Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning??? (MacColl)

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Brakn
Date: 01 Sep 06 - 02:45 PM

Hummmphhhh

You've never bought me a pint. :-(

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 01 Sep 06 - 11:21 AM

Seeing as you are on the edge of Salford, KT, do we know you at Swinton Folk Club? If not come along one Monday - The White Lion on the A6 near where Swinton Market used to be. Make yourself known and I might even buy you a pint:-)

Not that I would blatantly plug our club on someone elses thread...

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: GUEST,KT
Date: 01 Sep 06 - 09:52 AM

I suppose the thing with Dirty O T is that the words conjure up such a vivid picture of a town in the era of steam and old industry, and although it's quite correct to say that this is peripheral to the core meaning of the song and could be applied to any industrial town, knowing that it's inspiration was somewhere real you can relate to even if you're miles away and can only see it on a map, somehow seems to matter. End of long sentence.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: GUEST,number 6
Date: 01 Sep 06 - 08:31 AM

Live in Saint John New Brunswick (Canada) for a while and you will understand.

sIx

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Betsy
Date: 01 Sep 06 - 07:57 AM

Wee Little drummer says " Ewan wouldn't have given a tinkers todger if you thought it was about Blackpool or Bangkok - and that's why people all over the world respond to it." and I suppose you're dead right. Trouble is - Salford and sulphured can be very close in pronounciation if said quickly especially in various accents.
What causes a little confusion for me reading this thread ,is , I learned the song in the early 60's , from where I can't remember, and I always sang sulphured wind. It made sense after the steam train going past, though, I always appreciated that the song was about Salford. It further begs the question, why did so many people used to discuss which town the song was written about, if, it already contained the name Salford.,Curious. I don't think it did but I'm willing to recieve informed advice. No matter, On the subject of croft - it has a proper meaning in Scotland, but in the N.East where I live , we would use the word " common". A piece of inner-city scrub, waste or derelict land, on occasions used by Gypsies , Fairground shows, bonfires etc. and all the other dumping described by others earlier in this thread.
I suppose McColl was painting a picture of the grim reality of growing up in a dirty Northern town, much as L.S.Lowry did with a paint brush. We must remember that most Northern and many Midland towns and cities were /are heavy industrial towns especially up to the 1970's, and to varying degrees, were filthy places to live because of the use of coal, to power the vast industries. I was born in the late 40's, in a steel town and it was certainly a dirty old town.
A good comparison perhaps of the American and the British way of looking at this type of song - give Billy Joels " Allenstown " a listen. Yeh I know thsi is a Folk site, but .....

Cheers
Betsy

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 01 Sep 06 - 06:43 AM

I live in a haystack and I understood it.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 01 Sep 06 - 06:39 AM

Well no - obviously it does no harm to know what a gas works croft is.

However all these posts ....without anybody talking about the central theme.

And really you could live surrounded by haystacks and pagodas, and never see or experience salford - and yet still identify with the narrator of this song.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 01 Sep 06 - 06:00 AM

Oh yes - 100!

:D

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 01 Sep 06 - 05:59 AM

I had all but forgotten about this thread and have just re-read it with interest because of one of those co-incidences that crop up! Last weekend I had the pleasure of hosting Dick and Susan as part of their UK visit. Monday being bank holiday we had a bit of a drive round (looking for a traffic jam:-) ). Dick mentioned he was in the process of re-releasing some MacColl albums so I thought a MacColl tour was in order. I now live about 2 miles from the gasworks croft (was a car dealership until about 6 months ago - now disused again) so that was the first port of call. The old canal. as KT says, is the MB&B. Disused indeed BUT in the process of being re-opened so the new flats (Middleton Locks) are not defying the trade descriptions act by advertising as 'waterside development'! Go figure as they say over the water. Furthest we went was the quarry (now a car park) which was the start of the mas trespass.

Did you know btw the Dirty old town is one of the few songs that has no rhyming in it at all? Well, town and town in the refrain but I don't count that.

