UK Folk Revival 2018

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 02:36 AM

yeah.. the Beatles sold out and betrayed skiffle...

Only later in the mid 70s did teenagers rediscover the simple joys of skiffle, renaiming it punk rock...

punk was the last true pure form of working class folk music...



[this post is at most only 5% sarcasm...]

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 03:10 AM

Great stuff, Observer. We are agreed that folk music is not in decline. What better end to a week could we ask for than peace and harmony :-)

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 03:20 AM

Even when our "club" was getting hundreds of people attending weekly( we had to move to larger premises three times)....there were still those who saw no value in the music and who preferred "pop" and the culture it supported, I suppose it was a rebellion of sorts against parents, against the dull past and what they believed to be a future filled with flashing lights, stars, and fame.
"yeh yeh I can make you a star".
Much the same thing is happening today in "modern folk music"..... if it's different it must be better.
What I see are generations become further apart, technology and commercialism destroying things that were and should be innate to the human species. We are losing the ethos of the music, which at its best encouraged an understanding of the world, life, and love.

"Modern folk" is simply pop dressed up in the clothes of the tradition , a disturbing parody, in which the destruction of something precious and ethereal is applauded by those made emotionally numb to serve the cause of commercialism and a pseudo academic elite.

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 03:36 AM

Dave as I noted above, what you are attempting to pass off as "Folk/traditional music" simply does not cut the mustard.
Genuine folk music is definitely on the decline.
If the current trend continues, the commercial aspect will remove any remaining vestiges of the tradition and replace them with the stars and baubles associated with the marketing industry.

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST,Joe G
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 03:52 AM

I'd have no problems at all if EFDSS started a purely trade festival Dick. Whether enough people would attend to make it viable may be an issue though.

John Tams isn't at Shrewsbury this year - my folk or nope post was really to try to find out where people thought the boundary of folk lies. I consider JT to be very folkies but others here may disagree

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 04:02 AM

Genuine folk music is definitely on the decline.

What you define as 'genuine' folk music may well be on the decline. Which acts in particular do not 'cut the mustard? I would like to see you to argue the case that they do not perform 'genuine' folk music with any of them.

Its such a shame that you cannot move on and enjoy the wealth and diversity of folk music that is available today.

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 04:09 AM

"Move on".......don't make me laugh. These words are meaningless in the context of traditional music.

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 04:25 AM

Traditional music should not be encased in amber, never to be touched again. It should evolve and change and live. By its very essence it has to change as part of the folk process. From the very 1954 definition that traditionalists set such great store by.

The term can be applied to music that has been evolved from rudimentary beginnings by a community uninfluenced by popular and art music and it can likewise be applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community.

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 04:47 AM

that is why most poluar music will never be folk music, it is copyrighted and the words are very rarely alterd example [yesterday] arethe words altered.. no, so please no more pretending popsongs buddy holly songs,ysterday, are folk music, the only circumstances[imo] is if the tune is played as a tune and improvised or altered, then it might even be jazz

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 05:04 AM

Genuine question here as I do not know - Once the song is out of copyright and can be altered and absorbed into the "unwritten living tradition of a community", can it be said to be a folk song then?

As an example, the song 'Blue Moon' is sung in an altered form by a very large community - Manchester city fans! Can that be classed as a folk song? Our resident band at Swinton also incorporated the tune into their version of 'Nancy Whisky'. How does that work in terms of the folk tradition?

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 07:30 AM

Yes under the definition it is, but does anyone want to pay to hear fotball chants, perhpas they are alright a t free singarounds where anything goes ,but not for me.
JOE, the purpose of EFDSS IS TO PRMOTE TRAD SONGS AND DANCES, it was viable in the past at sid mouth sutton bonington, imo it should be given a chance again

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 07:59 AM

Definitions, definitions. You feel you need to put a crash helmet on before you raise them on Mudcat. But if we take one that includes oral transmission over at least a couple of generations, just *maybe* football chants *might* come to count as folk one day. There might be books on them and it is interesting, just take the uses made and versions of Delilah for example.

