BS: Who the hell is MacColl?

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 11:05 PM

999 - "I am likely the only person on Earth who thinks TFTEISYF is not a great song. I do not like it at all."

You're not the only one, Bruce. I've never cared much for that song either.

However, I love the album of Robert Burns songs that MacColl recorded. He was a very fine singer.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Neil D
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 10:44 PM

"Go Down Ye Murderers" is also a meaningful song.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 10:17 PM

I have hesitated to write as to MacColl's songs. I am likely the only person on Earth who thinks TFTEISYF is not a great song. I do not like it at all.

His 'Shoals of Herring', 'Travelling People' and 'Manchester Rambler' are songs of lasting value and worth. 'Dirty Old Town' has a place in the legacy of music, as does 'Freeborn Man' and 'Sweet Thames Flow Softly'.

People who do not write songs will laud him for his fame. People who do write songs will recognize his genius.

I do NOT care that he was a dip-shit politically, or that he had a view of himself that does not fit MY view of him. I liked and like what he wrote and what I thought and think is of value.

I am tired of UKers assuming that he is necessarily theirs to do with as they choose. The songs I mentioned above now belong to the world. And thus, so does MacColl (Miller), and that's that, imo.

PS 'The Manchester Rambler' is one of the better songs I've heard in my life. It causes a person to WANT to sing. The fact my grandfather came from Lancashire has nothing to do with it--although he was a tough sonuvabitch and a MU supporter. (If you dcn't know what the difference between MU and MC is, you shouldn't be reading this!)

Anyway, while I will not sanctify MacColl, neither will I put him down. He wrote good songs that we remember today, and if that ain't good enough for ya, write one that's better.

Jack Walsh's grandson, and proud to be so.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Gurney
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 10:10 PM

I was around, in England, in the period that Shimrod speaks of, and he is quite right about the 'fluff.' I thought it was fluffy then, and a good deal of it is still far from my taste now. Some is fine, though, as LH said, but I had my mind poisoned against them by their more popular fluff.

I never met Ewan, but friends who did were not impressed by his personality, his attitude, or his politics.
You can't argue with his songbook, though. He was one of the great promoters and songwriters in this idiom, and his songs had, for me, that extra touch that made them feel 'authentic.'
Which, of course, they have now become, some being adopted by the people he wrote them about.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Bert
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 09:41 PM

...MacColl was there somewhere in the background but not a major figure ... You are right TheSnail.

I started learning English folk songs in 1946 and I never heard of MacColl until I got to the States in 1980.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 09:37 PM

LOL!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: TheSnail
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 09:31 PM

Just like to say that I have been involved in UK folk music since about 1969 and I recognise nothing in Shimrod's description of what happened. MacColl was there somewhere in the background but not a major figure and the "fluff" was something I never encountered.

For Raptor, it might help put things in context if you knew that MacColl was Pete Seeger's brother in law and a close friend of Alan Lomax. If you don't know who either of them were, contact your doctor.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Bert
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 09:27 PM

A folk singer who was somewhat overshadowed in his time by Lonnie Donnegan.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 08:53 PM

I'm betting Raptor hasn't heard of Mike Seeger either. His favorite performers are people such as Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, John Prine, Steve Earle, Tom Waits...that sort of thing. He wouldn't know the classic folk performers all that well except for Dylan.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Elmore
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 08:44 PM

Attn:Raptor. He's the late Mike Seeger's brother- in- law. Ever hear of him? Mike that is.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 07:07 PM

Yes, a great many North American singers have covered that song.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Les from Hull
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 05:54 PM

He might be considered more in the USA if we remind you that he was the guy that wrote ' The first time ever I saw your face'.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Megan L
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 03:38 PM

It wid be a poor world if we were aw alike.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Raptor
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 03:31 PM

I honestly never heard of the guy. I guess he's only a big deal in the UK. But you folks that got so upset about the fact that this guy does't seem to be that important to be played on any North American Radio station should contact your doctor and have the pickle removed.

Get a Helmet.

Have a nice day!

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 02:54 PM

Oh, excuse me....I did not post this thread. Raptor did. I started thinking this was the "Did MacColl like anyone???" thread while I was typing.

In any case, my point stands. Raptor is just screwing around and being funny, he's not trying to blacken anyone's name, and I think he probably genuinely has little or no idea who Ewan MacColl is. There's no reason he would know about Ewan MacColl. It's not the music he grew up on.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 02:49 PM

This thread is not an attempt to blacken Ewan MacColl's name, it's simply a bit of light humour which I posted as a spinoff from several other recent threads about Ewan MacColl.

