Silly ideas about folk singers

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 30 Jul 12 - 07:07 AM

Trouble is. when other people sing your songs. they become something else. like one of my mildly risque songs became an obscene football chant on the terraces....

i mean people blether on about artistic control, but once its 'in the tradtion', you're buggered. people do what they like with it.

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Jul 12 - 02:37 AM

Never been able to shake the idea that the murderous Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) in The Whicker Man, was really Maddy Prior on speed.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Ernest
Date: 30 Jul 12 - 02:18 AM

Wasn`t I supposed to voice silly ideas in this thread, Don and Al?

Now I will refrain from writing that the singer/songwriterhas to die first before the songs can become "folk" (because thats silly too: that way Eric Bogle songs wouldn`t be folk while Johmn Lennon`s would) and rather ask the question if a beaver has more brains under his fur before or after it is turned into a hat.....

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Gurney
Date: 29 Jul 12 - 09:14 PM

Trenchant thought there, Ernest.

Don, the music becomes Folk Music when OTHER folk sing it, especially people who aren't trying to make money from it.

999, well, of course there is! How else would you bring the fish in?
Some folk sit on mountains or in gymnasiums gazing into infinity, and never catch anything. How daft is that!

Big Al, there's a plethora of new songs that are 'music to slit your wrists to.' Some people just prefer more traditional depressants.
An observation, not a dig at you. Never heard your stuff.
Chris. ;-)

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: GUEST,999
Date: 29 Jul 12 - 10:11 AM

"There's a very thin line between fishing and standing on the shore looking like an idiot."

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Jul 12 - 08:21 AM

Don't worry Don - that was a dig at me - not a serious comment!

Whoever it was, knows that I have problems with traditional folk music. the audiences that piss off or even worse - sit there politely - or even worse than that -toady up to the awful stuff and pretend its quite good; the dull music, the nasty or very twee characters in the songs - that I don't like much.

I do LIKE many traditional singers as people and respect them as musicians. However - folk, for me, starts when I start telling my own stories.

I know its not a popular viewpoint - but its the one I've arrived at, after a lot of years, and most of the time - it works for me.

Who knows - it might work for you.

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 29 Jul 12 - 07:22 AM

""Sensible ideas lead to becoming a singer-songwriter and still calling one`s music "Folk"´....""

The original source of every traditional song was a singer/songwriter, yet you call his music "folk".

Don T.

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Jul 12 - 07:00 AM

How intelligent do you need to be to swim round and chew bits of wood?

Not really university challenge stuff, is it?

More sort of Jeremy Kyle

I love you to bits, but why ween't you there for me when I moved onto the hard stuff - chewing bits of concrete instead of sticks?

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: banjoman
Date: 29 Jul 12 - 06:10 AM

My pet Rabbit washed his thing and couldn't do a hare with it

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 29 Jul 12 - 05:35 AM

The beaver was once considered highly intelligent with respect of its ability as a master-builder / architect - it being supposed that beavers understood the mathentic formulations necessary for the construction of vast and complex systems of river dams for which they are justly celebrated. Then it was discovered they were just reacting to the sound of running water. If you play a recording of running water to a beaver it will grab the nearest bundle of sticks and try to block it up. From this simple equation are these grand structures made.

As for I'm a Wee Beaver, there is this forgotton classion from TOTP circa 1974:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-FmG4JTIfk

Features a 'supergroup' of some of the choicest names in English Popular Music including Pink Floyd's Nick Mason on drums, Andy Summers on guitar (later of The Police), the legendary Dave MacCrae on piano (Matching Mole, Backdoor, The Goodies...), Richard Sinclair on bass (Caravan, Hatfield & the North, Camel), and Henry Cow's Fred Frith on guitar & air violin. And, of course, the great Robert Wyatt fronting his TOTP debut. The story goes the producer wasn't happy about the wheelchair, fearing it would upset the viewers; Richard Branson's response was to try to get weelchairs for all the band, but his influence then wasn't what is it now. Wyatt rightfully dug in his heels on the issue. "You'll never be on television again!" roard the TOTP man. "Like I fucking care," said Wyatt, then just embarking on his 40-year post-accident career & still going strong as one of true treasures of English popular music in which this cover of the Neil Diamond classic was very much - er - untypical to say the least. The covers of Robert Wyatt's 1974 album Rock Bottom had a sticker on them saying Not including the hit single I'm a Believer!. I've still got my copy...

Silly ideas about folk singers? Well, Wyatt is one of my various All Time Favourite Voices who I often wish would do an album of Traditional Songs. Of course, The Unthanks are great fans of his too. I could imagine them collaborating very nicely indeed.