Dave, I don't know either. But I wonder whether stuff is really passed on and remembered orally today: I tend to write more or less everything down, even if I have played it a thousand times. People video stuff on their phones to record it. Does that count as 'oral'? In principle on a transmission or 54 type defn maybe there is nothing to say a pop song could not come to be 'folk', but how likely this is?
The defn was devised to cover ages where there were no mobile phones or recording devises; maybe it isn't adequate to describe how people take pop songs copyright or not and make them their own, which definitely happens all the time all over the place.

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 08:19 AM

It is indeed complex, Pseudonymous, and I have long since said that the '54 definition is no longer fit for purpose but there are some who insist that it is the best we have so we have to live with it.

The definition goes on to say

The term does not cover composed popular music that has been taken over ready-made by a community and remains unchanged, for it is the re-fashioning the re-creation of the music by the community that gives it its folk-character

So, a rendition of 'Yesterday', to use an earlier example, performed in the same way as McCartney does it, will not be folk. But a version performed at a folk club and "absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community" could well become one.

BTW - As I type this I am listening to "Aqualung 40th Anniversary edition". A fine album and should be absorbed by many :-)

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 09:01 AM

Dave: My brother went to see Tull live a few years ago and said it was knock out. I've been listening to cello suites this morning … And yesterday it was Rainbow Bridge - on vinyl, Pali Gap doesn't seem to have been digitised yet. And in between, some Walter Pardon on Spotify.

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 09:05 AM

And if I hear somebody doing something I like, I may well google to get the lyrics and chords online. Things have changed since the days when you had to work out the chords yourself if you could or see if any of your pals had managed it. We can't turn the clock back and 'revive' the past. Maybe 'renewal' is a better word?

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 09:06 AM

I have seen them half a dozen times or so. One time, at the Apollo in Manchester, I was the designated driver so had not one drop to drink. However this was in the days when theatres permitted smoking and my passengers were partaking in 'certain substances'. I did not know until then that passive smoking could affect you so much. I was really in no fit state to drive!

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 12:24 PM

Tidying out an obscure cupboard today I not only found two copies of the single I am the Walrus (how did that happen?) but also an EP cover,

"jethro tull, life is a long song/up the pool/dr. bogenbroom/from later/ nursie."


Sadly the cover turned out to contain an Alice Cooper single that I had no idea I owned!

Whoever Anthony was, sorry I never returned his copy of Jean Genie!

Aha, some folk …… Gaudete Steeleye Span from 1972

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 12:42 PM

Observer says: Ah but Joe do they sing them in phony British accents? Over here in the UK when singing American songs phoney American accents seem de rigueur. The result is absolutely hilarious.


Well, US folk musicians don't usually sing in fake British accents, although they'll try Scottish and Irish. For a while, it seemed that US pop/rock musicians were trying to sound British, while UK musicians were trying to sound American - my son went through a phase like that.

And don't ask me about Americans on the Internet who try to affect British spellings....

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 24 Aug 18 - 01:09 PM

What most of these old gits who snidely disparage 'punk' fail to understand,
is just how similar it was to their prescription for Trad British Folk...

F'rinstance.. circa 1975-76 many of us smartarse Brit teenagers were sick
of all the trite conventions of prevailing rock & pop orthodoxies...
Singing in an affected American or 'transatlantic' accent was a particular irritant and call to arms...

We made a point of proudly singing punk rock in our own British accents...

I still enjoy 1950s and 60s British rock n rollers who avoided putting on a yank accent...
[it might have been shite rock n roll compared to the real USA deal,
but it has a charm all of it's own..]

We were teens who were at comfort being British,
without the nationalism and xenophobia still to be found amongst too many Britsh Trad Folk chauvanists...

I like a lot of music - some of it is British trad folk,
and some of that trad folk is barely listenable by most popular standards...
I also have a soft spot for outsider music..
Different music pleasures as the mood takes me...

there.. I suppose that's the closest I get to a mission statement...!!!

