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Can a pop song become traditional?
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,Punkfolkrocker Date: 23 Nov 15 - 07:19 AM "what is an unreal folk club, or even a surreal folk club?" Now if Banksy started up a folk club along the lines of his Dismaland Bemusement Theme Park...??? 😜 |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST Date: 23 Nov 15 - 07:55 AM Ah. So they have to be in the public domain to be folk songs? This gets better. I'll just move all my MacColl into the part of my shelves labelled pop. Ditto Guthrie, Seeger, Paxton, Garbutt, Thompson, Swarbrick etc etc. Like I said. Something in the water. It's alright, no need to get het up. We all know what we mean when we say folk, classical, pop, rock, grunge, punk, Celtic, Oirish, jazz.. We don't need a confused old man to tell us we are thick, if it's all the same to you. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Jim Carroll Date: 23 Nov 15 - 08:27 AM "I'll just move all my MacColl into the part of my shelves labelled pop." Are you really going to walk away from your dishonest cxclaim that I suggested only songs written by MacColl were folk songs - suppose so really - ah well!! Why move them to "pop"? As good as they were, with one exception, they weren't popular with anybody but a small number of people otherwise he'd have been able to set up Blackthorn Records way back in the 40s when he wrote Manchester Rambler. Not only do you have trouble with defining 'tradition' but you seem to be having trouble with 'pop' music now - late night maybe? The same with the others too - though a couple of them were closer to 'pop' in their approach than they were to folk. Any sign of that definition yet - having a problem holding my breath? Jim Carroll |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Teribus Date: 23 Nov 15 - 09:55 AM Most certainly judging by what can be heard at the folk clubs I have been to recently. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Jim Carroll Date: 23 Nov 15 - 11:06 AM "Ah. So they have to be in the public domain to be folk songs?" By the way Folk songs don't "have" to be in the public domain - they ARE in the public domain - nothing to do with definition - just on of those things you people never seem to want to come to terms with. Much of the damage, apart from th "not selling what it says on the tin" confusion you people have created is that clubs have to pay PRS and Imro dues to open their doors to the public. Jim Carroll |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker Date: 23 Nov 15 - 11:39 AM Heavy industrial strength deja vu setting in... 😜 Jim - As you may recall from previous threads on this subject, I tend to agree with most of what you espouse... let's say 90%.. But the 10% I can't support, are aspects of your views on music culture as it is right now, certainly since the punk/indie years of the late 70s... and maybe the near future of illicit underground 'resistance' internet communities and sharing... ..And your emphasise on the nowadays importance of Folk Clubs.. some of us, maybe a lot of us, never set foot inside them. We find and enjoy 'our' folk music [trad and contemporary] through other means, media, and distribution channels. Like it or not this is now an era of youtube / streamcloud.. etc... So despite all the legalistic/corporate greed odds against it.. I still think it's not impossible for a 'pop song' to evolve, adapt, and become accepted as a 'folk song'... |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: The Sandman Date: 23 Nov 15 - 12:24 PM MGM, Johnson also said 1,872. Ireland; Scotland The author of these memoirs will remember, that Johnson one day asked him, 'Have you observed the difference between your own country impudence and Scottish impudence?' The answer being in the negative: 'Then I will tell you,' said Johnson. 'The impudence of an Irishman is the impudence of a fly, that buzzes about you, and you put it away, but it returns again, and flutters and teazes you. The impudence of a Scotsman is the impudence of a leech, that fixes and sucks your blood.' nasty racist stuff, the same as the other quote, the best thing you can do Mike is get your lion and go to work on an egg |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Jim Carroll Date: 23 Nov 15 - 12:57 PM "But the 10% I can't support, are aspects of your views on music culture as it is right now," Punk was interesting until it became commodified - don't think it ever represented or communicated much, in the way folk song did/does (if you open your mind to it) It became as disposable as any other type of music with a shelf-life that didn't allow it to become anything