Help: Good modern folkies

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: InOBU
Date: 02 Feb 00 - 03:07 PM

Mary McCaffrey!
If you are following this thread, could you e-mail me at the address in bbcs resourses?
All the best,
Larry

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: Clinton Hammond2
Date: 02 Feb 00 - 03:50 PM

Maybe I'm just the biggees THREAD CREEP here?

Love me, hate me, love to hate me...

Ya know what... I don't care one lick...

I've know a few words since I was a young boy, that are a lot worse than the things Peg called me, but I'm not going to use them...

Nothing is universal... Nothing is universally understood... what an ego one must have to expect that the whole world thinks and acts like oneself...

InOBU... thanks for discussing without slinging... But you know what you can do with yer soap eh?!?! LOL!!

"Ya shouldn't hang me on a hook. My mother once hung me on a hook. Once" -Johnny Dangerously-

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: GUEST,canoer
Date: 03 Feb 00 - 02:47 AM

Oops. I see we took a little detour while I was gone. Nicely spoken, Peg, George, Lorcan.

Returning: To George H: Mr. Encyclopedia, thank you! Those sites should keep me occupied a while.

Re brother Bragg, I'm glad to hear he has an admirable history. Nevertheless, on this one song, if he was extending his scope, it went through a prism that separated out the distinctly (if very awkwardly translated) workers - vs - bosses language and structure. With the exception of one line that mentions exploitation, all the other language and sentiment is accessible to anyone from any class without their having to deal with the workers - vs - bosses matter. Especially telling is his idea that the final drama will take place in the streets and in the fields. What, are there no factories, mills, and offices where people work -- and go on strike -- any more?

Because the Internationale has a very special history, and because there are so few such songs, I prefer that "updaters" take special care to preserve its full meaning. On the other hand -- who'll notice anyway?

Been fun talking with you. :> -- Larry C.

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: GUEST,aldus
Date: 03 Feb 00 - 07:35 AM

Clinton knows nothing about traditional fiddling. But he does know that in a democracy everyone has the right to be offended. I too find many words offensive...but I have no right to ban them or to curb the use of them. Those of you who have exercised your right ot be offended...Thank you...now get over it.Back to music.

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: GeorgeH
Date: 03 Feb 00 - 07:50 AM

Canoer: You really need to talk to Mr Bragg on this one!! But I guess he'd say that what he sings supplements rather than surplants the original, and I'm sure he has the same respect as you do for the history of the original.

As for "are there no factories, mills and offices where . . people go on strike" well, in terms of being effective vehicles for change, that's about it. The Thatcher governments effectively emasculated the unions, and "new labour" shows little sign of restoring any significant power to them, or doing anything else to achieve greater justice between employer and employee. Most strikes here are either small-scale and localised or end up in the workers being replaced with non-union labour, and there's damn all the unions can do about it.

And at the same time our "strong" economy, much lauded by the government, is further damaging our "factories, mills and offices" infrastructure by making our exports over-priced and creating a domestic economy where "lowest price" is the bottom line for everything . . whatever is driving our economy (so called "invisibles", largely) it ain't doing a lot of the UK much good. So perhaps Bragg is right in looking for a new venue for the "final drama". Certainly his song reflects where political (though not party political) activism IS currently taking place in the UK.

'scuse the rant.

And a ps to Clinton Hammond - your attempts at self justification "suck" even more than your original remarks; since you refuse to accept reasoned and reasonable, though mild, criticism of your offensiveness I guess we all now know to treat you with the contempt you seem to want.

G.

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From:
Date: 03 Feb 00 - 11:47 AM

Good modern folkies? How about early Dougie McLean, Craigie Dhu for example. Much better than his recent pastel tinted nonsense. Also, brand new is Malinky from Edinburgh. Saw them at Celtic Connections this year, new CD (Last Leaves, I think)is just out. Karine the lead singer has a great traditional voice. Others from the 80s/90s: Ian Walker, flying high is a wonderful political album. Jez Lowe, also subtly political and overtly so on occasion. Ian Bruce, great voice now re-visiting traditional songs. Hope this helps a little with the Scottish Scene.

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: GUEST,aldus
Date: 03 Feb 00 - 12:39 PM

Sally; You are wrong about the origin of the word faggot.... Misinformation is a weapon often wielded by the offended...Faggot meant originally a bundle of sticks. When heretics were threatened with burning at the stake and recanted...the symbol of the "faggot" was sewn on their clothing to indicate a saved sinner. The word was also applied to someone who stood in for someone else at a regimental roll call.. it's most common usage in saxon english was in its application to an old woman who appeared to resemble a witch...the symbol for a witch was a stick broom, commonly known as a faggot. Get yourself a good dictionary of english word origins or you'll get offended if someone calls you niggardly.........or gay.......or dyke ......or obtuse...

