Help: Folk Metal

Subject: Folk Metal
From: GUEST,rustymahone
Date: 29 Jun 00 - 07:48 PM

I know it exists, but is it a good or bad thing. Comments welcome!

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Mbo
Date: 29 Jun 00 - 07:53 PM

Good thing! Good thing!!!

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: GUEST,Auxiris
Date: 30 Jun 00 - 04:21 AM

'Scuse me, but what is "folk metal"? Is it someone playing a National or all-metal Dobro guitar?

cheers, Aux

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Mooh
Date: 30 Jun 00 - 05:58 AM

If I understand what you're referring to, I like it. My only complaint is that this sort of thing can be gratuitous self parody, or a cover for questionable tastes, styles, and interpretation. If it's well done, it brings the music to the masses like every other tradition, so I can't complain...Mooh.

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Scabby Douglas
Date: 30 Jun 00 - 06:28 AM

If what you are raising is the use of electric guitars, electronic instruments, heavy-duty amplification, the marrying of modern or rock rhythms to traditional/folk songs or music..... isn't it about 30 years too late to be asking this question?

I mean, Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, right through to Runrig, Capercaillie, Steve Earle, Wolfstone

It's part of the mainstream, now not really an offshoot any more... at least in Celtic music...

Or is that not how it's seen?

Tell me , tell me

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: GUEST,Suetonius
Date: 30 Jun 00 - 10:17 AM

so, what is this? Spandex, mascara, big hair, on pudgy middle-aged guys with beards?

somebody clue me in...

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Mbo
Date: 30 Jun 00 - 10:21 AM

No no no...you got it all wrong! I do folk metal, and it's nothing like that!

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: MMario
Date: 30 Jun 00 - 10:23 AM

so mathewm'boy, clue us in. What IS folk metal?

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Rana who SHOULD be working
Date: 30 Jun 00 - 10:27 AM

I take it you are referring to a Heavy Metal type dound doing trad/folk stuff.

There is probably ( in my opinion) a few things I'll find interseting but a majority I'll find awful - I'm NOT referrring to electric folk/folk rock as in the groups ChantyWrassler mentioned. (and note I liked what we called Hard Rock in my day - and still do - Led Zepellin (BBC sessions are great), refraining from going on a real nostalgia trip and getting Paranoid by ZBlack Sabbath (saw them at Birmingham Town Hall in 1970) and so forth,

I found the Swedish group Hoven Groven to be really intereting. Made a massive mistake in this other "Celtic-Rock" group which seems to have a following - "Tempest"

A few years ago I found the Levellers to be good - but it is probably more punk-folk!

Anyway, I suppose I'm saying that if I like it it is interesting and "valid", otherwise it can be noise. But then someone's meat is another person's poison - so if you like it, it's valid

Rana

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Lepus Rex
Date: 30 Jun 00 - 10:29 AM

Shoot, Rana beat me to mentioning Hoven Droven. They rock, btw.

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Mbo
Date: 30 Jun 00 - 10:31 AM

Imagine Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" on acoustic guitar, like I do it...with a dobro doing the solo, and 2 fiddles doing the string part...that's folk metal.

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Scabby Douglas
Date: 30 Jun 00 - 10:59 AM

not really to the point , but my favourite band name - EVER - is the Scottish folk group "Deaf Shepherd"

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Mbo
Date: 30 Jun 00 - 11:02 AM

Yes, Deaf Shepherd are an awesome band--I just LOVE them!

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: GUEST,rusty
Date: 30 Jun 00 - 08:19 PM

Im acually refering to a band called "SKYCLAD" In my, Humble opinion, they are one of the best bands i've heard in a long time. P.S. Dosent MBO have a lot to say?

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Den
Date: 01 Jul 00 - 01:19 PM

I recall Gary Moore one time member of Thin Lizzy doing a few things that I would consider folk metal and the Brilliant Lizzy themselves doing plenty stuff that could probably be classified as folk rock. Then there was Horslips not exactly metal but I believe a band that pioneered a lot of this stuff. Den

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Jul 00 - 02:22 PM

well, you know me...'folk metal' would rank right alongside 'rap opera', 'slipjig madrigals', and 'bluegrass pumping chanties'......I can understand someone liking a different sound, but it grieves me when they screw up the originals...even more when they INFLICT their 'creations' on lovers of the purer forms!..Do what you wish, but CALL it something else, and DO it somewhere else...if I want to check it out, I'll come look, and I 'may' even enjoy some of it.. I just want to be ABLE to retreat if it doesn't suit me. Going to a concert billed as 'folk', and discovering that it is 90% electric and 90% written by the artists, with the other 10% gratuitously distorted is a bit frustrating....

