Making folk club recordings available

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 21 Jul 21 - 04:38 AM

That post above alone makes this whole thread totally worthwhile. Thanks Tony, your services to good music are appreciated.

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Tony Rees
Date: 21 Jul 21 - 01:52 AM

RE the discussion a few posts back - I contacted Nic Jones' family by his web page asking for their permission to publicly release my 1975 Oxford Polytechnic audience tape via YouTube, and they gave me the OK! So here it is for your enjoyment:

Nic Jones at Oxford Polytechnic Folk Club, March 1975

Maybe worth a notification via a separate thread for comments etc., I'm not sure...

With many thanks to Nic for his superb playing and singing on the night, plus at all other times, and his family for the permission to put this out there.

Regards - Tony

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: GUEST,Peter’Green
Date: 12 Jul 21 - 11:11 AM

I have just come across George Blake’s Legacy and as a child of Emery Down was unaware of his songs. As a now ageing singer i wondered where i can hear his songs as i understand Forest Tracks no longer exists. I am p,[e-mail]

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: RTim
Date: 09 Jul 21 - 10:26 PM

I just get excited Finding and Singing or Recording a song that no one else sings.....I love just breathing life back into a song....If someone sits up to listen its, great but anymore is a bonus.

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 09 Jul 21 - 07:35 PM

Martyn Wyndham Read once said to me as we were driving to a gig, you don't get much for singing nowadays, just a bit of pocket money. That was in 1983. Most singers have some form of self employment to run alongside their gigs. Steve is right. The motivation is easy to spot. 'Just love the songs as much as me'. That will do.

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 09 Jul 21 - 01:15 PM

Some of the biggest accolades I get from folk music is when my fellow performers say about one of my songs, I'd like to sing that one. That is reward enough for me, but then again I've never tried to make a living out of it.

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Jul 21 - 01:14 PM

I would not have a problem with it particularly if i was dead, most of my material is trad but i would be glad for anyone to sing any of my songs as long as i was mentioned, but everyone has a different take on these things.
i chose this form or genre not expecting to make much money , i did it because i loved tradtional music.

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 09 Jul 21 - 12:41 PM

.. I'll put it another way..

when when considering well-respected but commercially unsuccessful music artists...

Dedicated fans are likely to be more knowledgeable and better equipped
to evaluate and distribute a deceased artists
unreleased demos, outtakes,
and unofficial amateur recordings..

Families maybe not so...

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 09 Jul 21 - 10:56 AM

I'd agree with Steve's positive pragmatic position..

..except..

Families who inherit an artist's estate are in some cases greedy talentless stupid philistine control freak parasites,
who are the last people who should ever have been allowed to become custodians of any musical legacy...

In that instance, such families are maybe best not to be heeded,
and the amateur recorded music should still be made carefully available, despite their self defeating negativity...???

Caution, and short term expedient expendable anonymous download links can take care of that hindernce to sharing...

Fortunately, not all familes are so wretched...

If I'd become a moderately well known folk artist, and dropped dead without a will,
I can think of bickering cousins who'd be a nightmare if they took control of my unreleased recordings...

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 09 Jul 21 - 09:25 AM

I should add I am here talking about the British folk scene and what we call source singers (see www.yorkshirefolksong.net) so I would not include high profile commercial singers in that, other than personal friends.

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 09 Jul 21 - 09:23 AM

Using a bit of common sense and a majority vote scenario, what is wrong with digitising, making available online, with the proviso that any objections from performers or their families and you take the recording down? Of course anyone still performing is usually quite easily contacted through, if nothing else, their own websites or here.

I have contributed now to half a dozen websites over about 20 years material I have recorded. Not once have I been asked to take anything down, if that helps.

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Howard Jones
Date: 08 Jul 21 - 02:49 PM

In the 1970s Jim Etheridge would sit in the front row at Chelmsford Folk Club every week with his reel-to-reel tape recorder. His archive is now held by Essex County Record Office, along with other recordings by Dennis Rookard. However they don't have the resources to digitise them, and I don't know whether the public has any access to them.

