Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Musket
Date: 01 May 15 - 04:06 AM

"folk is not a style"

In the case of your performances Bridge, I concur with M'unlearned Friend.

😎😎😎

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Musket
Date: 01 May 15 - 03:55 AM

The song would be as hot as my bottom oven. 😎

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 01 May 15 - 03:28 AM

"having your aga serviced".. if George Formby were still alive today and releasing new songs...😜

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Musket
Date: 01 May 15 - 03:13 AM

I don't have a bugatti, silly boy. What do you think I am, a solicitor? 😂

Anyway, what with the BMW and Merc, there wouldn't be room in the garage. As it is, the Stag is in a lock up.

It didn't take a good woman in my case. Just heritage, breeding and a good pit.

Tell you what, just for you. I'll stick a ferret down my trousers whilst singing Bill Oddie 's Black Pudding Bertha. Live the dream!!!

I'll have to be quick though. They are coming to service the aga this morning. When the neighbours see the van turning into the drive, they'll think a public school educated solicitor has bought the house. I don't think you can get more aspiring middle class than having your aga serviced.

😎

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 30 Apr 15 - 04:19 PM

Richard - that's ok..

my little niche for exploration won't be conventional 70s folk rock,
80s punk folk,
or 90s techno dance folk,
or even 2000s folk metal...😉

but it will definitely involve a plethora of fuzz boxes,
cheeky ***** influences and piss poor singing...😜

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Apr 15 - 04:01 PM

As obvious a liar a Tony B.Liar, Mither. I have no problem with my background, but once I'd learned (it took a good woman) I had and still have) genuine empathy with people. Which does not include you. On either end of the stick.   You on the other hand seem to be deeply involved in pretence - a sort of Hyacinth Bouquet with a flat cap. And, doubtless, as a badge of rank, pigeons in a garden shed. Where you leave them while you drive about in your Bugatti.

The point about folk songs is that they indeed evolve, polished like pebbles on the beach, by constant tossing in the tides (ooh that reminds me of Mither). Folk is not a style.

Please note, B. Liar, that I did not bring the 1954 definition into this - but it is still obviously largely correct.


PFR - go for it, but I think you will find that Fairport and Steeleye got there first. And indeed Jim Moray since. I'd like to hear it. I like Al Whittle's work too - but I still know it's not "folk".

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 30 Apr 15 - 02:14 PM

I'm getting a stage closer to clearing out the back room
to finally unbox all my gear and set up my home project recording 'studio'
before it's too late...

Trad folkies - you have been warned...!!! 😈


[..just been sat on the bog mentally rehearsing my BBC Folk Awards acceptance speech...]

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Musket
Date: 30 Apr 15 - 02:02 PM

That's a thought. I must have sat down and evolved a song recently.

I thought evolution took time. Four hours after evolving it I played it at a folk club.

It being a folk song like. I thought it a more suitable venue than a bingo hall.

😂😂😂😂

Outvoted Jim. Live with it. Grumplily if you like but iTunes seems to know a bit about music.

(Says me, sat listening to some Ewan MacColl on Spotify as I type. All those songs he wrote eh? I'll write to Spotify and tell them to take MacColl out of folk. Where do want him Jim? Country and western? 😂

On a grumpy serious note, there are many folk artists who have made a career or lifetime interest in folk who might be a wee bit upset to keep reading an old man saying they aren't folk because err. He says so?

Obviously they (we?) reckon otherwise. Don't get me wrong, the tit trousers brigade are part of folk but folk is far too interesting to be just the sum of the many individual parts, most of which have been written by real people over the last fifty or so years.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 30 Apr 15 - 01:46 PM

oh yes you are grumpy Mij!

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST,Band Ivor
Date: 30 Apr 15 - 11:35 AM

Me above.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Apr 15 - 11:32 AM

folk songs evolve and are not made

No. Folk songs are first MADE and then they evolve, or maybe they don't. Maybe even in their natural habitat they remain unchanged - like George Bruce Thompson's McGinty's Meal an' Ale - which he wrote shortly before it was quickly snapped up by singers (Davie Stewart) and academics (Grieg & Duncan) alike. It remains unchanged to this day - but a highly evolved class of a Traditional Song even so. Then there's the songs of Tommy Armstrong, and other amazing things like The Keilder Hunt, The Shepherd's Song and Til the Kye Comes Hame - each sung by one of the finest Traditional Singers (Willie Scott), each with a known author (one may even have been written by him), each of them unchanged, and yet each totally and undoubtedly a bona fide Traditional Folk Song. I'm sure they might even have Roud numbers burned into their hides by now.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 30 Apr 15 - 10:26 AM

"Grumpy British Folkies"


.. what is it about old blokes and protracted feuds and vendettas...?????