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: Peg
Date: 03 Feb 00 - 01:14 PM

who's Sally?

The niggardly, picayunish justification of one's reprehensible boorish moralizings, utilizing obtuse, arcane, ostensibly-disingenuous psuedo-etymology, is the pathetic refuge of the self-righteous bigot.

peg

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: GeorgeH
Date: 03 Feb 00 - 01:20 PM

Aldus, you're making an idiot of yourself. No one said anything about the origin of the word faggot . . the comments were on the (history of) its CURRENT common usage. The same applies to "gay" and "dyke", from your list; they ARE currently offensive, and with good cause. I don't think there's any problem with niggardly, and you're certainly doing your damndest to be obtuse. Of couse in any free society folks can decide to be as anti-social and offensice as they like - but must expect others to take exception to their behaviour. Just don't try to suggest to anyone that ANY music is more important than questions of common decency vs. gratuitous offensivness.

G.

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: Clinton Hammond2
Date: 03 Feb 00 - 02:04 PM

I was trying to let this stupid mess drop, but this got my hackles up....

Self-Righteous??? Now there's the pot calling the kettle black... or should I say sooty, because some people might thing there are racist connotations to this... Are you also infavour of banning Ba Ba Black Sheep?? And myybe you agree that Tom Sayer shouldn't be taught in school?? I'm just gussing here...

"The same applies to "gay" and "dyke", from your list; they ARE currently offensive".. Offensive to who?? You maybe.. but don't presume to judge for the whole world.. especially not my corner of it k...

I don't know much about traditions fiddle music?? Not true... I know plenty about it and I know that I find it, for the most part, overblown... "I" find it boring... I'm not saying that others don't enjoy it... I'm saying "I" don't...

But thanks Aldus... freedom is freedom eh... no half-ways about it...

I can't belive this is all in defence of a pedophile... He pees on little boys and I get slammed for using words... Only in America... ;-)

NOW... I'm laving this mess alone... There have got to be better things to do than this... Like maybe giving myself a broken glass high colonic....

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: GUEST,Neil Lowe
Date: 03 Feb 00 - 02:13 PM

InOBU......perhaps you could enlighten me. I've never been to NYC, much less St. Mark's Place, but there's a line in "Talkin' Vietnam Pot Luck Blues," by Tom Paxton:
Big smile on the Captain's face,
He smelled like midnight on St. Mark's Place.

My question: what does 'midnight on St. Mark's Place' smell like?

Regards, Neil

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: InOBU
Date: 03 Feb 00 - 02:55 PM

Hi Neil:
I not only play at Bagatelle, here on SMP, but I have lived here for decades. Well, at the time he speaks of, the cops used to have a detail early in the morning to scoup up the boddies of dead overdosed kids off the sidewalk between second and third before folks going to work would be offended by the sight. Now, during the summer, we still get a lot of kids from New Jersey getting tanked and leaving their dinners on the sidewalk late on Friday and Saturday night, and of cource, as there are a lot of restaurants on that particular block of St. Marks, the rotting garbadge before the moring pick up and spruce up, in July and Aug. is pretty rank. So, to get an image of the sent he referes to (though again, it is seasonal, like going to Cardiff when the hops are being roasted) take the contents of your fridge, put it on your roof on a day when the temp gets over 90, add a dead dog or other large mamal, though on a can or two of Amercican beer - Budwieser for authenticity, a few labratory smells to get the right heroin smell - if you are aiming at the seventies sent, let stand for a long weekend, then, place your chair next to the mess, put on Tom Paxton, and enjoy the full effect.
Now, just as there is now a mall on the Holy Ground in Dingle, there is a city corportation of some kind that actualy cleans St.Marks between 2nd and 3rd all day long, and so, one needs not be so offended by the smell in these new days of NeoFacism provided by our agust little mayor, Rudy, so, other than having to deal with kids coming to play in a place where many do not card the bars (by the way they do at Bagatelle and it is well run and good food!) St. Marks is a ghost of its former smell, I mean self
Get the picture?
Larry

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: GUEST,Canoer
Date: 03 Feb 00 - 03:03 PM

Thanks, George. Got the same problems over here. It's the same world.

I can handle, "supplement."

Regards -- Larry C.

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: Peg
Date: 03 Feb 00 - 03:07 PM

Larry; lovely olfactory descriptions! I am trying to remember from a trip to NYC ten years back...is St. Marks Place where that big spinning cube statue is? and isn't St. Marks Place subway station the one with the beavers???