I imagine a lot of people will have similar recordings which might well be of historical interest and should be preserved, but how to do this? The EFDSS seems to have little interest in folk clubs or in amateur performances and I suspect they would not be interested.

Digitising them yourself and putting them online is one solution, but raises issues, as this discussion has illustrated. On the one hand these performances will probably be of interest to someone, on the other hand the rights of the performers themselves should be respected. They have the legal, and in my opinion, the moral right to object.

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 08 Jul 21 - 01:13 PM

Irrespective of opinions about copyright, which clearly differ, an issue with most of my recordings is that, as I said in my opening post, when I asked permission to record, I stated that the recordings would be for my personal use. Many of the singers and musicians I recorded probably wouldn't mind my making the recordings available to all, but some might, and it is impracticable to contact even all of those who are still alive. I think this is one of those situations where there is no right answer, only a choice of more or less wrong answers. When I die my executors will have access to my recordings but probably won't have much idea what to do with them.

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Jul 21 - 09:54 AM

I agree

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Tony Rees
Date: 08 Jul 21 - 05:05 AM

Indeed... Actually I was waiting to see if I can get that particular tape remastered by it present custodian - report back awaited :)

The I will contact Nic & Julia for their thoughts, which I am am happy to respect.

In the bigger picture, though, I do not think individual artists necessarily have the same perspective as their fans regarding what material deserves preserving - the "I must slash my paintings" syndrome perhaps - but for performers we respect, maybe they should indeed have the last word...

BTW I did not put that recording up, being mindful of Nic's situation, however it has been enthusiastically greeted by comments on Dime, to wit: "thanks a million" and so on...

Cheers - Tony

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Jul 21 - 04:49 AM

Nic, is contactable,it might be a good idea to ask him first?

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Jul 21 - 04:44 AM

well i would like to hear any NicJones recordings that you have

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 08 Jul 21 - 04:25 AM

I never bothered with Dime, because it seemed to me too elitist and exclusive.
So it's been out of my mind for years...

Also torrents were too much of a faff, and regarded as a risk
at a time when USA music corporations
were trying to criminalise teenage music fans;
and extorting mega thousands of $$$ fines for downloading a mere handfull of mp3s..

But that was years ago before spotify and other streaming services
became so lucrative for the music industry..

Enabling them to even more effectively rip off their own contracted artists...

Tony - really all you need to do is upload [lossless flacs ideally]
to a free cloud host, eg, www.mediafire.com
and provide links in your own relevent mudcat threads.

It works easy enough for other mudcatters who are kind enough to share
to our community...

cheers...

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Tony Rees
Date: 08 Jul 21 - 03:17 AM

For those who believe audience recordings of performers from the past should be made available to fans of the music, the following may be of interest... if not, feel free to skip this post.

It turns out that another of my originals has become available, this time via Dimeadozen (www.dimeadozen.org), not uploaded by me but by someone else from a low generation copy... in fact I do not even have the original of this any more, so it is great that it is preserved somewhere. It is Nic Jones recorded at Oxford Polytechnic in March 1975; I believe Ralph Jordan ("Ralphie" to mudcatters) was supplied with a copy of this at the time he was compiling "unearthed", but the tracks were probably not used (I have not done a detailed comparison). Anyway the relevant info is at http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=684401 and http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=684402 (2 versions were made available) but availability to view these pages and/or download depends on a user having a Dime account, also on persons who have "seeded" it (not an area I am familiar with), which apparently means that it is currently unavailable.

I would be interested to know if persons keen to hear and/or download this material prefer the Dime approach to that on youtube, which latter does actually break their rules regarding copyright material, also they do not officially allow downloads, as kind folk on this thread have informed me... Personally I find Dime a bit of a dog to use, since you have to be an uploader as well as a downloader, have plenty of bandwidth and a PC permanently connected to the net for file sharing, with kinda rules me out anyway. My preference is really for a site such as Sugarmegs where all the download links are readily available, however in mp3 (compressed) format or similar which is a little sub-optimal.