In any case, I am a fan of Ewan MacColl's recordings, I love the songs he did on the records I've heard, so why would I want to blacken his name?

The American folk revival really got started with performers like Jimmy Rodgers, Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives, Cisco Houston, Leadbelly, the Weavers, Odetta, and various others whose music I would hardly characterize as "fluff". I'd say it was built firmly on the cultural working people's heritage of both North America and the UK. When that music began to receive wide popularity with a really large number of people, there was a flurry of mainstream industry interest in it, and I'd say it was that which led to some of the "fluff" you refer to...that is, quasi-folk music that was performed in a preppy, collegiate style on TV and records by little groups of men in striped shirts and ties...and sometimes by waif-life females in bogus "folk" costume.

The Kingston Trio were, I think, part of that fluffy wave (although I think they did do some worthwhile material too), and so were legions of others who copied the Kingston Trio. Peter, Paul, and Mary were an act that seemed a bit contrived to me (invented by Albert Grossman), although again, they did some material with real merit.

By the time Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and others in the early 60s came along, they had successfully wedded the old folk traditions to modern songwriting that spoke to our own times as well as the past. In doing so, I think they enriched the folk tradition and were anything but "fluffy", as you put it.

And I also think MacColl did great stuff. But what I was looking for all my life was what Dylan, Baez, Buffy Sainte-Marie and the others in their peer group did. It's not fluff. Neither is it traditional UK folk music. It just depends on what you want, you see. We all tend to love the music we first encountered in our youth. That's just natural. That's why my Dad, for instance, loved Swing and Big Band music, whereas I have little interest in it. It's mostly built around brass instruments, and it's a sound I'm simply not much attracted to. I prefer piano and guitar-based music....with good lyrics.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 02:26 PM

Ewan MacColl was born in 1915, in the city of Salford, in industrial Lancashire, of Scottish parents. He was a playwright, actor, singer of British traditional songs and a song-writer. Along with people like A.L.Lloyd he founded the British Folk Revival which starting in the late 1950s/1960s and is still going today.

In the early 1960s the Pop Industry invented a form of light, rather fluffy, mainly guitar-based, acoustic music which they called 'folk music'. A bit later some (mainly American) singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan, and others, moved this fluff a bit closer to American traditional music.

Many people went to British Folk Clubs hoping to hear such fluff - and in some clubs they got it. But in other clubs they encountered something completely different in the form of the sort of real traditional songs favoured by Ewan MacColl and his followers; they also occasionally encountered his rather fierce brand of Left Wing politics. Some of those people, like me, for example, realised that MacColl's ballads and songs were what they had been looking for all their lives. But others, whose limited imaginations couldn't take them beyond the fluff, hated him - and they still hate today, nearly 23 years after his death.

But he was a giant and a genius (the only one that I ever met) and the mental pygmies who couldn't cope with that genius, when they first encountered him, still can't cope with it today, nearly 23 years after his death. They still try to blacken his name on threads like this - but they won't succeeed.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 12:24 PM

MtheGM - I know Raptor. I think it's very likely that he never knew who Ewan MacColl was, never heard of him, and is just now becoming aware of MacColl for the first time. He can tell you a lot about birds and American football teams, though.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: GUEST,Dylan for president
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 11:02 AM

A Stalinist, cowardly wartime deserter, a hypocritical, control freak of no real musical importance to anybody but a few up their own butts twisted bigots that post on this site!

----------PLEASE USE A CONSISTENT GUEST NAME (even when trolling...). JoeClone------------------

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 10:48 AM

Finn MacColl -- great Irish hero, also claimed by Scotland.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 10:26 AM

Something a bit pathetic about this pretence of pig-ignorance, isn't there?

Oh, well. Play your games.

〠☺〠☺〠

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 09:52 AM

James Henry Miller

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 09:40 AM

Could it be because there are not enough live ones of any merit?

Or maybe one has to be dead to be appropriately praised or reviled?

I'm not feeling very well today myself. That should get me some much needed attention!

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Raptor
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 09:25 AM

Why is there so many threads about some dead guy from england?

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 09:24 AM

Folky troublemaker from the 60s.

Subject: RE: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 09:13 AM

Some guy from England. Dead now.

Subject: BS: Who the hell is MacColl?
From: Raptor
Date: 20 Jan 12 - 09:09 AM

I'd never heard of him.