really - don't know too much about Indie, so can't comment. As far as I know, these, and rap are claimed from birth by their authors - if they are commercially viable they become fixed. Because numbers of people listen to a music doesn't make it necessarily theirs and it certainly doesn't make it folk. Go to south Wales and you'll find ex mining villages singing opera (someone once conned the Welsh into believing they could sing!!) - does that make Verdi or Bizet folk - don't think so really. One of the characteristics off pop song is that it comes with a sell-by date - most of our folk songs have lasted centuries and it their progress through time and space that makes them folk. We have become passive recipients of our musical culture - any claim we have to it is what we buy - we have no input into its creation and we can't re-create it without paying for the right to do so because it belongs to somebody other than 'the folk' - so how can it evolve or adapt and become somebody else's? Jim Carroll |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker Date: 23 Nov 15 - 01:07 PM "...we have no input into its creation and we can't re-create it without paying for the right to do so because it belongs to somebody other than 'the folk' - so how can it evolve or adapt and become somebody else's?" because we can f@ck about with the words and tune of a copyright song as much as we like as long as no one catches us.... 😜 .. and some might even be fortunate enough to record 'their' version and pay off the legal vultures to allow them to air it in public legally.... |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,Raggytash Date: 23 Nov 15 - 01:17 PM " most of our folk songs have lasted centuries and it their progress through time and space that makes them folk." Interesting perspective this. This afternoon I was having my customary pint and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" was on the radio. A piece of music I've always enjoyed. Will this, in time, become a folk song? I don't know the answer, just posing the question. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Jim Carroll Date: 23 Nov 15 - 01:25 PM "because we can f@ck about with the words and tune of a copyright song as much as we like as long as no one catches us" Still not ours PFR - it remains identifiably somebody's. I can be made a parody, in which case it can be said to be folk, but even that is dodgy - how many legal quibbles have there been about tunes being filched But even if that were the case - that is not what is being argued for here - people are arguing basically that any song they care to name can be folk because they care to call it that. It is a small group of folkies who are attempting tp de-define something 9 haven't come up with a redefinition yet - someday, if we live long enough maybe) Jim Carroll |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,keith price Date: 23 Nov 15 - 01:41 PM Queen couldn't play "Bohemian Rhapsody " live Raggytash what makes you think you and I can do it. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: keberoxu Date: 23 Nov 15 - 02:14 PM De-define. De-define? (I thought I had heard everything) |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker Date: 23 Nov 15 - 02:19 PM Jim - punk rock ethos / attitude... 😜 There's enough of us.. now in our late 50s to early 60s.. 30 odd years of sticking 2 fingers up to the corporate music industry... For every mega selling commodity "Anarchy in the UK" or "Sheena is a Punkrocker" there were a multitude of unrecorded spotty herberts knocking off songs about themselves and their mates and council estates, and shit jobs and the dole, and who did what to annoy us during the previous week, and taking the piss out the police and the tories, and local upstanding civic dignitaries we all agreed were complete c@nts..etc.. to be sung loud and pissed at weekend ramshackle gigs in local community scout huts, skittle alleys, village halls, wherever we could get away with it.. all around the UK... Most of these songs are long forgotten.. some still linger on in the memories of now respectable aging citizens with mortgages and grand kids.. occasionally meeting up for old times sake and swapping cassettes of long ago gigs and band rehearsals, and DIY home recordings, to now be transferred to CD for posterity.. But that was a valid grass roots ground level form of 'folk music', expression of teenage dissatisfaction and anger with the state and society.... and great effin fun as well... And a big part of that was taking well known pop songs and kicking the shite out of them until they were barely recognisable... they were 'our' versions... |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Jim