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: GUEST,KT
Date: 01 Sep 06 - 05:57 AM

Thanks for that, Manitas. It kind of goes full circle with my earlier comment about people from Salford singing Dirty old Town in an Irish accent, doesn't it!

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: manitas_at_work
Date: 01 Sep 06 - 05:45 AM

As has been pointed out here before, that wasn't so much McColl as the club he was leading and the point was to stop the inanity of people singing songs in languages and dialects they didn't know well enough to give justice to the song. It had the effect of making people look harder for songs from their own culture.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: GUEST,KT
Date: 01 Sep 06 - 05:36 AM

What is the problem with people wanting to understand something of the background, circumstances, or whatever inspired somebody to write a song? Anyway, I was under the impression the McColl had a thing about people only singing songs relevant to their area and upbringing - or something like that - though I believe that he didn't consider that the rule applied to him?

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 01 Sep 06 - 05:18 AM

Bloody incredible... all these songwriters and people avowedly interested in performing and folk music....

Ewan wouldn't have given a tinkers todger if you thought it was about Blackpool or Bangkok - and that's why people all over the world respond to it.

It is about the lyricism of being in love, and how when you are in love, particularly young love - one's surroundings acquire a veneer of poetry. Thus the bleak urban landscape becomes the very stuff of poetry. Its that feeling of what being young was like, as we like to remember it.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: GUEST,KT
Date: 01 Sep 06 - 05:09 AM

The sad thing for me living on the edge of Salford is hearing pub bands from Salford singing the song in a cod Irish accent in keeping with the general belief these days by the general public (including many Mancunians) that it's an Irish song! We really have the Pogues to thank for that one, AND Shane McGowan sings "gasworks wall"......

Incidentally, regarding the reference to the "old canal", the old Manchester, Bolton and Bury canal passes through Salford and was largeley disused by the 1930's.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: GUEST,wagga wagga
Date: 01 Sep 06 - 04:34 AM

Hi from Australia... I lived in Belfast for some years and heard 'Dirty Ardoyne' playing on the radio... could anyone help me with the name of the singer.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Wotcha
Date: 13 Oct 02 - 09:41 AM

I first heard this song in Germany a decade ago ... sung on European MTV by the ... Pogues. Probably explains why it got it's "Irish" connection. Yep and it's on a long fogotten music video with a suitably derelict venue and lead singer ... Great song.

Cheers,

Brian

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: belfast
Date: 12 Oct 02 - 11:37 AM

I can understand some people's irritation at the cultural imperialism of the paddies. And "Dirty Old Town" wouldn't be the only MacColl song that has been hibernicized. I've heard that "The Shoals Of Herring" has been sung as "The Shores Of Erin". And I lately heard a recent recording of "Dirty Old Town" where the words are occasionally changed to "Dirty Ardoyne".   But, after all, it's not like the Elgin Marbles. When we steal the song it's still there where it started. It's a victimless crime.

As for the expatriate/ expatriot thing (and my computer refuses to recognize the existence of the latter), I recently pointed out that misuse or misspelling in a friend's MA thesis. She looked at me as if I was the dreariest pedant who ever lived.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Oct 02 - 08:02 AM

Expatriate - expatriot would mean something completely different. (Only it's a mistake that seems to be sneaking in quite a lot these days.)

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: The Admiral
Date: 11 Oct 02 - 09:20 AM

Give 'em hell Leadfingers! Why don't people just accept that 'Dirty Old Town' is a beautiful love song written about one of the few real things in Ewan McColls' life - he was born and did actually grow up in Salford, the son of expatriot Scot parents. As much as I admire what he achieved in his life, most of what he was after Salford was fake - change of name, phoney accent, change of nationality, so on and so forth. But to get back to the song, if you don't understand it, leave it to those who do love and appreciate it. Bring up those whistles Leadfingers and we'll give it another go!