..it's a bloody good job none or our lot are politicians
with real power involved in international peace talks and resolutions...😜

The 30 years war would look like a lunch break in comparison....

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Apr 15 - 09:13 AM

"this thread is about grumpiness on the English folkscene."
I'm not actually a grumpy person Al - just somewhat intolerant of idiocy when affects the music I love.
This thread doesn't seem to be bout much really Blair, politicians, whippets, greyhounds - none of which are anything to do with the folk scene I know and I doubt if even you could stretch them to being "folk"
Leave me out of it please - and learn to spell my name if you are goig to take it in vain - that would be appreciated too
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 30 Apr 15 - 09:00 AM

ah! that's where we've been going wrong. writing folksongs - when we should have been evolving them...clay soil or a mixture of compost...

don't be a spoilsport Jim.
this thread is about grumpiness on the English folkscene.
You cannot deprive us of the man who should be captain of our team - bronze medallist 1954.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Apr 15 - 08:04 AM

"Al writes some excellent folk songs"
No he doesn't - folk songs evolve and are not made
Al doesn't even like folk songs and he has nothing but contempt for those who gave tem to us - "bunch of tinkers", or something like that, I think he called them
He much prefers pop songs sung 'dahn the pub'
"This thread had to degenerate into 1954 nonsense eventually"
Nonsense to the ignorant only Muskie
As I said, I had no intention being involved (not interesting enough) - it was Al's somewhat behind-the-back snide which drew men in - blame him
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Musket
Date: 30 Apr 15 - 07:13 AM

Al writes some excellent folk songs, and performs folk songs in folk clubs over the years. If he doesn't like folk song, he has an odd way of showing it?



(This thread had to degenerate into 1954 nonsense eventually. It was either that or gay marriage, Palestine or bloody Tories.)

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Apr 15 - 05:13 AM

"Jim Carrol is threatening to take them off the case."
I wasn't going to bother with this thread Al, but if you persist with your squalid sniding on a thread I'm not involved iI'll use it as an opportunity to reply to your incredible arrogant stupidity on the thread you and your like managed to get closed Al - please try to act like an adult Al
You've made your point that you don't like folk song - please have the decency not to talk about others behind their backs (and please ,make the effort to spell my name correctly.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Musket
Date: 30 Apr 15 - 04:07 AM

The flat cap is real and the whippet is a greyhound to be technically correct. To my knowledge the other Muskets enjoyed a similar upbringing to you, public school, university etc etc. I'm sure either will let you know about pets and headware if they wish.

I do recall being licked to death by two Dalmatians when in Scotland last staying with Musket but flat cap? Naw, trying to appear working class to impress people is more up your street, what?

My cap was a natural progression as I became a slap head. The rain coat for dog walking is Rohan if that helps?

You see, the difference between us is you really want to be a working class hero but the mask keeps slipping whilst I am happy to go to the garage and say eni meni mini mo to choose between the BMW and Merc. Meanwhile, you can take the lad out of the pit estate but like you, I can't take my background away. You appear to want to lose yours whilst berating me for mine. Odd chap.

Look on the bright side. I'm a bit like the deserving poor you condescendingly witter on about, but minted.

I love armchair warriors. 😎

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Apr 15 - 09:52 PM

You can be surprisingly ignorant at times Mither. Still pretending to have a flat cap and a whippet?

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Musket
Date: 29 Apr 15 - 01:56 PM

Possibly from when he collected gentleman's jackets for them at his local con club...

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 29 Apr 15 - 12:19 PM

"astrakhan... sounds like a classic era Dr Who evil genius or monster species...???