Carroll Date: 23 Nov 15 - 02:51 PM "(I thought I had heard everything)" Obviously not - if you have a definition for something and decide that definition is invalid but don't bother replacing it - you de-define it - can't think of another word for it - can you? Not conviced that what you are describing is folk or traditional otherwise all those Aldermastons, Faslanes and Anti Vietnam War demonstrations I went on were 'folk' - nevrer heard them described that. What goes into0 making up folk is really far more complex than 'a fist in the face of the establishment' or the music industry. That strikes me as part of the industry going Awol from where I'm standing. More power to that. Jim Carroll |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST Date: 23 Nov 15 - 02:54 PM "They ARE in the public domain." - Jim Carroll. Err.. No they aren't. Just because we might ignore PRS doesn't mean copyrighted songs are in the public domain when sung in pubs. You might want to define folk through cheating on hard working song writers but I have more respect for the genre. I may not pay Vin Garbutt when I sing his songs but a) he knows I and others do and is comfortable with it and b) in return I buy his albums and go to his concerts when nearby (ok and have been known to put him up for the night.) But I'm still in breach technically of copyright. Copyright allows people to write songs without them being stolen. Many folk songs are written by people scraping a living writing songs. By Jim's reckoning one of my pop songs I wrote many years ago and a friend still performs to this day (it's crap as songs go mind) is a real folk song because I never copyrighted it. And there was me thinking it was about the music not the status. Keep wriggling. Genres. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker Date: 23 Nov 15 - 03:04 PM "otherwise all those Aldermastons, Faslanes and Anti Vietnam War demonstrations I went on were 'folk' - nevrer heard them described that" errrrm... I think they might have been... or at least, a sub facet of a wider alternative movement's 'folk culture'.... ???? I'm sure that's how it might be regarded in a lot of socio/historic documentaries and magazine articles.. 1960s Folkies were up to there neck's in it all, serious movers and shakers, after all... ???? I'm struggling to remember contextual material from my student years... |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: keberoxu Date: 23 Nov 15 - 05:21 PM de-define, de-define, de-de all the waaaaaaaaaaaaay..... |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: MGM·Lion Date: 24 Nov 15 - 12:57 AM As one who was on the first Aldermaston March, playing in a group led by Fred [later Karl] Dallas, under the overall ægis of John Hasted, I confirm that there was a very strong folk element on the Aldermastons. Not least in the song which became the CND anthem, The H-Bomb's Thunder, to the tune of The Miners' Life Guard, written by distinguished sf writer John Brunner with whom I happened to be sharing a flat in W Hampstead at the time. John could not sing a note, BTW, so asked me to sing the first draft as a try-out; so I can claim to have been the first ever to sing the song which has later been sung on various occasions by millions worldwide. ≈M≈ |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST Date: 24 Nov 15 - 02:52 AM With every old codger lining up to claim they were marching at Aldermaston, then Rod Stewart's songs are all folk, not just the ones with mandolins playing on them. Mainly because at least he actually was marching. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Jim Carroll Date: 24 Nov 15 - 03:35 AM "Keep wriggling." I'm not the one wriggling - you have my definition and its track record - I still await yours. "With every old codger lining up to claim they were marching at Aldermaston" Your posts seem to have degenerated into simple troll abuse - don't know about the Singers Club being sterile - this rather unpleasant conversation certainly is so I'll leave you to your somewhat personal bile and hope it gives you every satisfaction. Jim Carroll |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,keith price Date: 24 Nov 15 - 04:13 AM I get the feeling Guest regards anyone over the age of 18yrs as old. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity Date: 24 Nov 15 - 04:16 AM Sure they can, and are...'House Carpenter' is hundreds of years old...and was also popular at the time...that's why it went on to be 'traditional'. Maybe no one is writing stuff that good anymore.... GfS P.S. A re-post of a prior post expressing pretty much the same thing..jeez, are they deleting above the line, too???..even well known facts???