The Admiral, in the not so industrial Windsor, Berkshire.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Leadfingers
Date: 10 Oct 02 - 08:18 PM

I was dragged up in Birmingham(Warwickshire,U.k.)and never had any
difficulty with this song until the Irish took it up.IT AINT IRISH!
its English with a Scots influence. I can appreciate that anyone
from the other side of the pond can have troub;e with this,cos it
is SO English and not at all American.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 10 Oct 02 - 06:18 PM

"explain the song to your audience with the information that's been supplied here"

Most bar/pub audiences don't give a rat-ass... I was more curious for my own mental health...


"picture in your mind the decrepit industrial parts of Windsor"

There are parts of Windsor that aren't???

LOL

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 10 Oct 02 - 06:15 PM

Clinton, you could explain the song to your audience with the information that's been supplied here; and so that you can sing it convincingly, picture in your mind the decrepit industrial parts of Windsor.
Works for me. Not Windsor, but Belfast in my case.

Seamus

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Deda
Date: 10 Oct 02 - 02:05 PM

Dirty Old Town is also mentioned
here. Bull Am (still busing in France, but only for another week and a half) still gets asked to play it all the time.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: GUEST,J.A. Gilbert, daughter of late James A. Gilb
Date: 10 Oct 02 - 12:48 PM

hello!... - i was looking up the origins of 'dirty old town' out of curiosty - my dad passed away dec 05/01, and he used to sing this song ALL the time, in fact my friends and i inherited it as a 'leaving the pub drunk' kind of song a few years back and sang it whilst drunkenly exiting many pubs, both here in canada and visits to the uk! (mum & dad came to canada in '64)
i just came across your forum - well, thanks for satisfying my curiosity! i've never posted a reply in any forum before, but i had to put in my two cents for this old gem - i think it was 'nutty' and a nearby post from a GUEST who both gave this old tune the thumbs up, and obviously it has a lot of meaning and emotion for me, too, as it sure did for my dad, so cheers to all you guys who actually LIKE the song! i guess i just wanted to confirm that dirty old town was written in/about salford; that's where my dad was from.

the part irish, part limey band 'the pogues' covered it, much to my amusement - i thought it was great, and gave a tape to my dad and he and his pals thought it brilliant! imagine me and my dad listening to the same band, and listening to dirty old bloody town! they also did tunes like 'waltzing matilda, too!) so a new generation of pub goers adopted 'dirty' thinking it is an old irish tune (including some of my friends, whom i had the opportunity and salfordian insight to set straight!!)

anyway, i can't believe anyone actually thinks this is a badly written song! even if you don't know what a 'gasworks croft' is (the pogues changed it to wall, coz i guess they didn't know either!) it's still a fine old tune! i've love it since i was a kid, and i think it makes a lot of sense. i saw, with my dad, how they have 'gentrified' the dirty old place, too. i'm not a big fan of 'gentrification', per se, but i'm glad that salford has maintained and improved it's identity, rather than been let run down, or just swallowed up altogether in good old Manchester (me mum's from there!)

i'm glad there's actually people out there still talking about this tune! thanks again!

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Yorkshire Tony
Date: 13 Aug 02 - 10:28 PM

Croft was certainally still in use in Leeds where I grew up - in a house called "Woodcroft".

"Smelt the spring on the smokey wind" - the smells of industry were ever present but you still got the occasional wiff of a blossom tree or other scent of spring from someone's garden - perhaps this was what inspired the line.

I've often pondered "Spring's a girl in the street at night" - to me it conjours an image of something delicate a beautiful against the dirty backdrop of the town.

Like Lanfair in Salford, I can remember when all the public buildings in the centre of Leeds were black with soot - my mother used to think they were built of coal when she was a girl.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Jul 02 - 06:21 PM

Once again, Clinton "Never try to sing anything you don't understand, that's a good principle."

If you find it difficult to understand it, then presumably you aren't the only one in your part of the world with the same difficulty, whatever that may be.

Is it something to do with people needing to take things literally, and not recognising figurative language? So that when the song talks about chopping down a dead true, as an image for demolishing old buildings and an old community, people get confused?