- Tony

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 05:28 PM

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Jim Carroll - PM
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 05:31 AM

"I am in favour of creative artists getting paid for their work"
I would be if it was done even handedly and all-inclusively - neither is the case
It favours the most successful and it ignores the creative artistry that went into the making of our folk songs
Onnce you hang a price tag on creative art it ceases to be art and becomes a commodity
The folk scene was created to escape from that rat-race
Jim

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 03:50 PM

Howard, irrelevant as far as the
the royalties on trad arr are a pittance compared to the composers royalties on their own composotions
the morality of performing other peoples work for financial gain without their permission[ relvant to the piracy remark made by someone else earlier]

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Howard Jones
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 12:49 PM

Sandman said "The problem appears to be with copyright on modern popfolk country recordings, not trad arr folk musics
logically if folk clubs consisted of people playing ONLY trad folk music the problem would not exist"

The performers own the copyright in their own performance, which is quite separate from the copyright (if any) in the material they perform. Performing only trad/public domain material doesn't get around that issue.

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 11:02 AM

well i was never booked there so i cannot say, but most blues are not copyrighted which was my point,
i consider blues american folk music, whereas some of the material played in folk clubs is as described by someone else as modern popfolk country and has copyright problems,
i find it ironic that material played in a blues club has not copyright problems but SOME music played in a folk club has.

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 08:01 AM

I went to the blues club just once - that was more than enough!!

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 07:24 AM

i did a few evenings at both clubs over the years.
croydon, more recntly, also had a blues club at the same venue as the folk club, most of that material was probably not copyrighted

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 05:15 AM

On our few visits to the Ram Club, now sadly closed for good, the floor spots were mostly trad songs, unlike Croydon which hopes to reopen, anything goes!

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 02:01 AM

The problem appears to be with copyright on modern popfolk country recordings, not trad arr folk musics
logically if folk clubs consisted of people playing ONLY trad folk music the problem would not exist
   Before Anyone misinterprests this post.I am only pointing out what is the root of the problem not attempting to stop anyone singing any music

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 01:59 AM

"Reading back I think the problem here is that the poster was recommending the use of a downloader along with the links, which does make it piracy..."

Downloaders are legal and are widely used...

They are a legitimate tool, with accepted function and purpose,
beyond your narrow minded definition of 'piracy'...

You might just as well be accusing anyone of sailing a boat of being a pirate...!!!???

Downloaders are essential for folks who struggle against crap unreliable internet connections
who are unable to stream media without excessive buffering, glitches, and freezing..

Sometimes the only viable option is to download online video/audio
for playback offline...

I can tell you for a fact, that even with 'good' broadband
music streaming services I PAY for,
are problematic and frequently unlistenable...

.. and these legal corporate streaming services are definitely actively ripping off music artists,
far far worse than any dedicated music enthusiasts who enjoy sharing amateur archive recordings...

YOU are the one who is out of step with 21st Century media distribution culture...

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 01:33 AM

it also shows that there is not just folk music played in folk clubs, apparently these recordings include
quote,,, as there are modern pop/folk rock and country songs involved.

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 12:44 AM

Tony - You are doing a GOOD thing...

But, you are also being too kind to the opinions of the mean minded anonymous GUEST anti sharers.

I suggest you are over thinking the problems they inflict on us.
.. and should definitely NOT ever remove the recordings you have uploaded,
just on their say-so..

We shouldn't give in to their cranky control freakery...

Obviously, if a named music artist requests their recordings be witheld,
that's a different matter.
But even then, there should be some scope for positive reasonable negotiation...

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Jul 21 - 09:25 PM

GUEST, Lou, it hurts just to read that the recorder turned off between songs. I have shelves of such material here to digitize and am going to have to set up a database to keep track of who performs what. This will be donated to a university collection, mostly, but I have other things on the Internet Archive and will be putting a few of these songs there.

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: RTim
Date: 06 Jul 21 - 08:41 PM

You want Folk Club Recordings? Well there is a YouTube site with at least the last years recordings from Sharp's in Isolation weekly Zoom sessions.....songs from many locations....have a Listen and enjoy..

