how is Nic Jones

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: RolyH
Date: 25 Apr 02 - 03:02 PM

I took the cover out and replaced it with one from 'The Nolans Greatest Hits'So everything is alright now.

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: John Routledge
Date: 25 Apr 02 - 03:25 PM

Roly - you are obviously a man of impeccable taste.

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: GUEST,Sondra Willis
Date: 25 Apr 02 - 06:19 PM

Nerd,

I really am trying to be reasonable here. The lack of objectivity on the part of Nic's fans is something, as Ralphie suggests, one must "see threads passim" to understand. I am not suggesting that people in this thread are being particularly shrill--yet--but they have been in the past. I really would like to see this whole conversation dropped, before we have to all be defused and defanged. Threads about Nic Jones have a history of blowing up in people's faces in Mudcat. I should have couched my statement as "...because I believe his fans lack objectivity" and taken ownership of the statement. I do apologize for that.

That said, I am certainly dropping the subject, because I'm becoming just as guilty of carrying it on by coming back in to clarify, obfuscate, and scold, and I don't want to play bad cop here.

Best wishes to all.

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Apr 02 - 06:59 PM

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion.

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 25 Apr 02 - 08:37 PM

I don't really see any attempt to clarify or to be reasonable or objective in your posts, "Sondra", just as I don't see any "blowing up in people's faces" in previous threads relating to Nic, except perhaps in a few posts from anonymous correspondents who would like to create that impression. What I do see, however, is a recognisable posting style; you have contributed to some of those threads under another name, haven't you? At present, you just look like the perennial troublemaker who assumes a new persona as circumstances require, usually pretending to be in some fashion a "victim", in order to give yourself spurious authority and defuse possible criticism. This is a typical trolling technique, as you obviously know. If you are serious about dropping the matter, then do so, now; but you do so love to have the last word, don't you?

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Apr 02 - 07:30 AM

Some people don't have much food on their table, but they got a lot of forks and knives, and they've gotta cut something...

(You can play spot the quote if you like)

The PC nonsense will no doubt pass one day. Back in the past, when the American language was being censored, (e.g. chickadees instead of titmice), there was a SERIOUS proposal that the guy who steers a rowing boat should be called a roosterswain, not a coxswain.

This is reflected today in the idiocy of those who thought the word Manager should be replaced (by personager?) even though it has nothing to do with MAN.

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Apr 02 - 09:21 AM

Take the names off the posts Malcolm, and I think you'll find the "recognisable posting style" fits most people/posts in Mudcat.

I've always been amused by the silliness of the exercise of some desperate members to project their personal fantasies onto the posts of guests they can only imagine as having a single face. But then, some people do have trouble with the ambiguities and uncertainties of life. There just seems to be an unusually large concentration of them involved in the folk scene.

Last wording it over to someone else now...

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: GUEST,Nerd (member at work)
Date: 26 Apr 02 - 12:34 PM

Okay, damn me for going on, but...

Sondra,

isn't saying "I should have taken ownership of the statement" nothing more than changing "you're to blame" to "I think you're to blame?" What I was talking about was recognizing that your own bias is also contributing to the disagreement: i.e., we are all to blame for the fact that we do not agree about this--or, conversely, none of us is to blame. Opinions are opinions, and they are by nature not objective. You have no more objectivity than I. Can I say this any clearer?

I think Nic's a great musician, and quite probably a good person, by virtue of what I perceive in his music. You think that his virtues as a musician are overshadowed by his poor taste in art and the underlying insensitivity that you perceive there. Both of us are judging our own perceptions of Nic's work according to our own biases. Neither of us is objective or pure or better than the other.

The only place where I think you are unreasonable is in continuing to blame "Nic's fans" for their "lack of objectivity." I have read al the threads you refer to, and have no clear sense of how their lack of objectivity is qualitatively different from yours.

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: GUEST,JohnB
Date: 26 Apr 02 - 12:40 PM

Been away a few days myself, reading all this brings a few unrelated things to mind. Anyone see the Monty Python "Pope" sketch, where Michelangelo is painting the ceiling, it ends up with "I may not know much about art, but I know what I like" What if all CD's had no artwork, wouldn't that be boring. How could you tell one from another? Does this make the Beatles "White" albumn cover racist? Why the hell do they keep calling "fishermen" "FISHERS" on the news? JohnB

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: GUEST,Sondra Willis
Date: 26 Apr 02 - 12:42 PM

Nerd,

OK, you're right about the objectivity issue--I mean that sincerely.