Maybe there are parts of the world where that way of using language really isn't done too much, or rather where the expectation is that it needs to be signalled, so that people are alerted to it. There was a discussion here about irony recently which got into that idea.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 08 Jul 02 - 05:17 PM

I think everyone read them at school in the late 60's. Weren't they set plays for O-level? I can't remember that much about them now. Obviously the first location stuck in my mind most, being an East Ender myself.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: IanC
Date: 08 Jul 02 - 11:40 AM

Manitas

Well, "Chicken Soup with Barley" is set in East London, but the other two Roots and I'm Talking About Jerusalem are both set in Norfolk with no real reference to East London at all.

I read all three plays at school in the late '60s but I could only really bring to mind "Roots" for some reason, so I suppose we're both wrong!!!

;-)
Ian

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 08 Jul 02 - 09:18 AM

I remember it as being about East London with the thirs part set in a housing development in the suburbs? See http://www.methuen.co.uk/weskerplays1.html.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: IanC
Date: 08 Jul 02 - 06:32 AM

Manitas

Just to put the record straight, the Wesker Trilogy is set in East Anglia (a region) not East London.#

:-)
Ian

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Phillip
Date: 01 Jul 02 - 01:45 PM

Rod Stewart was mentioned earlier, and I was reminded of a song of his I was discussing with my daughter this weekend. I think he used the tune of Farewell He, for his song Farewell, and just straightened it out a bit. Those with better musical ears might prove me wrong.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Phillip
Date: 01 Jul 02 - 01:31 PM

MacColl was publicity officer for the mass trespass on Kinder, and The Manchester Rambler came from that role. I haven't bought the new Ewan MacColl songbook, but I have one from 1963 which contains only one other pre-War song in its collection of 51, the not so great Plodder Seam. So, perhaps Ewan's exploits in Catterick and such places from 1939 onwards were a time for artistic development, although The Second Front Song, and Browned Off are not among his best.

Like others here from Manchester and the sprawl around it I feel Dirty Old Town is an excellent song. The best version I know is at the end of The Singing Streets, far better than the more arranged versions Ewan recorded later. He prefaces it with this passage:

"The minstrels go, and the searchers take over. It is their world now... a world where adolescents walk in an ecstasy of loneliness or stand in idle groups where streetlamps shed their pools of light... a world where young Prometheus becomes a trembling-kneed Apollo on the gasworks' croft."

O to be young again on that very croft, by Tyldesley's flowering redbrick walls! To kick the can across the waste, crying "Best!", to be pulled back into the shadows by womanly-jiggly women with hungry...

Oops.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 30 Jun 02 - 02:27 PM

So I sang it yesterday at my matinee, with the 'proper' lyrics, and man oh man, did -I- get the hairy eyeball from some folks...

So you folks out there who say idiotic stuff like "It's obvious what it means" can pucker up... I am NOT the only person who knows 'wrong' lyrics to this song...

It might be a regional thing... maybe everyone in this area has the song screwed up...

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Hrothgar
Date: 30 Jun 02 - 05:26 AM

Dominic Behan and Ewan MacColl put out a recording many years ago called "The Singing Streets" which compared their urban upbringings and the songs they remembered.

I only have a second hand tape of it, so I don't know any more about the it's provenance.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: ard mhacha
Date: 29 Jun 02 - 05:00 PM

As long ago as 1957 I heard Dominick Behan on the old BBC Third Programme Singing dirty old town. This was the first time I heard the song and even being introduced to the song by Dominick`s awful singing, it has always remained a favourite. Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 28 Jun 02 - 09:13 PM

Oh dear... Please name the guilty parties (or at least the pub) so that I can embarrass them when they are least expecting it!

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jun 02 - 07:37 PM

Recently home from a pub singalong in Sheffied (30 odd miles from Salford)

Depressed to have to report that it was introduced as an Irish song with "a Dublin wind"

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: firínne
Date: 28 Jun 02 - 07:23 PM

A croft is a small piece of land adjoining a house, or a small farm. But like Dave says, in the case of Salford, it would be waste or derelict land. [You forgot to add the supermarket trolley, Dave!!]