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: MGM·Lion Date: 24 Nov 15 - 04:48 AM Well, I suppose I am old, at that -- 4-score+3. Whether a 'codger', not for me to say. I mean, how does one 'codge'? What is 'codging' precisely? Not a practice I have ever indulged in sfaik. ≈M≈ |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Will Fly Date: 24 Nov 15 - 05:10 AM codge Verb (third-person singular simple present codges, present participle codging, simple past and past participle codged) To patch or cobble together; to make hastily and carelessly. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Will Fly Date: 24 Nov 15 - 05:12 AM Forgot to add, Michael = just a dictionary definition - not my opinion! :-) |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST Date: 24 Nov 15 - 05:24 AM It isn't quite so ironic when someone has to spell it out to them. Thank you Mr Fly. Presumably those annoyed used to be young codgers. I'm just off to write a new folk song. I have a booking in a folk club on Friday and I usually present a few new folk songs at this annual booking for the good people who listen to my folk songs in a folk club. Not that they are brilliant songs of course. The lazy amongst us have always known folk clubs to be less than discerning audiences. Perhaps I codge them together? Sorry to read that precious people still think the world spins round them. Folk is defined by those using the word. Acoustic, roots, traditional, protest, ballad.., presumably we all know folk all compared to old codgers? |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: The Sandman Date: 24 Nov 15 - 01:02 PM you reckon you write folk songs? could you let us hear some?Folk is not defined by the term acoustic, acoustic has a definition which means Of or involving the performance of music using acoustic instruments, sometimes amplified through microphones. so jazz could be acoustic, classical music can be acoustic and frequently is and classical music is not folk or traditional. your definition is less accurate than the 1954 one, you are just spouting crap. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST Date: 24 Nov 15 - 04:18 PM Hook line and sinker yet again Dick...... |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: MGM·Lion Date: 25 Nov 15 - 06:02 AM Thanks for that definition of 'codge', Will. Seems to be a variant of 'bodge'. Which dictionary did you find it in? Not in my edition of Chambers. Regards ≈M≈ |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Will Fly Date: 25 Nov 15 - 11:42 AM I found it in various slang dictionaries, including Cassell's Dictionary of Slang (which I have in print). It also reminds me a bit of cobble, in the sense of "to cobble together" something. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,Allan Conn Date: 25 Nov 15 - 12:29 PM The Concise Oxford suggest "codger" meaning an old or strange person is perhaps a variant of "cadger". Cadge means to beg for something so a cadger is a beggar. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Lighter Date: 25 Nov 15 - 02:38 PM Oxford has never heard of the verb to "codge" either. It suggests the likelihood that "codger" is a variant of "cadger," which originally meant not a beggar or scrounger but an itinerant dealer or street hawker. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: MGM·Lion Date: 25 Nov 15 - 02:50 PM Thanks for headsup to Slang Dict, Will. I find it is in fact in my Partridge Dict of Slang & Unconventional English -- meaning 'repair', & (confirming my above suggestion) possibly a variant of 'botch' [of which 'bodge' as I used above, a variant.] Roger & Out! ≈M≈ ...but still don't see why only silly old buggers like me should be expected to repair things, at that! Is a young shoemaker, or the girl who puts on the patches at the dry cleaners, a 'codger', then? I think we should be told! |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Lighter Date: 25 Nov 15 - 04:58 PM > possibly a variant of 'botch' Another one of Partridge's odd conjectures. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,guest Date: 26 Nov 15 - 03:12 PM Partridge? Eric or Don? re the latter now there's was a wonderful exponent of the old English TRADITION of the one man band- much lamented and always enjoyed the folk scene |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST Date: 26 Nov 15 - 07:57 PM Have we managed to decide how many angels are dancing on the head of the pin yet? |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,jim bainbridge Date: 27 Nov 15 - 08:20 AM No it seems not... I was accused of a 'copout on the subject a while back. It was no such thing. I simply stand by my view that until somebody can define to my satisfaction the nature of the two alleged music types, there is very little point in trying to even approach the question asked above. In my opinion, nobody has even approached valid definitions- I think it's impossible and unnecessary, but given satisfactory criteria, it might be a worthwhile discussion. What did the Synod of Whitby decide about the angels and the pins anyway? |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Jim Carroll Date: 27 Nov 15 - 08:37 AM "In my opinion, nobody has even approached valid definitions" Been defined internationally since 1954 and had sever hundred books published based on that definition - may not satisfy you Jim, but until someone comes up with a better one, we'll just have to struggle on with the one we've got - that is, if we intend trying to pass on what we've got. Bit to wet to start burning the books in the garden at the present time. Jim Carroll |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker Date: 27 Nov 15 - 08:40 AM "Have we managed to decide how many angels are dancing on the head of the pin yet?" more to the point.... what tunes are they dancing to.... Trad or contemporary folk, jazz, or pop music...???? Though I never realised angels were so tiny, always thought they were at least 5'7" to maybe 6'5" for the really lanky ones..... 