Right now I'm listening to mid 60s Brit band The Action..
1/2 an hour ago I played The Southlanders "I am a Mole" about 5 times in a row... I'm still smiling...

I'm off down to the kitchen now to listen to some Louis Jordan...

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 04:08 AM

you must have catholic ears,johnny rotten is playing in dublin thuis weekend ,are you goin, i believe the pope is going to dublin too

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 04:15 AM

Is that Johnny Rotten?

I hope not, I've only used it twice...

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 04:38 AM

Sir* John Lydon is sharper witted and more hilarious than ever now that he is an angry old cumudgeonly git of 62...

[* come on yer majesty.. it's about time..
tap that sword on his shoulder.. at least give him the chance to tell you to eff off
and stick it where the sun no longer shines on the empire..

..though, he did do that butter ad, and dresses like a country gentleman,
so these days he'd might shock the nation and welcome the honour...???]

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 04:40 AM

very good Dave, i hadn't heard that.

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 04:48 AM

I saw the Sex Pistols over the top of Burtons (was it called Wood's then? It changed its name so often) in Plymouth at the end of '76 and I don't recall anyone say they were "sick of all the trite conventions of prevailing rock & pop orthodoxies".

Of course, I can't speak for the intelligentsia of Devon, but I think most of us were there just to jump up and down (you could hardly call it dancing) and have some fun. Nothing more thoughtful than that.

I'm wondering if Greg Dyke had anything to do with bringing the Pistols to Plymouth? He did introduce me to The Ramones at his "Implosion" on Union Street.

Nowadays I'll listen to anyone who can actually play their instrument, which does rule out a lot of Punk, and I can do that here in Glossop almost any night of any week.

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 05:06 AM

good for you... so what.. next..

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 05:23 AM

SO basically you are admitting that 40 odd years ago you might not have been as well read,
bright, or actively involved in discussions about creative arts and music
as other teenagers...

fair enough... some of us started bands and fanzines,
while others copied prefab punk uniform fashions and attitudes off the telly
and sat on their arses sniffing crisp bags of glue...

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 05:59 AM

And back to this Folk Revival . . .

Although I've only been here in north Derbyshire a short time, and so I can't comment on any "revival" in these parts, the folk scene seems in very rude health to me.

There are plenty of both amateur sessions/singarounds and professional concerts.

I'll be sad to leave the place.

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST,other
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 06:00 AM

actually, no

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 11:28 AM

mod - fair enough.. but the post Date: 25 Aug 18 - 07:06 AM was a valid thread relevant contribution..
So I'm resubmittting it...

"So a smug antagonistic anonymous GUEST tries to establish punkier than thou street cred
by claiming to have seen the Pistols...

They'd be by far the most mainstream corporate commercialised sell out punk rock band of all time...

Now consider how that might relate to this thread, and the OPs quetion...

"How much do is it now propelled by Commercial pressures and what are the advantages and disadvantages of Commercialisation"

The Sex Pistols and their duller witted plastic punk 13 year old fanboys
were as far removed from the grassroots amateur punk/indie culture
as The Mumfords are from real trad folk...


Me and my mates were 18 year old small town provincial college kids,
who actively established bands, fanzines, youth theatre and arts projects,
and a long lasting network of musicians gig sharing collectives and co-ops..

all for eff all remuneration or glory... just like trad folkies used to do,
and is what is at debate in this thread...

1970s punk and folk scenes were parallell and often interlinked...

If that makes me an intellectual... I've been called much worse by far better people..."

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 11:34 AM

Mod - if this is not acceptable, I can see a tweak, a sentence that can be cut,
that might make it comply with your deletions,
which go further back than I first noticed...

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 03:34 PM

And let me elucidate:

I wasn't trying to "establish punkier than thou street cred by claiming to have seen the Pistols" . . . I was merely pointing out that rather than a rebellion against "trite conventions of prevailing rock & pop orthodoxies", the audience were just a bunch of kids having a good time.

