Folk Songs to Ditch

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: LaMarca
Date: 24 May 97 - 09:51 AM

I'm working on the crew for the Washington Irish Festival this weekend; here's a list of songs you probably WON'T hear at this great traditional Irish music festival, and if I had my druthers, never again anywhere:

The Wild Rover (with clapping or beer mug pounding on chorus)
The Unicorn Song (written by that great Irishman, Sheldon O'Silverstein. He should be ashamed.)
ANY song involving audience participation with hand gestures, unless the audience is 10 years old or younger.
Danny Boy (see above thread)
Any IRA song sung by a drunken American audience who doesn't have to personally experience the results of their political sentiments.

Re Waltzing Matilda: The Queensland version was also recorded by A. L. Lloyd, who brought a wealth of Australian folk songs to the attention of us folks in the northern hemisphere. I've always liked that tune a lot. For a good time Down Under, check out Mark Gregory's Australian Folk Song site:

http://www.chepd.mq.edu.au/boomerang/songnet/

He's put together a great collection of songs there, and links to other related sites.

To Barry Finn: GREAT song! Okay if I pass it around to our song circle?

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: cleod
Date: 24 May 97 - 09:26 AM

Hey, I heard a version of Waltzing Matilda sung by Tico Torres (of Bon Jovi) I'll bet he sounded much better than all those other people who mangled the poor song...

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: Alison
Date: 23 May 97 - 11:42 PM

Well seeing as so many others are getting their spoke in, I'm going to be a complete traitor to my home country and recommend that "Danny Boy" is ditched . It's not so much the song which annoys but the never ending variety of ways people find to murder the tune, from the misty eyed drunk dreaming of home version, to the over the top warbling tenor one. (apologies to any tenors out there!) Alison

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 23 May 97 - 09:48 PM

Can someone lend me a ten-foot pole that that I won't touch this thread with?

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 23 May 97 - 09:31 PM

To Susan of California:

Once a jolly swagman went surfing through the internet
Came upon a forum of folk songs so rich
When who should he find but Susan of California
Saying Waltzing Matilda is the first song to ditch.

Susan how dare you, Susan how dare you?
You've just insulted our national pride
Matilda is our unofficial national anthem
And fifteen million Aussies are after your hide.

No, I don't really mean all that. It may be a silly song but we're quite partial to it down under.

Now I'm about to do the same thing:

A song I've hated since I was in primary school is The Happy Wanderer. Still hate it 45 years later

To Frank

The two most common tunes to Waltzing Matilda are the Marie Cowan version which is probably the most familiar tune outside Oz and the Queensland version which you may hear in Aussie folk clubs. However you are not likely to hear either version in a folk club - we can all sing it but we choose not to (for fear of overexposure).

Cheers, Alan

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From:
Date: 23 May 97 - 08:13 PM

To Susan of Calif.

There are 2 tunes to Waltzing Matilda.

The original or "Queensland" version which I picked up from an Aussie site and the current or "Victoria" version which I won't sing any more. My voice teacher, Don Hansen, knew the tune since someone played it for him on his trip to Oz last summer. This would indicate that the Queensland version is still alive and well "danunda" and perhaps used as relief from the usual tune.

To Bert.

Right. It's overexposure that does it. However I think that overexposure may be relative to local conditions. I haven't heard Guantanamera in such a while that I am actually learning it out of Pete Seegers book.