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Bullfrog Jones
Date: 28 Jun 02 - 07:22 PM

I've avoided this thread until now, because (a) it 's bloody obvious what it means, and (b)I've heard it sung badly too many times ever to want to hear it again.
I now concede that (a) it helps if you grew up in an industrial inner city (Birmingham, in my case) and (b) I was right the first time!

BJ

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 Jun 02 - 05:19 PM

A croft, in this case, is definitely a bit of spare ground. Usualy waste ground. Imagine old bricks, bicycle frames and tyres with rose bay willow herb and couch grass growing through them and yoou have a Salford croft!

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: GUEST,Jim
Date: 28 Jun 02 - 04:53 PM

What is a croft (in this context)?

Guest says that "The gas yard croft is a bit of spare ground in front of the gas works"

Greg says that "it's a fairly obscure bit of northern dialect, not currently much in use"

Was Guest right? I can't find any mention of such a meaning in any of my dictionaries.

Jim

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 28 Jun 02 - 04:47 PM

Dave, in my recording of Ewan as well as the five I have by other people, they all sing 'croft'. I think you must have got your version from someone more bent on 'proper' rhyming that Ewan ...

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 Jun 02 - 11:01 AM

BTW - forgot to say that the gasworks is still there! And its croft. I pass it twice a day. There was a fire in the scrapyard next door some time last year. That was fun. When they found there was not enough mains pressure they managed to drop the level of the Irwell pumping water out of it onto the gasometers to keep them cool. I would have thought pumping Irwell water onto a fire was pretty dangerous but I guess they must have known what they were doing...!

Cheers

Dave the Gnome

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Watson
Date: 28 Jun 02 - 08:00 AM

Fits in with the rhyme???

What rhyme?

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Hrothgar
Date: 28 Jun 02 - 07:56 AM

Two things: I think "Landscape With Chimneys" was in 1948.

..and I have always thought it should be "gasworks tall." This fits in with the rhyme ("wall") and also with the architecture of gasworks. There is as much poetry as there is songwriting in it.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 28 Jun 02 - 05:50 AM

I didn't realise that Jimmy (sorry Ewan) was actually into folk song as early as that either. His original occupation was theatrical direction. I once heard him say that his inspiration for "The Manchester Rambler" was the late Afred Wainwright - although he originally came from Blackburn - somewhat north of Manchester.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Lyrical Lady
Date: 28 Jun 02 - 12:55 AM

Thank you Clinton for starting this thread. My buddy Danny Burns used to sing this song and I always enjoyed the tune but now I know so much more about it. Great stuff.

LL

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Llanfair
Date: 27 Jun 02 - 05:42 PM

Declan, Things were very grey in the early '50's in the city, there wasn't a lot of colour about.

All the city centre buildings were a uniform black....I can remember being really surprised when Manchester Museum was cleaned up, and it was SANDSTONE!!!

As for smelling the spring on the air, our Ewan was quite right, but I think you had to be young and optimistic to smell it properly through the polluted air.

I was brought up close to the Mersey, and that, too, was black and looked thick and poisonous.....probably was!!!

Cheers, Bron.

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: Wolfgang
Date: 27 Jun 02 - 02:09 PM

I think you are right in your defense, Nerd, and I sounded harsher than I had wanted.

So please let me add that I am more than glad to have bought that book and that many many aspects of it (especially, but not only the notes to the songs and the remarks about tunes and where they come from) show a lot of love to detail and accuracy. This songbook has more information about the songs than most other songbooks I have bought. It belongs into the top ten percent of singer/songwriter songbooks in my opinion.

(the spelling of the few German names, which was in my mind when I wrote the other post is awful, but from that minor detail one should not infer to accuracy in general)

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Help: Dirty Old Town? Meaning???
From: GUEST,Nerd
Date: 27 Jun 02 - 01:45 PM

In its defense, the EM songbook is huge, and was bound to contain some errors. The website listing the errors is maintained by Peggy Seeger, as a means of addressing them. it seems to me she is being more responsible than most editors! Also, some discepancies may reflect differences in the "official" verses as published, vs. the way EM actually sang the song after it was in his repertoire for a while. To paint it in broad strokes as unreliable may not be fair.