Anonymous? Yes. But smug and antagonistic? I think I must have hit a nerve.

And, I never accused you of being an intellectual . . . that would just be ridiculous.

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 03:47 PM

Back from Dublin in one piece despite the efforts of the Poe aand his entourage

"From the very 1954 definition that traditionalists set such great store by.
It's always been my experience that the only people ws set enough store by it out those like yourself who mention it to disparage it - most of the people I know treat is as a definition in need of repair - nothing more
As nobody else has ever come up with another, it does as a astandby
It would be appreciated that those with an obsession with '54 would get over it and not try and infect the rest us us with it.

I've just been accused of misrepresenting what people say (by the poster who gets his rocks off by deninrating elderly dead singers)
"Jim. But you say that you know what the folk culture of our islands is, and all these other people (many of us having spent a lifetime in folk clubs) know nowt."
Where have I said this Al I don't say you don't know - I say you have never come up with an alternative definition - your music is not that with I have known (probably for a lot longer than most people here and is represented in literature that goes back at least a century and recordings that go back nearly as long and chan be clearly found registered under the title (established in the 1830s as "folk"
The term is internationally applied to songs made and sung by the people to represent their lives, thoughts and aspirations
If you want to tag a pop song to that title, tell us why and where it has merited the title
The club scene sank because people began using the term as a meaningless catchphrase so you never knew what you were going to hear when you turned up   
That's a world world away from "knowing nowt" - it's cynical misrepresentation because some people cant bother their arse to think up a term for the music they want to sing - a hostile takeover
If you are going to quiote me, do so accurately
Jim

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 03:55 PM

The club scene sank because people began using the term as a meaningless catchphrase so you never knew what you were going to hear when you turned up."
the club scene has changed for a number of different reasons.
lack of venues ,
more festivals through out the year.
People getting older and passing on
Less volunteers prepared to run a club every week for non commercial reasons.
Commercialism

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 04:43 PM

Just back from a festival in Argyllshire, the music comprised of four groups of young people.....guitar accordion fiddle bagpipes keyboard and a massive drum kit, all played at breakneck speed so loudly the tunes could not be deciphered and the words a mystery.
The audience of mainly young people jumped up and down in time to the overpowering beat.
I am getting a bit deaf, but the noise level was so high that I was finally forced outside.
This is modern folk?

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 06:08 PM

Well definitions are just restrictions that we impose on the chaos of life.

I think the perspective has simply changed since 1954.

I think there has been an identifiable artistic movement we call 'folk'. And that folk music is the music connected with that movement.

The trouble with saying that its just something that happened a long time ago in small communities, is that involves turning your back on humanity and what it is up to

I understand and sympathise with your point of view - you did important work for the movement with one idea of what folk music amounted to.

Jazz and classical music went through the same ructions with the trad lads calling the modernists dirty boppers. And if you read EF Benson' Lucia novels, you will read of the short shrift Debussy received from folks brought up listening to 19th century classical music in 1920's.

That things move on does not invalidate or lessen the importance of what you set out to record and preserve.

The point is that its an unfolding story - full of charismatic people, creativity, one that takes a twist with each technological breakthrough - a story that connects us all, cos we're all living threough these days of history.
The English folk club scene might surprise you yet - don't give up on it completely.

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Brian Peters
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 06:34 PM

"I was merely pointing out that rather than a rebellion against "trite conventions of prevailing rock & pop orthodoxies", the audience were just a bunch of kids having a good time."

The ability of web discussion groups to make enemies out of complete strangers who share the same enthusiasm is always a thing of wonder to me.

Isn't the above exactly what PFR was trying to to say? The prevailing orthodoxy in 'alternative ' music circles in the mid-70s was Prog-Rock. Kids jumping up and down to punk was - precisely - a rebellion against all that.