Frank Phillips

Subject: Lyr Add: RISE UP SCREAMING
From: Barry Finn
Date: 23 May 97 - 06:15 PM

I'm coming back later but i'm tossing in the whole book,
"RISE UP SCREAMING". If I hear open to page %#$&* again,
ever, it's open season. If it's not worth learning why
it, The tune is to "Jack In The Green"

A pub session or a party is a very strange thing
They're all out of fashion, no more do they sing
For they read from a book or copy a tape
They imitate sounds no mortal should make

There's no sound in the kitchen, no sound in the hall
There's a murderous screech that plays off the walls
Where is the music, where are the songs
In the mouths of monsters where no sound belongs

Dead pan they look as they sing in your face
They'l spit out the words and the tune they'll disgrace
A song will be beat o'r and over to death
And in a round robin they'l resurrect it again

No more will be heard a version that's lost
Or a variant that's rare or two songs that were crossed
The borrowing or sharing of a tune or a song
Will be according to the Bible, all else will be wrong

And now for the future, it's bleak for the song
No young mortal will dare to carry it on
They'll be none around who without books can sing
Or swap without tapes or rise up singing.

I know that I just wiped out a musical library in one
swift stroke, but there is alot of talent in closets
due to 'sing that same one'.

HTML line breaks added. -JoeClone 27-Feb-01

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: Susan of Calif
Date: 23 May 97 - 05:46 PM

I'm not sure if this is officially a folk song, but I could live the rest of my life without ever hearing "Waltzing Matilda" again. Hated it when I first learned it in the 2nd grade, still hate it 30 years later.

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: Bert Hansell
Date: 23 May 97 - 04:48 PM

Cap,

Those songs are supposed to be performed when you are too drunk too pick. Why do you think they are holding hands and swaying? :-)

And talking of picking, let's get rid of "She sat 'neath the Lilacs and played her guitar"

Bert.

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: Cap
Date: 23 May 97 - 04:33 PM

What a great thread! Personally, I would ditch any folk song that is performed while holding hands and swaying. After all, how is a person supposed to pick? ;-)

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: Peter Timmerman
Date: 23 May 97 - 01:17 PM

That reminds me (the hangover is wearing off) that someone at our event mentioned an article from Acoustic Guitar magazine where people who sold guitars had become sick to death of "Classical Gas", "Blackbird", and "Stairway to Heaven". They pleaded with people to test out their potential purchases with something else. I have no idea when the issue was. Yours, Peter

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: Dale Rose
Date: 23 May 97 - 12:19 PM

Back in the early 60s, I heard Maybelle Carter tell Ralph Emery on his late night radio program that she was SO tired of Wildwood Flower! I cannot remember the whole conversation, but the gist was that she would just as soon not EVER have to do it again! OK, this leads me into another candidate. The group on any number of TV shows all gather around their separate microphones and for their closing number sings, "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" and/or "I Saw The Light". Just once, we need to hear these songs done earlier in the show by a single act, or better yet, not at all! Naturally, we need to exclude the "Orange Blossom Special" and "Rocky Top" from any performance that is even remotely bluegrass. Someone actually yelled out, "Rocky Top!" to Ricky Skaggs at a festival. He yelled back, "You're kidding!" Well, that is enough for now, but I am sure that if we keep at it, we may well eliminate at least half of all the folk songs ever written. (Sorry for having used the words written and folk songs in the same sentence.)

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: TFT
Date: 23 May 97 - 12:06 PM

Morning Has Broken should be broken.

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: Martin Ryan
Date: 23 May 97 - 11:53 AM

If DG is his usual efficient self, the April 97 version of the database will include a version of "The Green Fields of France" which may suggest that before your ditch a song, you should consider shooting it straight between the eyes!

Regards

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: Jack
Date: 23 May 97 - 11:49 AM

Can I vote Can I huh huh Oh boy!

The Wedding Song

It fits the overexposure category in spades. My wife is a wedding vocalist and everyone wants that song.

But aside from that its not that great a song (IMHO). The melody is so monotonous The 12 string part is a dirge. The lyrics are OK I guess. Not bad, but kind of simple.

I'd stick it in the 25 year hiatus file and intentionally forget it was there.

I love a good vitriolic thread! ;-).

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: LaMarca
Date: 23 May 97 - 11:43 AM

Can't resist adding another comment...