Tim Radford

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvqDn8d3uUq1a3Wk87Q9GMsW87L6qdFqJ

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: GUEST,Lou
Date: 06 Jul 21 - 08:34 PM

I have the task of digitizing and annotating several years of board recordings form a local folk club in California. The only way we are able to do this is a (substantial) grant from the Grammy foundation to pay for the transfers and the lawyer to obtain permissions before it gets put out on achive.org - I can tell you the bulk of the grant (like 80%) is to pay for the lawyer to obtain the permissions!

Listening to hundreds of hours of mostly poorly recorded, often badly performed material to try to extract titles is a horrendous task! The ten percent of it that is good recordings of excellent performers is small reward, almost as small as the pay I get for doing the work. Oughta make the d*mn lawyer listen to it all hisself! :-)

Oh, and the idiot recording them paused the recording between most songs, so if they introduced the name of the songs the names did not get recorded Darn that was stupid of them!

I shoulda become a lawyer instead of a sound person!

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Jul 21 - 06:46 PM

Reading back I think the problem here is that the poster was recommending the use of a downloader along with the links, which does make it piracy as there are modern pop/folk rock and country songs involved.   These arguments go round and get nowhere, so I'll leave it there.

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Jul 21 - 05:11 PM

How about making available any items that are trad arr, would that get around the problem,
Personally if it was any of my own songs I would not be worried.
I think calling you a pirate is a bit over the top, having said that i will probably be the next person to be insulted by an anon guest

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Tony Rees
Date: 06 Jul 21 - 04:02 PM

Thinking about this further ... it seems there are two distinct approaches - either 1, treat the (copyright) laws as sacrosanct - in which case, at least half of the materials posted to youtube would have to be pulled, plus most/all of other music sharing sites such as Dimeadozen, Sugarmegs, etc., or

2, treat the relevant laws as flexible... for example, can it be morally justifiable to break a law to save a life, or a forest, or a cultural artifact? If the answer to any of these is "yes", then posting a recording for which one does not own the copyright to a public site might be seen as defensible on grounds of cultural value.

I simply do not know which is better in the present situation. Clearly taken to the extreme, one could argue that this material should not exist at all, however we are all aware of historic, legitimately issued compilations that would not be possible except for the enthusiastic recordings of amateurs in the past, and can clearly be seen to be of artistic/cultural value to future listeners and viewers.

My present inclination is that probably I will remove this material again and wait for a better solution, or for us all to die, whichever is the sooner...

- Tony

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 06 Jul 21 - 08:31 AM

Many folks bend or completely disregard far more important rules & laws,
which they have no respect for;
and continue to get away with it scot-free..

Such rule-breaking is popularly accepted and encouraged by general society,
who feel these laws are unfair and should not apply to them...

I wonder how many of the legalistic obsessive anti music sharing moaners in this thread,
habitually break rules which could have potentially serious hazardous consequences...???

Here's a possibly not too exaggerated example just for laugh..

Driving slightly over the speed and alcohol limit,
while using a handheld mobile phone to post to this thread how illegal and antisocial music sharing is...

If only these anti sharing obsessives could realise how out of touch they are, and try to keep their negative opinions on these matters in perspective...

We should not pander to them.
We should not allow them to feel they have the moral high ground and control to prevent enthusiasts from sharing and enjoying music,
which has mostly been forgotten or discarded.

Fair enough if the music industry can monetize these scrapings from the bottom of the barrel of music history.
Even better if profits can be reinvested in encouraging young musicians..

As long as the music is made available and remains easily accessible at fair prices..

What we don't need are the miseries who hoard old tapes until they rot beyond use.
Or deliberately destroy them out of pettiness and spite...

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 06 Jul 21 - 08:26 AM

keep up the good work, Tony

We've recorded concerts at my folk club since a bloke who enjoyed recording turned up in 2008 & have published the grand sum of 14 songs since then!