I remember thinking back in the 1980s that, as PFR said, there was a crossover between folk and punk, particularly the concept of 'doing music for yourself'. Incidentally, anonymous Guest, I've lived in Glossop for 36 years, and will be looking out for you at the next Buzzcocks reunion gig in town.

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 09:06 PM

GUEST seems obsessed with me.. flattering to some extent.. but not reciprocated...

I almost posted an exended missive addressing GUESTS utterly petty incorrect presumptions
and accusations regarding myself,
until I realised that the entire string of posts had been deleted..

But what would have been any real point posting it, even if GUEST had read it before it also got the chop..

Our anonymous antagonist aint gonna respect anything I say, no matter how valid or justified.

No big deal.. GUEST's identity, intentions, objectives for pursuing me across threads are totally inconsequential
while he/she/they hides and snipes from the netherworld of spineless non-consistent identity...

..and sorry to disapoint you.. no nerves struck..
at worst you are just a diverting amusement between household chores..
but at best you serve a purpose stimulating my long distant memories of ideas
from a more hopeful pre thatcher era,
when punk and folk offered a positive alternative counter to mainstream commercial music culture...

..and guess what, I haven't listened to much punk music at all in the last 25 years...

So it's odd to me that other mudcatters make such a song and dance of it,
somehow elevating me as defender of the safety pin and mohican media stereotypes...????

I was actually listening to Bill Nelson and Be Bop Deluxe this afternoon...
Rubbish self indulgent lyrics and song structures imho.. but great guitar playing and tone...

[mod - please can you let this post survive,
and I will try my best to ignore GUEST's need for further reaction from me.. thanks...]

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 09:47 PM

errrmm.. except for...

GUEST - I appreciate the sarcasm of your calling me an intellectual...
[in a now deleted post...]

35 years ago an uptight middle-class marxist lecturer suddenly cracked,
lost her temper,
and accused me of being an anti-intellectual,
when I innocently asked if she could please clarify a point
during one of her densly incomprehensible
poorly communicated seminars...

She was so up her own rear end with big fish in a small academic pond vain self importance..

got to laugh...

[mod - you can delete this one if you like... cheers...]

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 01:27 AM

Brian Peters,

I doubt very much you'll see me at a Buzzcocks gig, even in Glossop.

I'm hoping to get to the Hayes Sisters at the Globe on 6th September, though. If you're around, I'll seek you out.

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 02:51 AM

It seems to me that, despite the complaints of being insulted by some, there is a fair amount of it coming from both sides here and those complaining the loudest are quite capable of doing their share
I suggest that rather than pointing fingers we ALL agree to stop it or we all learn to live with it
I find this "nuffin to do with me guv" attitude as insulting as it gets

"The club scene sank because"
I go along with much of what Dick lists, but I think the essential reason people stopped going was the choice of what they could listen to in a folk club was taken away from them
Before the takeover, even in the 'Mickey Mouse' clubs, you knew you would go home having heard a night of songs you had set out to listen to a few hours earlier - folk songs - if you chose not to go back, you did so on the basis of how well those songs were interpreted.
Then the "anything goes" crowd moved in and the people stopped coming
It didn't help that the standard fell because the tolerance of bad singing from 'singers' who hadn't bothered to learn their songs became the norm Those of us who expected a standard below which public performances didn't fall were called 'elitists' - we just expected singers to have put in enough work beforehand to put over their songs - little enough to ask as far as I'm concerned.
The more responsible of the clubs devised ways of helping inexperienced singers, be it established singers offering to help to full-blown workshops
Bad singing from 'Magical Mystery Tour' folk clubs killed off a healthy and still very promising scene.