It smelled pretty much like the rest of NYC to me, but if pressed, I can conjure up what different areas smell like...once had a vivid rush of deja vu on the upper West Side, when the smell of an Italian dish seasoned with basil and thyme wafted out, wham! I was in my grandfather's kitchen back in western NY... too bad Little Italy is almost gone, it used to smell real good around there...I mean, it still does, it just smells like Chinatown now...and i love the dusty smell of that shop in the West Village where they sell old chess sets...

so does Bagatelle have good beer? I'd rather smell the remnants of Guinness or Beamish or Murphy's or Bass than Budweiser any day... and I hope they have a decent single malt selection ;0

looking forward to my visit to the apple

peg

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: GUEST,Neil Lowe
Date: 03 Feb 00 - 06:58 PM

InOBU....that was probably a little more information than I needed to know, but yes, I get the picture. I know, I know....I asked. Thanks.

Regards, Neil

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: InOBU
Date: 03 Feb 00 - 08:32 PM

Yup, Peg
the big spinning cube, that is Astor place at the begining of St. Marks Place, where one day, my wife and I, both lawyers interceeded when a group of young toughs were hassling a person who had been hit by the cube, when they had spun it without looking to see if anyone was sleeping under it.
We found ourself defending the poor fellow, and one of the flash toughs said, He was asuming the risk when he choose to sleep there!
October! sais my sweetie, One month of law school and you think you can talk like a lawyer.
Exit a group of red faced first years... chalk up another legal victory for my wife Genie... Ah the cube!
Larry

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: Ely
Date: 03 Feb 00 - 08:38 PM

Ed Miller (Scottish, displaced to Austin, Texas)

Norman Kennedy (very traditional Scottish)

Townes Van Zandt (country, the "Bob Dylan of Texas")

Robert Earl Keen (see TVZ above)

Kelly Joe Phelps (acoustic guitar blues)

Kate Wolf (1960's-1980's, reminds me of Jean Ritchie)

Billy Bragg (British political stuff)

Freakwater (alternative honky-tonk)

And of course, the usual Arlo Guthrie, Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, Paul Geramia, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Doc Watson, Clarence Ashley, Elizabeth Cotten, Etta Baker, Jean Ritchie, Howie Mitchell . . . )

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Feb 00 - 08:08 AM

Clinton; Give it up...you cannot win against an offended language policeman. They claim your rights, the rights of free speech, the right to be offended....you have no right to speak, no right to offend them and no right defend yourself. They do not get it...the cure( personal attacks on the politically incorrect" is worse than the disease {being politically incorrect}.

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: GeorgeH
Date: 04 Feb 00 - 08:36 AM

Guest (the last), take a course in English comprehension. Then come back when you are prepared to put your name to your purile stupidity.

G.

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Feb 00 - 11:29 AM

This is what today's London Times says about 'Catters Sam and Ian (of 4-2-2- fame):
{ how do you like being called a brat act, guys?
RtS

Nowt so gear as folk It was only a few years ago that folk singers were regarded as a sad bunch of beardy Frank Dobson lookalikes singing about jolly plough boys and wild gypsy rovers. But the times they are a-changin'. Led by a new breed of feisty young designer-clad "folk babes", folk music is hipper than it has been for decades and, on Monday, Britain's first ever folk awards ceremony will take place.

At the head of the folk bratpack and expected to win major awards are Kate Rusby, 25, and Eliza Carthy, 24, whose most recent album, Red Rice, added drum and bass grooves to her traditional folk stylings.

Other brat acts in contention for awards include the brilliant young fiddle player Nancy Kerr and Tarras, the teenage band from the Borders, whose debut album Rising made a big impression last year. The equally youthful 4-2-2 from Yorkshire, winners of Radio 2's Young Folk Award, will also perform at the event. Their prize includes a prime slot at the prestigious Cambridge Folk Festival in July and a British Council-sponsored world tour.

"Folk music is built on tradition, but there are so many young acts coming through that it is quite humbling," says John Leonard. He says that audiences for the weekly Folk On 2 programme, which he produces for Radio 2, now touch 750,000. "There's more interest than ever and folk records are getting played across the BBC's airwaves by mainstream broadcasters. Folk has broken out of its ghetto."

But despite folk's increasing crossover potential, it is the several hundred folk clubs up and down the country which remain the backbone of the music. The BBC asked those who make a living from playing the circuit to vote for the Folk Club of the Year. The first winner is the Westhougton club in Lancashire.

"It's a very traditional folk club that has been there for ever," Leonard says. "But there are plenty of others like it. All of these clubs are run by enthusiastic amateurs who usually end up putting in their own money to keep it going. But the clubs have bred a kind of artist you don't find anywhere else in the world. The floor spots where people play for free give anyone an opportunity to sing and everybody gets a hearing, whether they are great or dreadful. The best people, like Kate Rusby, go on, but everybody starts from the same place."