But a complete record of every concert since then (10 per year) are sitting on a couple of external memories as an archival record of our club. Performers are asked if they want to be part of the archival record, & they can get a copy of their performance if they want it.

I've just realised I have no idea of what we will do with them ONE DAY, whenever that is, maybe our local library might want to add them to their archive of local stuff. The Library hosted an exhibition of our history a few years back.

sandra

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Tony Rees
Date: 06 Jul 21 - 07:52 AM

"Guest" does have a point, and a basis in copyright law. I personally do not view myself as a pirate - I have not pirated anyone else's recorded product - but as a cultural saver of otherwise unavailable performances. However I am more than happy to remove these tracks from youtube if others think they should not be there, and maybe think further about other ways to share them (remember tape trading days...) - just mentioning that this phenomenon has always been around, and probably always will be, so long as there are comitted fans interested in more than just the official releases...

- Tony

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 06 Jul 21 - 07:13 AM

Full respect and thanks to Tony..

A real positive music enthusiast...!!!

We need more folks who enhance the joy in life..

The balance is more often being too heavly over-weighted by all the mean spirited miserly miseries...

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 06 Jul 21 - 07:07 AM

Whoever that toxic GUEST is,

he/she/they easily wins "mudcat misery of 2021" award..

.. and we're still only half way through the year...

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 06 Jul 21 - 05:45 AM

And who might this whinging guest be I wonder. Thank Clapton that we have had all these live recordings since 1st lockdown last year. Thank goodness I recorded The Mysteries in 1985 and 2000, and The Transports in 2017(??). Thank goodness another mudcatter would stand for hours holding up 2 mics to record Fairport. Thank goodness a few forward thinking folks recorded Nic Jones back then.

I curse those who hoard live recordings and refuse to share them - Twickenham Folk Club for instance!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Jul 21 - 03:30 AM

Tony You are a pirate, all the acts have rights, all the songwriters have rights, all the publishers have rights - you are breaching those rights and Mudcat should not be a platform for promoting relatively modern recording bootlegging.   It matters not if the performers are' still around', this is still piracy.

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Tony Rees
Date: 05 Jul 21 - 09:46 PM

Just revisiting this thread after some gap...

OK, I have uploaded some audience recordings as audio (or video in one case) to youtube - avoiding (in most cases) either persons/acts who are still around and performing (so as not to possibly hurt their feelings), or recordings of performances that I do not consider quite pass the "worth sharing with posterity" bar. Folk have the opportunity to ask for youtube to take them down, as well, if they object.

Here is the list to date (maybe more in future...) mostly folk or folk-rock, but some jazz and country as well:

Albion Country Band - Norwich Folk Festival 16/6/73
Richard & Linda Thompson - Cambridge Folk Festival 1975
Richard & Linda Thompson - Oxford Town Hall, 22 April 1975 (audio) - Part 1 of 2
Richard & Linda Thompson - Oxford Town Hall, 22 April 1975 (audio) - Part 2 of 2
Dick & Camilla Fegy - London February 1981 (audio)
Richard & Linda Thompson with Simon Nicol - Lesser Free Trade Hall, Manchester, U.K., 7 February 1981 (soundboard recording) (original provided by a friend)
Waso (Belgian Gypsy Jazz) - Sevenoaks, UK, March 1982 (audio recording)
Häns'che Weiss Quintett, Cambridge Folk Festival, UK, 26-27 June 1975 (audio recording)
Jon Delaney Quartet, Hobart 2011 (Gypsy Jazz) - video recording
Scott Hamilton + band, Hobart 1989 (Jazz) - audio recording
Albert Lee + Vince Gill, with the Flying Emus, Melbourne Feb 1988 (audio only)
Fairport Convention: "Folk Meets Pop", 1969 (audio only) (copy provided by a tape trader)

If any of the links do not work, let me know...

To date, this seems like the best method (for me) to make these recordings publicly available. Audio quality is a bit compressed by the youtube algorithm but not noticably so. They can be downloaded from youtube as well by a number of "back door" methods as needed - the one I use is called "Youtube video Downloader" from savefrom.net, but there are others.

