Review: Folk Singers at War

Subject: Review: Folk Singers at War
From: SINSULL
Date: 25 Feb 06 - 08:05 PM

I tried. I really tried but this semi-amateur TV anti-war extravaganza is painfully bad. In fact, this is enough to put me off folk music for life.

Has anyone else had the misfortune to trip into this while channel surfing? It is a Community Access TV Station and I can't find an explanation on their website. Each artist is from a different state and has been filmed in a different venue - some church halls, some formal stages. The songs are all anti-war. The treatment so heavy handed and humorless totally lacking in insight or irony - navel gazing with an occasional "FUCK" thrown in for shock value. The 60s without a soul.

I sat through "Empire of Oil", "He Lies, He Lies, He Lies", and a young man with an electric guitar who mumbled incoherently into the microphone with great angst. A folksinger who has to have set the record for introducing his song talked a full five minutes before offering his Dylanesque "When The Soldiers Came That Day". The young man in tie dye with no face - his hair was in it - droned on totally tone deaf and I gave up.

So why was Mudcat not contacted for some talent? We have some brilliant anti-war singer-songwriters here. InObu comes to mind immediately.

Anyway - comments?

Subject: RE: Review: Folk Singers at War
From: Padre
Date: 25 Feb 06 - 10:25 PM

Sinsull,
Can you tell us what station or city it was on? Sometimes, those community access stations will only put on folks from the immediate viewing area.

Your description of the performers sounds like what I used to hear called 'The Gallbladder School' of folk music.

Padre

Subject: RE: Review: Folk Singers at War
From: alanabit
Date: 26 Feb 06 - 03:57 AM

Thanks for the warning! That sounds like a good one to miss.

Subject: RE: Review: Folk Singers at War
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Feb 06 - 07:31 AM

Bit like Tom Learer's "We are the Folk Song Army" Eh?

Subject: RE: Review: Folk Singers at War
From: Severn
Date: 26 Feb 06 - 10:29 AM

A misleading title, it seems, taking no notice of such things as St. Woody Of Guthrie's "Sinking Of The Reuben James", "Round & Round Hitler's Grave", Talking Sailor", "Last Class Seaman" and the like from his time as a civillian and a member of the Merchant Marine during WWII. "This machine Kills Facists" was written on his guitar.

Or the songs written during and for the Spanish Civil War and The International Brigade.

Or the glorification of IRA "martyrs".

Or the...

You get the idea. A lot of Folkie Heroes would have fired, and maybe even did fire, at the right targets especially in WWII.

And where does the oral folk tradition still take place in its purest form and still create new songs daily, albeit mostly parodies? Among military personnel (and, of course, children on playgrounds) where new songs are being written and passed around as I speak. As much, if not more so than among a lot the amateurs and professionals who consciously consider themselves folksingers. There are a few collections of songs spawned within the Vietnam Era military available.

"Where have all..." Never mind.

My daughter, who's opposed to the current situation and administration, recently asked me if it wasn't basically the same as the Vietnam Era, and I told her that when I got back from 'Nam that I had no fear of attack from Vietnamese on the streets of the USA, that our present fight for daily survival has more enemies in the immediate vacinity from all sides, and having needlessly provoked the tiger by poking it, it won't cease being mad at us now or go away, even if we stop the war. I'm more at fear now in the current climate than I was then.

War breeds folk music from all directions.

Should the show have been better called "Folksingers At Anti-War", "Folksingers At War With The Current Wars" "The Anti-War Song Tradition Continues", or as SINSULL might suggest, "OFF"?

I have not seen it myself, so I can't judge, but I generally can take SINSULL at her word.