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: oggie
Date: 01 Jul 00 - 03:46 PM

Jim Eldon (The Bridlington Fiddler) does an amazing version of Bat Out Of Hell with just vocals and fiddle. Years ago Barry Dransfield did the same with Whiter Shade of Pale. Mid period Springsteen is fun on melodeon especially when turned into country dance tunes (The River as a Polka)

All the best

Steve

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Jul 00 - 03:52 PM

Is it about the music or the image? I mean is it people looking like a heavy metal band playing folkie stuff, or people looking like folkies playinghevau metal music?

There's a few Morris Dance sides make a great impression (especially on the roadway) by using metal scaffolding poles instead of wooden sticks in their dances? Does that count as Heavy Metal?

I suppose you could call some Caribbean type steel pan drums heavy metal bodhrans...I'd love to see someone trying to blend the two approaches. (Carolan wopuld sound great on a steel band, but I've never heard it done yet.)

Actually rap opera might work quite well - replace the recitative with rapping, could work.

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Amergin
Date: 01 Jul 00 - 03:55 PM

Isn't screwing up the originals what the folk process is all about?

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Jul 00 - 04:49 PM

Amerigin..not exactly...some of the stuff that we know is WAY different than the originals took decades or centuries of trial & error and the failures were not well documented..what we have now is often gratuitous change in order to get around copyright laws or to 'establish an image'....and the results are recorded and broadcast and passed off as 'creativity'....some change is inevitable, and some is even good...but, I repeat, KNOW what the original IS when you are experimenting, and KNOW when it is so different that it needs a different venue.

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Clinton Hammond2
Date: 01 Jul 00 - 06:26 PM

Sorry Bill... I gotta side with THEM on this one... If it don't change, it stagnates and dies... let the 'kids' do what they want to the tunes... If you don't like 'em, I'll meet ya at the bar and we can co-miserate... But I won't let ya try to stop 'em! LOL!!!!

Whoop it up folks!

[~`

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Jul 00 - 06:44 PM

Best music is near the bar anyway.

Key thing about folk music is a presumption that things get better as they get older - the music, and the musicians. Once you realise that, you've got something to look forward to.

Actually isn't Heavy Metal proper oldie music by now anyway? Like Punk is, when you get down to it..

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: MichaelM
Date: 01 Jul 00 - 06:59 PM

Hoven Droven is nice but how about Vasen (I can't make the accent over the A)? I have "Whirled" pounding out of my speakers at this moment.

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Jul 00 - 07:03 PM

"If it don't change, it stagnates and dies.".....pooh!..*grin*....you mean, like Beethovens 9th?...or King Lear?..or "The Twa Corbies"?...or Westminister Abbey?..Folks sure like THOSE icons to stay as they are. I can't stop them 'messing' with the old songs...but I sure can make noise when they do it near me!!!

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Amergin
Date: 01 Jul 00 - 07:11 PM

Bill D., the thing about Beethoven's 9th and King Lear is that they are adaptable. With King Lear you can modernise it, giving it modern costuming and sets but using Shakespearean language. You can make it fit into a situation that would reflect the society of today. Or you can make it so far into the past and make it fit there. A couple of weeks ago in Ashland, Oregon I saw a production of Hamlet that made an interesting combo of modern dress and medieval weaponry. With the Beethoven tune, that can be adapted and played with anything. Or it can be used to accompany a set a of lyrics. That is also the great thing about folk music. It can be adapted to fit modern times, modern styles, or it can be adapted to fit the form of music it is being used for.

Amergin

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: Lepus Rex
Date: 01 Jul 00 - 07:19 PM

Väsen is great, too, but they don't really have any 'metallic' tendencies. But you've got good taste, Michael. :)

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Jul 00 - 07:20 PM

Still water stagnates. It turns into stuff you can't drink. Running water doesn't stagnate, it stays drinkable. It might look as if it was the same water in the river all the time, but it's changing continuously. But not in what matters.

But I'm still waiting for some enlightenment on whether the crucial thing in whether something is any particular sort of music is the look or the sound? (And I'm not being sarky here - the medium is the message, and how you look affects how people undersatnd you.)

Subject: RE: Help: Folk Metal
From: GUEST,Auxiris
Date: 02 Jul 00 - 05:14 AM

Hello, everyone. After having read your comments and even though I feel that I still don't really understand what " folk metal " is all about, I'd like to add my "grain de sel" (grain of salt) after all. . .

It seems to me that folk---or rather traditional---music is something that resists both the ravages of time and creative innovations quite well. While I may not choose to follow a particular style of "folk" after having given it a fair listen, I wouldn't try to persuade someone not to play and/or listen to it themselves. On the other hand, I don't believe that traditional music(s) necessarily need to be made "accessible" in the sense of having all kinds of, uh. . . let's say modern effects added to be appreciated. Having said that, I find Arty McGlynn playing sets of reels on his Telecaster quite breathtaking. Is that folk metal too?

My own first encounter with traditional music was hearing someone play an Appalachian dulcimer and, over thirty years later, I'm still listening to traditional music. I don't think that a few " innovations " from time to time are going to destroy the acoustic side of things.