I have a lot more video in the drawer, but the performers are in general still around so I am hesitant to upload without their permission, as described earlier in this thread.

Hoping the above is of some interest,

Cheers - Tony Rees, Australia

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 14 May 19 - 04:09 PM

> @Richard Mellish: after all the posts in this long thread it will seem a massive anti-climax if we don't actually get to hear any of the recordings you have made.

> If you have uploaded any of them to the web, even for private or limited-invite listening, feel free to send me a PM letting me know where.

Not done yet apart from the few of Bert Lloyd. I'm trying to keep too many balls in the air at present but should get round to uploading some recordings sooner or later. The issue of upload time and web space remains to be addressed, but considering the recording circumstances a lossy compression format such as MP3 probably wouldn't lose much.

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Tony Rees
Date: 14 May 19 - 03:42 PM

Re-reading this thread there are some interesting and fair points made. I think there is a distinction that can be drawn with on the one hand, informal, amateur music making that perhaps should not be shared with the world (if at all) except with the consent of the performers in question - who may not wish their efforts to be disseminated by the same means as more "professional" or polished works - and amateur recordings of professional acts which may be of some present or future cultural value to preserve. As punkfolkrocker says above:

"Unseen and heard archives of amateur recordings
are recognised by museums as invaluable assets
whose holders should be positively encouraged to share
what they have of our hidden national heritage..."

This is the category the majority of my holdings fall into, either as audience or soundboard recordings, unauthorised though they may be. So, I have dipped my toe in the water and let one out via Youtube here (quality is not fantastic but I at least enjoy listening to the performance again): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW7tF_hvUz8 (my thanks to Colin Harper for doing the upload on my behalf). Maybe this is one solution (subject however to possible take-down notices for copyright infringement...). Dime (dimeadozen) is another route, though I am not really sure how that works and I have a feeling it is a lot more complicated for both uploaders and downloaders (having had no success to date on the latter front).

Regards - Tony

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 03 May 19 - 04:14 AM

@Richard Mellish: after all the posts in this long thread it will seem a massive anti-climax if we don't actually get to hear any of the recordings you have made.

If you have uploaded any of them to the web, even for private or limited-invite listening, feel free to send me a PM letting me know where.

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 03 May 19 - 03:56 AM

..so there is a good utilitarian reason for the clichéd folkie aran sweaters...???

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: Tony Rees
Date: 03 May 19 - 03:11 AM

I am reading Brian Hinton & Geoff Wall's authorised biography of Ashley Hutchings (vol 1) "The Guv'nor and the Rise of Folk Rock" (2002) and am re-acquainting myself with their chapter on the various incarnations of the Albion Country Band (of which more anon...) - Albions Mk1 and Mk2 never made a record, Albions Mk3 did but it was not released for 3 years as the band broke up immediately after recording it. RE Albions Mk1's first London appearance: "Fortunately a tape survives, and as we will find with the Albion Country Band, it is only because of fanatics hiding tape recorders under their pullovers that much of the story can be told at all." (p. 251).

Just sayin'...

Subject: RE: Making folk club recordings available
From: GUEST,Some bloke
Date: 01 May 19 - 03:07 AM

We ask our booked artists if we can record the concert with a view to making CDs for sale of no more than two songs per artist (otherwise their own CDs don’t get sold) and preferably (if they sang them) traditional or written by the artist. These become raffle prizes and sold to subsidise the running of the club.

Many are ok with it. We record in very high quality through the main mixer and ambience mics and I spend hours mixing it down in post production. Some artists have included our recordings as live tracks on their own albums. Granted, one or two feel they are contracted not to and only one has said no based on personal choice.

If we get into discussing copyright and unauthorised recordings, bear in mind how many phones are busy recording. I’m delighted when a video of me appears on Facebook although I didn’t know I was being recorded but I’m sure Mick Jagger thinks differently. Most folk circuit performers like the publicity, and few are tied to litigious record labels these days.