The club scene was established on a definite form of music - originally introduced by Sharp and co and later revived by th BBC's 1950s extended field trip
We didn't need a definition - '54 or any other kind - the type of songs we wanted to listen to could be found in Lloyd's and Vaughan Williams' Penguin Book of English Folk Songs' or MacColl's and Seegers' 'The Singing Island, or that issued on the 10 volume 'Folk Songs of Britain' series of albums or Norman Buchan's 'Scotland Sings.
They were the basis of the folk sohg scene
Singers like MacColl and Leon Rosselson and many others were making new songs using old forms so our clubs never strayed far from their roots
We knew that we were there to promote a certain type of music - not ourselves
That seems to be the basic difference between then and now

I still have a couple of dozen live recordings of clubs I attended around forty of fifty years ago - they are still highly enjoyable and they buzz with atmosphere
We made a two radio programme tribute to MacColl a couple of years ago and the young producer commented on just that and said she envied our being there - they certainly seem not to make 'em like that any more

For me, MacColl made the best and most enjoyable analysis of British Folk Song in 1965 - a series of 10 half hour programmes of exquisite singing from the best of our performers, with a loving and very perceptive analysis - those programmes have never been surpassed in all this time to my knowledge.
If you want to know what British and Irish folk song is, listen to them - if you haven't got ac copy - just ask
Jim

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 03:16 AM

Jim, Dick says "the club scene changed", not sank. I think that is right. His points are good, as is yours, and a combination of these factors has resulted in the folk clubs you describe being few and far between. But there is a different folk scene now that incorporates the old and the new and while we may lament the good old days, there is still a vibrant and lively network of venues where people can perform, get involved or just listen to folk music. It is not all introspective songwriters and pop covers either, although there is an element of that. There is also plenty of traditional folk and good new music amongst the dross.

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 04:15 AM

"Jim, Dick says "the club scene changed", not sank."
No it did not "change" - it was taken over my a music that had nothing to do with folk
The clubs that had been set up to present one type of music were taken over by people who wanted to listen to another - thye no longer were putting on folk songs
That is not change - it is the usurping of a name and venue
You could have got your own clubs and called them something else - you chose to take over our description
That is what makes what happened a hostile takeover
It's not as if you were successul at what you did - your clubs bombed just as ours did
Ours had a good reason - people couldn't find folk music in folk clubs - your's bombed because you couldn't make up your mind what you were trying to sell - you tried to please all of the people all of the time and ended up pleasing nobody
That's what ****** up the folk scene
The fact that you allowed standards to drop as you did meant that what you put on was a badly performed unidentifiable mish-mash
Your music has no future because it has no definable identity
Ours will at least survive in the collections collections and the archived
Can your point out one single publication containing your 'folk song' - no you can't
Can you provide a track record - a genealogy - a history... of your folk song - of course you can't - it would be like trying to bottle fog

THe predatory behaviour of peole who neither liked nor understood folk song has succeeded in killing off the real thing
Here in Ireland, it took only the effort to understand what folk songs means and build a foundation for it
Now thousands of kids are pouring in and taking our folk music up - it has a guaranteed at least two generation future

Hand on heart - can you say thay?
Of course you can't - you can't even describe what you represent as folk music
You're like these big Multinationals (except you're not big) who moved into the East Anglian farms, tore down all the hedgerows, farmed the land bith their monster machines, until, after a few years the East Wind blew off all the topsoil and made the land a desert
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 05:18 AM

I will try and explain why i think commercialism has contributed to the decline of folk clubs. AND uk FOLK REVIVAL
1.Lack of available club premises as manager of pub thinks more money can be made puttin on discos etc.
2. Performers altering direction because more money can be made from song writer composotions [prs imro etc]and doing less trad, temptation for performers to try cross over folk sounding love songs with folky sound to make more money and get composotion royalties,moving away from trad music and political social comment, because the two are less likely to get mainstream extablishment airplay[ with a few exceptions jez lowe springs to mind]

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 05:38 AM

Yes Sandman, I attended a JL concert lately and was pleasantly surprised by the emotion conveyed and his connection to the audience.
I spoke to him briefly during the interval and he asked me if I would like him to sing anything and he sang my request with a lovely explanation of my choice......a REAL folk character on a par with Alex Campbell.