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST,#
Date: 29 Apr 15 - 11:09 AM

Read 'The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton' (by Sir ACD) wherein is mentioned an astrakhan overcoat.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Musket
Date: 29 Apr 15 - 10:56 AM

I'm glad you know what an astrakhan overcoat is Bridge.. Buggered if I do.

Tell you what, if you are in charge, I'll grease the rifles for them, make sure none of them have a blank up the spout and tie my own blindfold...

I wouldn't have the cigar though. Not good for my health, and anyway, what do you think I am, a solicitor?
😎

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Apr 15 - 08:04 AM

Mither would make an excellent double for Tony B.Liar. A plutocrat, a privatiser, a terminological inexactituder. One of the sort who stabbed the miners in the back. Come the revolution he's going up against the wall, doubtless while still smoking his cigar and in his astrakhan overcoat.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Musket
Date: 29 Apr 15 - 04:13 AM

No. Mr Bridge, as you inadvertently respectfully call him, could never be selected by a party. He supports left wing politics but has right wing skeletons in the old cupboards.

Far better leaving him shouting at his keyboard where he can do less harm. I'll keep him occupied. I know, I know, I am statesmanlike enough to be Prime Minister but Bridge needs a key worker and nobody else puts up with the miserable old Sod .

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST,Ellen Vannin
Date: 29 Apr 15 - 02:33 AM

Goodness me, Mr. Bridge and Mr. Musket sound like a couple of politicians at Prime Minister's Question Time.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Apr 15 - 01:59 AM

why stop at nose flutes.. what about arse bagpipes !!!???

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST,#
Date: 29 Apr 15 - 01:40 AM

The coming investment opportunity is a combined nose flute/harmonica combo. Be the first on your block . . .

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST,Blandiver (Astray)
Date: 28 Apr 15 - 11:08 AM

That link again:

Bocarina - Noseflute Pro

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST,Blandiver (Still Very Much Astray)
Date: 28 Apr 15 - 11:04 AM

The BEST Nose flutes can be had here for pennies:

http://www.danmoi.com

Check those sound samples!

*

Otherwise, nice to see this again. The fundamentals of music are like LIFE itself - we understand each idiom as a species on the tree of evolution. It all comes from the same source and all of it shares at least some of the same DNA*. Other than this, by being ancient all music belongs to the future, just as long as there are people left to do it.

* If I understood that last episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson's reboot of Cosmos I watched correctly.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Musket
Date: 28 Apr 15 - 09:26 AM

Stick it up yours and you could still get a tune out of it Bridge.

Perhaps Lennon's Working Class Hero?   You have been trying to be one long enough so some might just be convinced eh?
😎

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST,#
Date: 28 Apr 15 - 09:13 AM

Grumpy British Folkies--why, I've never heard of such a thing.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Apr 15 - 05:03 AM

And I can think of places for you to put one.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Musket
Date: 28 Apr 15 - 03:56 AM

Les Barker used to play the Lancashire folk banana through his nose....

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Apr 15 - 02:50 AM

Weren't we all polite, back then?

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Apr 15 - 07:02 PM

refresh.

they used to sell noseflutes on the back of comics - also seebackroscopes and floating sugat cubes....

why didn't they catch on, 'snot all that much of a mystery..

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 20 Jul 12 - 10:10 AM

What happened to Mongolian nose flute player?

Just for the record, the Mongolian nose flute isn't an instrument. It's a way of producing the voice so that it comes out sounding a bit like a flute.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jul 12 - 07:51 AM

The description on the Froots Facebook page says it all really -

fRoots magazine has a lot to answer for. Since it wandered whimpering from the womb as Southern Rag in 1979 it has brought many folk, roots and world music artists to wider attention, sometimes to their great benefit, occasionally not! Many careers have prospered, a few have been blighted. It has set readers on paths to unfeasible musical enthusiasms and profoundly irritated those who didn't share its own. It has catalysed meetings that have led to marriages and lifestyles that have led to divorce. It has set people off on travels to places and cultures they never imagined, and trapped a few at home with more CDs than any sensible human should own. Praise it or curse it, fRoots has changed lives.