In our song circle (and probably others, too) certain individuals become linked to certain songs. There is always a component of the group who will perpetually request the SAME song from that person; they never seem interested in hearing something new or different. It doesn't mean that the song itself is bad, but the person who is asked to sing it for the 50,000th time is sure sick of it, and so are SOME of the other members of the group (Mrs. Ravoon comes to mind, Bill D.) This is especially true of parodies; a lot of them are funny or amusing the first couple times you hear them, but they fit Heinlein's "Funny once, Mike" classification of jokes.

I have also experienced the flip side of this; being a relative newcomer to the group, I have on occasion found a "new" old song that I think is really neat, learned it and sung it, only to have an old-timer sneer at it because it was over-done 20 years ago. I don't know what a happy medium is between honoring requests for songs one is sick of, and reacting rudely to someone who may have just discovered that song and thinks it's really great.

This leads us into the other traditional folkie social circle habit, "more obscure is better" or "My source is better than your source". If songs are to be pruned because they're overdone, you have to look at the reasons they're overdone. There seems to be an element of human nature that puts great importance on the idea the "My (or my group's) tastes are special and superior". If too many people start liking something, it is now "Popular" and beneath the Inner Circle's attention. There's a line from a Peter Gabriel song (NOT a folkie; sorry Elsie and others) that I'm fond of quoting; it's a cynical song about exclusion, which sums up this attitude wonderfully: "How can we be "in" if there is no outside?"

I am constantly torn between the interest and desire to explore obscure varients of ballads and defensiveness when I elect to sing one that others deem too mundane or common. On the other hand, I don't want to hear "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" every song circle. One of the problems caused by "Rise Up Singing" is that it provides a defined canon of "folk" song that everyone in a group can learn, but is then sometimes used to exclude the vast repertoire of songs that weren't included in the book. So "Popular" can be exclusionary, too. "But that song isn't in The Book..."

This has rambled a BIT off the Folk Songs to Ditch topic, but I think that folks need to look a little at their reasons for wanting to include a particular song...In a lot of cases, this is going to boil down to personal taste and history. Anyway, all that being said, "I've got a little list; they never will be missed..."

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: Peter Timmerman
Date: 23 May 97 - 11:20 AM

Dear Bert, Yes, of course, you are right. Perhaps we should have called the first category the "25 year give it a rest" category. In category 1 everyone started from the premise that they were good songs. The real objections were overexposure and also the way they were always destroyed in presentation. Some people also hated the songs, but.... The second category was different (a bit like the remark about all those Woody Guthrie songs). It was all done in a spirit of fun.

Dear Frank, The only Canadian song that came up was Alouette, and that was during a discussion about list songs and gesture songs, during which Ilkley Moor came up, and we never got back to it. Yours, Peter

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: LaMarca
Date: 23 May 97 - 10:53 AM

Oh, boy, I've found people who share my aversion to "Don't Think Twice..." I've always felt the protagonist in the song is an absolute scum; this is perhaps colored by some of the toads I kissed before I met my prince. This promises to be a FUN thread; I'll think of my candidates over the weekend and see what other goodies (baddies?) people have submitted on Monday when I get back to work(?) (where my net link is...)

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: Bert Hansell
Date: 23 May 97 - 10:53 AM

Unfortunately we have a problem here.
If you can remember a song it is unlikely to go away.
Most of the songs that you mention suffer from one problem only, OVEREXPOSURE. Each of them has survived so far on it's own merits. Just because we are sick of hearing a song doesn't make it a bad song.
Amazing Grace is another in this category, it is a good song but, just once, I'd like to go to a sing and NOT hear it.

I think a more important project would be to list songs that most people have forgotten but need saving.
We are in great danger of losing a lot of good songs just because they fall into the category of "old pop".
A positive emphasis in this direction would reduce the frequency of performance of "SONGS TO DITCH".

Bert

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From:
Date: 23 May 97 - 10:52 AM

Peter

How about an entirely separate category for us Canadians.

