About those bawdy lyrics

Subject: About those bawdy lyrics
From: GUEST,SingSong
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 11:25 AM

Dear Friends,

I'm not ususally prudish, but while my 9 year old daughter and I were searching for the words to "The Ash Grove" the search yielded "The Mayor of Bayswater's Daughter" sung to the tune of "The Ash Grove". We opened it, and found a bawdy song, waxing "poetic" about said daughter's pubic hair. Would it be possible, when posting bawdy lyrics, to maybe denote them with, let's say, a "B" or a little icon of Tipper Gore (or Frank Zappa if you're on the other side of that debate) so some of us don't have to open them if we don't want to. I'm not interested in infringing on anyone's first ammendment rights, and I certainly don't have to read it, but sometimes just reading enough to determine it's bawdy one gets more than one wished for. I thank you all for your courteous consideration of this proposal. Susan

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: Edmund Flynn (inactive)
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 11:42 AM

I appreciate your concern, but the problem is not simple. There is no big red line deliniating where "nice" turns to "bawdy". It is a continuum from "best" to "worse".
Who would determine where to draw the line? And your idea of the limit of "nice" might not be shared by others.
Edmund

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: Amos
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 12:27 PM

'Course you could increase your own tolerance bandwidth. Don't see why you should feel harmed -- unless this is a "stop me before I do it again plea", which I doubt.

A

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: Jeri
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 12:33 PM

From the FAQ, AKA "Newcomers Guide" which is the last thing any newcomers read:

Explicit Lyrics: Some people have suggested that there should be a warning posted at the beginning of threads that include lyrics that are sexually explicit. Bawdy songs have always been an integral part of folk music, and you'll find lots of dirty ditties if you do a category search of our database for @bawdy. There is no set policy on this sort of thing, but Standard Mudcat Policy is that freedom of expression is to be encouraged and protected. If you're going to post something spicy and think you should label it, that's fine - but there is no requirement for labeling here and visitors are advised that they read at their own risk.

I do agree that it would be best if the searches here found the specific song you're looking for first, instead of parodies, but that's an accuracy issue. (And Max is working on it, I believe.)

The problem with identifying lyrics not suitable for kids as Edmund pointed out, is definitions of what's suitable and what isn't are extremely subjective. SingSing/Susan may not want lyrics with pubic hair in them. Some else doesn't want rape or people getting killed, and another may object to any mention of one or all religions.

There may be a way to filter out by key words, but I don't know it. ("NOT @bawdy" ??)

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 12:34 PM

Amos, she said she wasn't "prudish", I suspect it was for her daughter's sake that she is asking and in a courteous manner.

SingSong, this is a fully open, unregulated, frequented mostly by adults site. Censorship is abhored and as EF said, it would not be an easy thing to do what you are asking. Just as when you surf the web, you take your chances. We are here to preserve songs in all of their bawdiness, or not.

There may be a way for you to do a search which would filter out anything designated as "bawdy" but I am not sure how that would be done.

kat

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: Amergin
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 12:36 PM

myself I like "body" songs.....

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: wildlone
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 12:46 PM

There are many sites with software downloads for safe surfing like
"click for parental control software" .
But the downside is there are also downloads to disable blocking software .
dave

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: Amos
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 12:59 PM

Wal, Barky gets to decide for herself how much pubic hair she wants to read about and she is eminently sensible about it. Makes sense to me that if you want to protect a delicate chiuld from coarse reality, you have to prefilter what you show them.

A

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: JohnB
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 01:16 PM

Caveat Emptor, and this did not even cost you anything. Some sex site has the "whitehouse" name in the USA. The Internet can be a dangerous place for kids but we all learn somewhere, sometime. It is probably good that you were with her when she learnt her first bawdy song. JohnB.

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 03:10 PM

What's bawdy about a long haired cat called Dicky Dido ?

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: SeanM
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 03:25 PM

I think a lot of this really does have to come down to personal responsibility to understand that these are mostly, above all folk songs, and a LOT of folk songs have to do with... well... how we get more folks to sing them. "All Among the Barley"... "Lusty Young Smith"... heck, a HUGE amount of ANY national tradition of songs are about sex in all it's wonderful forms.

Fortunately, a lot of it is in innuendo form

*checks DT and finds 'Eskimo Nell'*

Errr... OK, some of it is in innuendo form.

M

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 03:33 PM

If you search for:

ash grove {not} @bawdy

DigiTrad will at least filter out the ones we've designated as bawdy.