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Jul 12 - 04:49 AM

Talking of hares (jugged, jumping or pubic, or white dancing in the night) - has anyone written a song celebrating the beaver?

I always liked that Monkees songs - I'm a wee beaver.

I'm in love/I'm a wee beaver

As beaver songs go, its in a class of its own. But does it tell the truth about swimming round and biting bits of wood? Not a fulfilling life for anyone - one would have thought.

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane
Date: 29 Jul 12 - 02:31 AM

A passenger dining at Crewe,
Found a large mouse in his stew,
Said the waiter: "Don't shout,
And wave it about!
The others'll be wanting one too!"

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Jul 12 - 07:42 PM

Waiter, there's a hare in my soup!

Of course, sir. You ordered rabbit stew!

As an alternative to:

Waiter,what's this fly doing in my soup?

Well, sir, it looks like the backstroke to me

RIM SHOT!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Dead Horse
Date: 28 Jul 12 - 08:40 AM

These animals are dangeroos :-)
Is that some kind of wannabe wallaby ?

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Mo the caller
Date: 28 Jul 12 - 07:20 AM

Now you're confusing me :)

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Ernest
Date: 28 Jul 12 - 05:12 AM

@ it`s magic:

Obviously, a next is not an animal but a plant. Otherwise it wouldn`t have grown on a field.

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: it'smagic
Date: 27 Jul 12 - 08:40 PM

I was wondering what kind of animal a next was!

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Mo the caller
Date: 27 Jul 12 - 02:56 PM

But then my 2 year old, when shown a NEWT asked if it was a crocodile

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Mo the caller
Date: 27 Jul 12 - 05:36 AM

"What's a hare"

yes, indeed.
A little boy on a playgroup sposnored ramble looked quite alarmed when I said there was a hare in the next field. But then my 2 year old, when shown a next asked if it was a crocodile.

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Ernest
Date: 27 Jul 12 - 01:58 AM

Sensible ideas lead to becoming a singer-songwriter and still calling one`s music "Folk"´....

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 26 Jul 12 - 09:08 PM

What's so great about having sensible ideas...?

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 26 Jul 12 - 01:12 PM

The Names of the Hare is an early English poem & can be found in The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans & David Thompson; if you like hares, you'll love that book - one of my Bibles. That translation is from the middle-English made (at my request) by my old friend Thor Ewing, but it also features a lot of the folklore from The Leaping Hare too. The last bit is my own; I have eaten hares, but would rather see them alive & leaping over the frosty furrows of an early spring morn.

Also from The Leaping Hare comes THIS, which is especially resonant. Click on the picture - that's medieval graffiti from St Albans Cathedral which also features in The Leaping Hare, but I chanced to see it back in December when we were passing through on our way to our gig at the Kit & Cutter Folk Club. Very special!

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Elmore
Date: 26 Jul 12 - 12:53 PM

During the folk scare I thought that folk singers had to be famous,like Seeger, Baez, Dylan to be worthy of my interest. What a Fool!

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: GUEST,Claire M (Permanant GUEST!)
Date: 26 Jul 12 - 12:47 PM

Sean,

"Spell" bound. Wow. Did you write 'The Names Of The Hare' yourself??   Even got a picture of a hare with Gowdie's spell on.

I said that there were 5 hares running about on the day of my village's Easter service; the woman I was telling proceeded to ask:

"What's a hare?"

So I said they were sacred, half-joking, she didn't know what sacred meant either.

I give up.

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Ernest
Date: 26 Jul 12 - 12:45 PM

They always drive Porsches to catch hares.... ;0)

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: Dead Horse
Date: 26 Jul 12 - 12:29 PM

Folk singers have always been splitting hares :-)

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 26 Jul 12 - 07:58 AM

I must add Hares are my thing too:

http://soundcloud.com/sedayne/the-names-of-the-hare

Subject: RE: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 26 Jul 12 - 07:57 AM

Go Into a Hare is from Isobel Gowdie; Robert Graves expanded on it in The White Goddess. Here I am singing a setting of it by Raymond Greenoaken interspersed with the verses of his Ragwort Road...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw7FUAsiVyc

Subject: Silly ideas about folk singers
From: GUEST,Claire M (Permanant GUEST!)
Date: 26 Jul 12 - 07:15 AM

Hiya,

I used to be convinced that Maddy Prior was a shape-shifter who talked in old-fashioned language because of the hare song and the fact I was reading copious amounts of Robin Jarvis, where the characters actually did both -- in between listening.
I even tried to sing the spell in it myself to turn into a hare. Even as small as I was I knew that wasn't how people normally spoke.

I still like hares now, which is lucky because we've got pictures and statues everywhere, and I honestly thought it was because of the song.

...(Y)_
...('-.-)
.o(")(") 

What about you ??