😕 silly buggers dancing on pins though... never did understand devout religious self harming and flagellation...??? |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST,Raggytash Date: 27 Nov 15 - 08:43 AM Synod of Whitby sorted the date of Easter in 664AD, Angels and Pins came much later. Personally I don't need to define folk music that closely. If I like it fine, if I don't like it fine someone else will. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Vic Smith Date: 27 Nov 15 - 09:08 AM What did the Synod of Whitby decide about the angels and the pins anyway? They pondered the question for a long time, Jim, and found that everyone had their own opinions and nobody agreed with anyone else. The more they thought, researched, discussed and argued, the more depressed and sullen they became. Then one of the Synod's brightest brains had a brilliant idea, He stood up and shouted, "I've got it! Some questions don't have answers; this 'angels' and 'pins' thing is one just like..... well let me think for a minute..... yes, just like 'Can a pop song become traditional?' So instead of wasting our time on things that we can't answer, why don't we approach Malcolm Storey and ask him to start a Whitby Folk Week. He'd probably do it for years... decades even... and we could all help him out as stewards!" There was an immediate round of applause and cheers and shouts of "Great idea!". So that is what they did and, do you know, they became much happier people afterwards. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: MGM·Lion Date: 27 Nov 15 - 11:56 AM @ j bainbridge If a tacky tautologous turgid trite tortuous truism like ☠☠ 'a good song is a good song' ☠☠ on the part of a normally cogent commentator like yourself is not a C O P O U T ☞ ☛ ☞ ☛ ☞ then I reckon it will do till a copout comes along. Regards ☺〠☺~M~☺〠☺❤❤ |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: The Sandman Date: 27 Nov 15 - 12:05 PM BodgersThe term was once common around the furniture-making town of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England. Bodgers were highly skilled itinerant wood-turners, who worked in the beech woods of the Chiltern Hills. nothing to do with codgers. Jim Bainbridges point is not a cop out but valid, he learns a song not because of its classification but because the song appeals to him. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: GUEST Date: 27 Nov 15 - 12:19 PM What we need is a North Korean or Taliban style ministry of culture. That'll decisively end all arguments. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Brian Peters Date: 27 Nov 15 - 01:23 PM So the Guest who finds this thread as futile as the angels-on-a-pin conundrum managed to revive it just when it was dying the death. Nice bit of trolling. |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Jim Carroll Date: 27 Nov 15 - 01:33 PM "That'll decisively end all arguments." Did I miss somethink - all you have offered are rather unpleasant ageist snides Jim Carrol |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: MGM·Lion Date: 27 Nov 15 - 01:50 PM Disagree, Dick. Whatever you think he might have meant to communicate, he expressed it with extreme clumsiness in exceedingly copout·worthy terms. "A good song is a good song" does not, unless one is determined on more kindness than such a tautologous idiocy deserves, afford the interpretation you so obligingly chose to put on it. If he simply meant that he sings what he likes without the need for taxonomic categorisation, why couldn't he say so, instead of talking in meaningless truisms? Why, even those pinhead-dancing angels could do better than that. I say again: if it was not a copout, then it will do for me till a copout comes along. Regards ≈M≈ |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: MGM·Lion Date: 28 Nov 15 - 02:11 AM Beethoven's setting of Schiller's Ode To Joy as climax of his Ninth Symphony Cole Porter's Miss Otis Regrets The Battle Of Harlaw Irving Berlin's Always Greensleeves The Fox as sung by Burl Ives Ditto as sung by The Young Tradition ················ USW·&c&c·and so forth to the power of ∞ ,.,.,.,.,. I should rubricate all the above as 'good songs'. Do you, Dick, or does Mr Bainbridge, or indeed does any living breathing sentient human being, genuinely believe that no further distinction needs to be made or that any attempt at taxonomy or categorisation is superfluous???? Oh, come on!..... luvyazall justersame ≈M≈ |
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Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional? From: Will Fly Date: 28 Nov 15 - 04:17 AM That's a very nice list, Michael. Oddly enough, three of them are in my playing repertoire: Miss Otis Regrets Always Greensleeves Haven't quite got round to the Ode to Joy yet, but it's only a matter of time... I remember the first time I heard "Always" - 'twas in the Noel Coward film "Blithe Spirit", which I saw as a child. This post adds absolutely nothing to the thread, but it's always a pleasing diversion to talk trivia about songs... |
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