So, NOW can we let it rest?

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: GUEST,Truthtroller
Date: 26 Apr 02 - 06:36 PM

Sondra...what are you,a hornet? We hear you baby. Now shut the fuck up.

T.T.

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: GUEST,sid the ferret
Date: 24 Mar 04 - 01:30 PM

by the way.....how IS Nic Jones?

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 24 Mar 04 - 04:13 PM

He's just fine!

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 25 Mar 04 - 03:01 AM

Never felt bold enough to inquire after Nic; good to know that he's "just fine". The last live experience I had of Nic 's talent was in Hexham folk club 'way back in the late sixties. We used to do some goodnatured sparring re. the works of Rabbie Burns [I was m.c. at the time]. I clearly remember being charmed by "Barbara Allen", "Little Musgrave" and --surprise--"the Lochmaben Harper".

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: GUEST,Sean Gaston
Date: 21 May 04 - 02:47 AM

Nic's doing fine, and even "battling a guitar" as his wife put it. If anyone's interested in the well-being of Nic Jones and possibly to buy an album or two from him, they should go to www.nicjones.net, as this is his homepage. There, you'll see some pictures of Nic, before, during and after the heyday. There's even a fairly recent one of him playing his guitar at home (so you know he still does it). He's not doing many more alternate tunings though, like he used to, or even the same stuff as he did before. Afterall, his records should show that he's really a man of change anyway, live ones included. There's nothing from any of his records on Resurrected.

However, Nic Jones and the members of Halliard would best like to forget about their record, "The Irish In Me", for reasons that are probably related to them sounding more like the Dubliners than the Halliard. However, that was their only hit album.

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 21 May 04 - 12:12 PM

Sondra,

Loose some weight! (i.e. Lighten up! I had an uncle who had a wooden leg -- from the knee up. (My aunt died of teminal slivers.)

Uncle had to learn to have a sense of humor. ---- When I finally got diagnosed (MS)I was rather devastated but I finally knew why I couldn't walk or play my instruments. In a real way, knowing was liberating. I soon realized that: If you don't have a sense of humor, it isn't funny. When I put out a new CD in '98, I named it: The Older I Get, The Better I Was. I enjoy tasteless humor when, as Nik did, it performs the good service of helping the one who is maimed or disabled or "existence challenged" to better get a handle on their all to real situation.

If you are diabled, I am sorry.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: Flatfoot
Date: 06 Feb 08 - 12:59 PM

I sent Nic a version of Green To Grey I recorded last summer and was chuffed to get a hand-written letter of thanks in reply. He seems jovial enough, and while it is a great shame we are unliely to ever see him live again he does enjoy noddling on the guitar at home. I know he and his wife Julia moved house recently, and have been dealing with all the tribulations that entails. I have been in contact trying to work out who owns the rights to the two early Nic Jones solo LPs as well as Devil To A Stranger and The Noahs' Ark Trap, which are like the proverbial rocking horse excretia to hold of, but I have managed to find after much trial on vinyl. I had a view to getting them re-issued on a small label with a friend of mine. I was sadly warned not to involve myself in trying to untangle the legal knotwork that sadly prevents these classic LPs from being re-issued for my own well-being! Let's hope one day in the not too distant future that can be resolved, it really is a crime that such seminal recordings are denied wider distribution.

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: Mr Happy
Date: 07 Feb 08 - 06:49 AM

Here he is, 'tho' somewhat shyly keeping his back turned while singing!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kG__e9T3FPY

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 07 Feb 08 - 07:37 AM

Loved it, thanks. I'm glad Nic Jones is doing alright and glad he has a sense of humour, gallows or not.

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: GUEST,irishenglish
Date: 07 Feb 08 - 10:35 AM

He has a myspace page as well by the way.

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: HipflaskAndy
Date: 07 Feb 08 - 11:26 AM

His myspace.......is here
Please do contact him - and buy via Mollie Music (the Jones' own)

He's patron of Otley Black Sheep Festival (Sept) and will be cheerily out and around that fest in 08 as he was last year.
Cheers - Duncan

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: HipflaskAndy
Date: 07 Feb 08 - 11:28 AM

Mollie Music......here!

meant to put that on previous post! - Duncan

Subject: RE: how is Nic Jones
From: BusyBee Paul
Date: 07 Feb 08 - 07:15 PM

Well said Duncan, it was great to see him out and about at Otley in '07 and he had a ball too.

Lovely man.