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 05:48 AM

I meant JEZ was one of a few exceptions who make social comment songs popular.
3. Increase in festival run by entrepreneurs who are trying to make money, being more commercial then alters the direction of choice of music, result less trad material and less politcal social comment songs, more material that will not challenge the establishment, or acceptable to those used to pop music diet, so a directional change towards more pop sounding music or more commercial mainstream, taking the music further from its roots, in an attempt to make money for the entrepreneur under the guise of bringing more people to hear folk music, so the direction of the folk revival gets changed to some extent by commercialism.
perhaps it does bring more people?
but if commercilism is taken too far are the roots still there in sufficient quantity for people to hear.
That is why i think EFDSS should be running a tradtional festival of song and dance, whose aim should be protection and promotion of tradtional dance and song, any profits made go back to either running the next years festival or the EFDSS to be used for other folk projects

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 05:51 AM

Re Jim Carroll'a statement

"The club scene was established on a definite form of music - originally introduced by Sharp and co and later revived by the BBC's 1950s extended field trip"

The club that I attended from around 1956 until 1965 was not. It appeared to grow out of the skiffle scene encouraged by Alan Lomax.

In 1961 two of the club's regular singers/songwriters went off to form their own club. From Jim's own admission he did not get into the music until 1966 and I get the impression that that club may have been established in the way he describes.

Can Jim name any other clubs prior to 1961 that were established that way and if so how does he know?

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 06:05 AM

Swindon folk club,Founded by Ted & Ivy Poole and friends in 1960, Swindon Folksingers’ Club has a long history of keeping traditional music alive in this busy town in north-west Wiltshire. From its beginnings in the folk revival, the club has seen Swindon’s character change from railway town to a modern centre of new technology and financial services; but through it all, Swindon Folksingers’ Club has remained as a friendly, relaxed and welcoming place where anyone can come and sing or listen.         

The Topic was founded in 1956 by Alex Eaton - once he had left the local Young Communist League choir - and some friends. It was the height of the Cold War, with Suez and the Hungarian Uprising dominating the headlines. From its very beginnings as a fairly informal opportunity for like-minded youths - many of them teenagers still at school - to get together and talk politics and sing folk songs or play skiffle, up to its current policy of around two-thirds guest acts, The Topic was always and remains now a weekly club (sometimes, in the earliest days, twice-weekly).
just to show different perspectives,
however Swindon did not exclude people playing skiffle or singing blues as floor spots[ as far as i remember],although guest booking policy was more in the direction of tradtional music

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 06:21 AM

"It appeared to grow out of the skiffle scene encouraged by Alan Lomax. "
Lomax did not "inspire" the skiffle scene, which, it was reckoned was largely based on the recordings brought back to England by Ken Colyer when he was a merchant seaman
Lomax first helped inspire the BBC mopping up campaign which gave us a basis for our British and Irish repertoires and later, betrayed people like Ewan and Bert for singing American songs
The Short Lived 'Ramblers' group was an aberration and had nothing to do with the skiffle movement
It was because of Lomax's strong views that it became possible to establish policy clubs
These were early days and everybody was learning
Ewan Peggy and Bert were part of the Ballads and Blues Club (I have a recording of the live radio broadcast) and they broke with it to form a principled and decdicated folk club, e Ewan wrote an article, 'Why I am Forming a New Club' in one of Dallas's magazines
The first public performances dedicated to folk music were probably the morning concerts hed at The Theatre Royal, Stratford
Shortly afterwards similar clubs sprang up all over Britain - Manchester and Birmingham were two of them
Jim

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: GUEST,Joe G
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 06:23 AM

I'd add to Dick's comments about the Topic that as long as I have been attending, since the early 80's when I moved to Bradford it has had an eclectic booking policy featuring both traditional and contemporary singers. I believe that is why it has survived and remains healthy though I am sure others will disagree :-)

Subject: RE: UK Folk Revival 2018
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 07:01 AM

East Anglia.... a desert?

What have they been telling you over there in Ireland?

I know Ian Paisley's son was living somewhere near Yarmouth for a while. But that family have a way of exaggerating ...they always did.