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: wildlone
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 03:41 PM

I do not use any controls on my surfing [no minors in house]but as I understand it you can configure your browser to filter out certain key words that you set.
As with any form of censorship it can have problems, if you filtered out the major swear words a site about Yorkshire would not be allowed because of Scunthorpe.
dave

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: Hollowfox
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 04:26 PM

Scunthorpe? Could someone explain, by PM if necessary, why this is a Rude Word?

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: Midchuck
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 04:54 PM

It contains within it one of the Forbidden Words (I'm not sure why it's forbidden, considering that half of us have one, but I lack subtlety).

The filter programs aren't bright enough to distinguish a Bad Word standing alone from one that happens to exist within a totally innocuous word.

Peter.

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 09:14 PM

If people have parental-control software installed on their machines, shouldn't that filter out the bawdy stuff?

I guess I'd compare this site to a library. It's not a pornography site, but yet it does have many songs that may be less than totally wholesome - with music and literature, that's the way it is. You're sure to find the same in the "fiction" section of your library, unless you stay in the children's department.

Since you don't pay for the information you get at Mudcat, this is different from the reasoning behind having "explicit lyrics" labels on recordings. When my oldest son was nine years old, he bought a CD from a group called Loverboy. The CD came sealed - with no indication of what was inside, which turned out to be pretty raunchy. Well, record stores are usually reluctant to take unsealed merchandise back, but I did get a refund of my kid's fifteen bucks. Shortly afterward, Tipper Gore and others were able to convince the record companies to label the raunchy recordings. Now my kid is 28 and a punk rock musician, and the lyrics he writes would make Loverboy turn red.

And if we had an "explicit lyrics" label, that's what my kid would search for (and he probably would have done that at age 9, too).

There is one problem we have that should be fixed, and Max is working on it. If somebody chooses a song from the "titles" list, they should get that song. There are a few songs that are likely to be requested by children, that will bring up a bawdy song as the first choice if you click on the title (even though the bawdy song has a different title - there's a technical reason for that and it's hard to explain concisely).

-Joe Offer (author of the "explicit lyrics" warning in the FAQ)-

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: Barbara
Date: 28 Jan 01 - 02:13 AM

I just looked at it myself, and I can see why Susan might be upset. It is one of the more graphic of our bawdy songs, and not exactly what you'd want to share in a tender moment with your young daughter while looking up the words for 'the Ash Grove'.
Perhaps this is just part of the educational services provide by Mudcat and the greater folkmusic community.
The odd thing is that 'The Mayor of Bayswater's Daughter' comes up first on the list when you search 'ash grove'. I guess that's what Joe is talking about, right Joe?
Blessings,
Barbara

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Jan 01 - 02:52 AM

No, Barbara - what I'm talking about is our "titles" list. If you click on a song title, Mudcat does a search that picks up all songs that have the title words anywhere within the text of the song. It's no problem if the title is one-of-a-kind, but try clicking the title to get Bill Staines' River. You'll eventually get to the song, but you have to go through dozens of pages to get there. Well, there are a couple of song titles that give you a surprise - when you click on the song title the first song that comes up is a raunchy one. Max does have it fixed in the prototype version of Mudcat, but it's not available for general consumption yet.
Another advantage of the prototype is that you don't have to do line breaks. Max still has a number of bugs to fix, so it's not quite ready for use.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: Terry K
Date: 28 Jan 01 - 03:01 AM

.......and Scunthorpe is in Lincolnshire, which may well now be South Humberside or somesuch.

Terry

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: Snuffy
Date: 28 Jan 01 - 07:12 AM

It was South Humberside from '74 to about '96 but it's back in Lincolnshire now that Humberside has been abolished as a county

Subject: RE: About those bawdy lyrics
From: Susan of DT
Date: 28 Jan 01 - 09:21 AM

The "titles" search was instituted for folks who can't bear the thought of typing into the search box. It is, frankly, a LOUSY way of searching---titles, as I've often said, are a snare and a delusion. The Title Search, however, will not come up with anything that's not explicitly asked for. If you go to the As and click on Ash Grove, that's just what you'll get. If you type Ash Grove into the search box, you'll get anything containing those words. The order is strictly alphabetical--the search engine used on the website is fast but dumb, and "Mayor of Bayswater" comes up before "The Ash Grove".

For effective searching, you can't beat the old-fashioned, klunky (I'm told), DOS-based DigiTrad still available for download or on disk (or CD-ROM). You can specify a search in titles, or entire text, or by keyword or by number (Child or DT), and things come out in real alphabetical order (ignoring initial words of "The" and "A". and you can mix requests (phrases, keywords, words, and Booleans , such as {NOT}, {AND} and {OR}.

(this is from dick greenhaus---Susan is much more mild-mannered)