Folk songs that you REALLY like but want to see deleted forever from the Archives of the CBC.

I don't know if those south of our mutual border realize that 2 songs by Wade Hemsworth, namely "The Log Drivers Waltz" and "The Blackfly Song" were made into animated TV shorts. These were then played whenever commercial sales couldn't fill the allotted time over a period of what seemed like a year. This mercifully has ended but what were 2 of my favorite songs have been put on my "Don't play for a long time" list.

I think there was at one time an attempt to save Ilkley Moor with a bi-lingual version "On Ilkley Moor sans ch(a)peau" but can't remember all the words.

Frank Phillips

Subject: RE: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: Peter Timmerman
Date: 23 May 97 - 10:49 AM

Note on last message: three rules, not two.

Anyway, the second category received its share of controversy. The top 5 categories for editing or pruning were:

(1) Sea Shanties.

There were just too many of them, and there was only so much you could do pulling on a rope or rowing.

(2) Early blues from the mississippi delta.

I am posting this under protest (especially knowing the name of the site). This proposal for editing aroused protest from, well, from me, but to no avail. Did we need all those recordings of the fifth version of whatever out of the back of John Lomax's car. Pure ignorance in action. I go on.

(3) Sequel songs.

Somebody mentioned a sequel to Marty Robbin's "Ballad of El Paso" ("Wicked Felina?), which was used against this genre.

(4) Feminist rewritings of famous folk songs with new words.

This started out as a complaint against "If I Were a Carpenter" as a sexist song, and degenerated after that.

(5) IRA Ballads.

These were not objected to for political reasons, just bulk.

Phew. Yours, Peter

Subject: FOLK SONGS TO DITCH
From: Peter Timmerman
Date: 23 May 97 - 10:28 AM

Having by chance a dinner party last night which included one or two folkies, a one time fiddler, and various citizens, I was unable to resist the temptation to raise the question: “Which Folk Songs would you ditch?” as brought up obliquely in the “Thrediquette” thread. This resulted in one of the great, if increasingly rowdy, evenings. Add in a couple of telephone calls and one e-mail, and I post the results of my 9 person survey. The rules evolved during the evening.

There are three rules and two categories. The two rules are:

(1) You can be as politically incorrect as you like;

(2) “Kumbaya” is out of the competition (This became known as the Kumbaya Rule).

(3) In folk music there is a fine line between the rustic and the crummy. (This is a quote from Tom Lehrer, and means that people should err on the side of generosity, also known as the Lehrer Rule).

The two categories are:

(1) individual Folk Songs that you wish had never been born, and that if you hear again you will run screaming into the street, the pines, or the misty shieling.

(2) categories of Folk Songs that need pruning or else editing in an ideal world.

Naturally enough, the first category caused the most intense hilarity, obscentiy, hand wringing, etc. Because of the Lehrer Rule, songs that aroused hatred but which were grudgingly conceded to be worth preserving, survived. These included (I have a longer list) Puff the Magic Dragon, Guantanamera, and the House of the Rising Sun. The top three, with the worst first, were (trumpets):

(1) “On Ilkley Moor Baht’at”.

Everyone hated this song. They hated the attempts at bad North Country dialect, all the “worms shall eat thee oop” stuff (see the worm thread for another take on this). The repetitions only made it worse.

(2) “Michael Row the Boat Ashore”.

People actually ran from the room howling during the discussion of this song. People said terrible things about what they would like to do to the Georgia Islands (which I am told is where the song came from), and hoped that Michael would row the boat away or drown.

(3) “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”.

This was a dark horse entry that eventually compelled our attention. While everyone admitted that the tune was great, it was felt that the character in the song (whether it was the author himself was left mostly untouched) was a moral creep. Not only was he leaving without even having the grace to say goodbye (fare thee well indeed), leaving her hanging on, but he actually blamed her for wasting his time!

The results of Part 2 in a moment.