Rusby certainly has gone on and is favourite to win in the Folk Album of the Year category for Sleepless, with its repertoire of "drowning ballads and castle-knocking-down songs," as she calls them.

She has an answer to those who question the continuing relevance of such songs, pointing out that what remains unchanging about the human condition is often more profound than that which we call progress. "The old ballads are full of stories about falling in and out of love, being born and dying. They've never seemed old-fashioned to me."

She brushes aside the suggestion that the "folk babes" such as herself and Carthy have rescued folk music from what looked like a slow but inexorable slide into oblivion. "Folk music has been there for hundreds of years. It doesn't need me or anybody else to be its saviour."

Carthy agrees, but is also on a mission to take the music to a wider audience. "If you don't want to sell loads of albums and prefer to sit around in tiny clubs, that's OK," she says. "But I can't do that because I live in the modern world. I approve of dragging the music into a contemporary context. It's about time folk was made more stylish."

The BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards take place on Monday. The event will be broadcast at 8pm on Radio 2 on Feb 9

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 04 Feb 00 - 11:32 AM

Sorry, that last GUEST was me: too busy cuttin' 'n' pastin' to notice I'd missed my handle off!
RtS

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: simon-pierre
Date: 05 Feb 00 - 01:24 AM

Does anybody mentionned Bob Snider? He's really good.

SP

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: Clinton Hammond2
Date: 05 Feb 00 - 03:08 AM

SP...

Did you mean Tod (2'd's?)Snider?? As in "Todd (1 'd'?) Snider and the Nervous Wrecks"? Check the Thread about Funniest Talking Blues Tune...

It's way too later after too long a gig to spell! LOL!!!

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: Sourdough
Date: 05 Feb 00 - 11:47 PM

Not all that long ago, I took the position that I wasn't going to get too exercised about people using "nigger". As Clinton pointed out, it is a word that is often used by Africa Americans among themselves.

I was having this exchange on a bulletin board and I made what I thought was a reasoned and articulate defense against the "word police". Then someone made the simple point that racial epithets made the people being referred to uncomfortable so why, he asked, would I want to insist on doing that. There is enough lack of civility in discussions without inserting needless discomforts. Did I have a reason that was worth making people uncomfortable? Was there a point I was trying to make that was worth sacrificing their comfort for?

I didn't and there wasn't so I changed my mind. Perhaps some others will change their minds, too.

Sourdough

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: simon-pierre
Date: 05 Feb 00 - 11:56 PM

Clinton,

I really mean BOB Snider, a canadian. He recorded two album on EMI, «Catterwaul and doggerel» (with the hilarious «Darn folksinger») and «Word and pictures»; maybe more, but i don't know them.

SP

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: Clinton Hammond2
Date: 06 Feb 00 - 08:16 PM

Simon...

Cool...

I'll keep an ear pealed and see if I trip over them!

How's that for mixing metaphores!?! LOL!!!

Take Ye Care Eh!

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: GeorgeH
Date: 07 Feb 00 - 05:33 AM

Despite some good recommendations, much of that Times article are garbage. Apart from anything else, in much of the UK the folk clubs are irrelelevant . . and too many of them are more likely to put people off the music. Granted there appear to be areas where this is not so (the North East in particular has been cited), and there remain good clubs in many areas, but (IMO) far more significant these days is the Arts Centres circuit.

And despite his hype, John Leonard's programme is generally dismal (his frontsperson, former folk humourist Mike Harding, doesn't help); its usual bland, easy-listening MOR content is quite untypical of the strength of Folk music in the UK; indeed the UK folk scene is gravely under-represented in the programme (although its not as uniformly dreadful as it was in its early days).

By contrast there is now an excellent late-night Radio 3 programme which covers folk/roots music from the UK and the rest of the world and does so very well - plus Ned Sherrin (Radio 4?) frequently features excellent Folk acts without the need to submerge them beneath his own patronising ego . .

So - the "scene" is in very good health . . just don't trust "mainstream" journalism.

G.

Subject: RE: Help: Good modern folkies
From: GUEST,Terry
Date: 07 Feb 00 - 08:09 AM

In all of of this debate (and IMO some rather wishy-washy recommendations) I still see no reference to Vin Garbutt, hence my input. I don't expect anyone outside of UK to be aware but if you want a real treat, seek him out. I've enjoyed his gigs at Hitchin and at Watford in recent years, but I guess you foreigners (no offence) will have to make do with recordings! Terry