That'll be curse then.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 19 Jul 12 - 11:28 PM

How long is a piece of Sting? (In this case about 12 seconds). Hardly enough to say whether it is/isn't an ocarina. This sort of misattribution gets right up my nose, but it didn't look like it actually reached his.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: TheSnail
Date: 19 Jul 12 - 05:21 PM

Mongolian nose flute player.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 19 Jul 12 - 04:41 PM

Here's the original 1985 recording. Just wastes me...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orRvnGkxrVA

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 19 Jul 12 - 04:34 PM

all those wonderful 1970s Dollar Brand big band arrangements of Bra Joe, Tintinyana, African Marketplace, and the rest ...

Just been playing this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt1ZAtC9TUY

Back in the 80's my old Granma used to love this song. I saw Ekaya on various occasions with Carlos Ward & Essiet Okun Essiet in the band. Gorgeous.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 19 Jul 12 - 04:06 PM

'another place'

Does he mean the house of Lords...?

When this skirmish of ideas was at its height, some lines of Auden were just beyond my reach to quote, but I found the book today - its from a poem called 'A Communist To Others'


You're thinking us a nasty sight;
Yes, we are poisoned, you are right,
    Not even clean;
We do not know how to behave
We are not beautiful or brave
You would not pick our sort to save
    Your first fifteen.

Yes, that's now English folk Music leaves me feeling quite a lot of the time.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST,Folknacious
Date: 19 Jul 12 - 03:35 PM

Late arrival here, alerted by postings in another place:

"Be interesting though to see how many Mongolian nose flute players, etc. - the sort of thing Froots has so selflessly devoted its pages to advancing the caree s of, whilst the people who have made the Englsih folkscene work have seen their life's work relegated to the 'and the rest' column - support this initiative."

I consulted the oracle today and asked how many times Froots has featured Mongolian nose flute players or, say, to pick a random example out of the air, Derek Brimstone. The answer came - "never, in either case." Though the oracle did reveal that Froots had once published a letter from a certain folk club comedian guitarist complaining about "funny foreign coloured people" on the front of Froots, but has never, as far as he remembers, published one from a Mongolian nose flute player complaining about people playing The Wild Rover.

I rest my coat.

Ken.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 19 Jul 12 - 05:51 AM

Blandiver also said
> Kippie Moeketsi was always Bra Joe from Killimanjaro after
> Dollar Brand's (AKA Abdullah Ibrahim) piece of the same
> name - there's a famous recording of that which features
> Kippie, although my favourite was always this
> solo recording from African Piano.

Right, that's my listening sorted this evening - all those wonderful 1970s Dollar Brand big band arrangements of Bra Joe, Tintinyana, African Marketplace, and the rest ...

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: GUEST,Baz Parkes
Date: 19 Jul 12 - 05:14 AM

Blandiver said, amongst much else

"But, as I keep saying (and it's not a matter of saying something often enough either) it's a million country miles between Harry Cox and Peter Bellamy. One is real and the other illusory, and no matter how compelling that illusion might be, it pays to be aware of how (and why) the one thing is very different from the other.
Thomas Hardy makes much the same point about the mummers in Return of the Native, but can't just put my hand on a copy atm

He should know, he played the fiddle...

I'm glad to see the horse finally made an appearance..

Baz

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Will Fly
Date: 19 Jul 12 - 04:00 AM

I thought altercating was when you changed key in the middle of a tune.

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Jul 12 - 07:42 PM

These others have been altercating.....I've just been my natural sunny self, like Mrs Thatcher in the words of St Francis, bringing darkness where there is light and talking to badgers.....

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: Edthefolkie
Date: 18 Jul 12 - 06:48 PM

Good stuff Diane, I was just going to point to Carole Pegg too!

Anyway, watch this chaps, a though provoking parable on the consequences of a minor altercation.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cekr16B4Gno

Subject: RE: Review: Grumpy British Folkies part 273
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Jul 12 - 04:50 AM

==Al, I'm glad to hear that you don't really exist, but why on earth would anyone want to invent you?==
.,,.,.
Well, he sez it was me who invented him. Can't really remember why ~ suppose he just seemed a good idea at the time. Maybe I realised in a flash of somethingorother or wotsit that the world just had to have an Al...

OTOH, perhaps he just invented me inventing him. In which case...

Er Er Er Er

All too much. Think I'll go back to bed.

~M~