Learning to dislike a good song

Subject: Learning to dislike a good song
From: Bert
Date: 25 Apr 06 - 08:32 PM

This is the other side of the coin to the 'learning to love a bad song' thread.

One that comes immediately to mind is 'Summer Wages'.

At first it sounds like a good song and then you start listening to it and analyzing the words.

First it's about gambling, which I don't do too much 'cos I always seem to lose.

Then there's our hero and his good woman How good is she that the moment she is left alone someone is likely to steal her? I don't think I'd bother too much with a woman like that.

The next verse repeats that she is likely to be stolen.

The break tells of a bunch of losers who've gambled away
their 'dreams of the season'

And to finish up he's gambled away all of his money and is too chickenshit to even go find his woman.

What a pair - All I can say is that they deserve each other.

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: Peace
Date: 25 Apr 06 - 08:45 PM

Just have some tea and oranges that come all the way from China. That'll fix up up.

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Apr 06 - 09:04 PM

That'd just mean a different way of understanding the story. The way when you see the feet of clay on a hero, the story changes.

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: Francy
Date: 25 Apr 06 - 09:07 PM

If all you want is peaches & cream and happy enndings and sweet obedient people, I don't Folk Music will fit that bill.....Oh well
                   Frank of Toledo

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: Joybell
Date: 25 Apr 06 - 09:17 PM

Summer Wages always reminds me of the Australian book to play to film "Wake in Fright" (Called "Outback" in America). The dream-like way the hero never gets where he wants to go because he gambles away his money. He's using his holiday pay too. Cheers, Joy

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 02:14 AM

If you want to learn to hate good songs then listen to the Mike Harding Show on BBC Radio 2, hi picks a good song by a good singer and plays it so feckin often you end up thinking, ' oh no, not that again '

eric

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: Jon W.
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 10:55 AM

Yeah. It's like that scene from the Blues Brothers, where the music owner has posted a sign, "No Stairway to Heaven."

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: Charmion
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 11:06 AM

I sing "Summer Wages" as a description of a man providing one of life's bad examples: he's working these old tow-boats in his slippery city shoes because he's paying the price of his decision.

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: Mr Fox
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 02:42 PM

The Mary Ellen Carter (Not that I think it's that great a song to start with):

"Look, lads, this seagoing pile of crap has nearly killed us all once. Let's salvage it and give it another chance."

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: muppitz
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 02:49 PM

"Summertime" and "The Fields of Athenry", (There are far better songs to sing, I'm so fed up of the fields of Athenry"

Good songs in essence but ones that I hear far too bloody often and have come around to really disliking!

muppitz x

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: woodsie
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 04:43 PM

At our weekly jazz session they have unofficially "banned" Summertime.

Now Moondance seems to be replacing it.

"I'm not really a jazz singer, but I think I can do summertime, or moondance" cringe ...

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: lamarca
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 05:43 PM

There's a diffrence between a "good" song that's overdone and a popular song that might not be so popular when you really listen to and think about the words. I'm not sure any of these are learning to dislike a "good" song; they're my dislike of popular songs that other folks like because I hear something in the lyrics that I find objectionable.

Ralph McTell's "Streets of London" - Just the sort of advice you want to give a lonely, depressed person who's going through a rough spot "Buck up, kiddo, your probs are all in your head... No matter what problems you have, as long as there's someone out there with worse troubles, yours aren't valid, so quit your whining..."

Willie Nelson's tearjerker, "Always on my Mind" - I treated you like #!%#, but it's OK, babe - you should have realized you were always on my mind, so that makes it all better...

The old Springsteen hit, "Fire", which I refer to as The Date Rape Song - it's every male's fantasy that NO doesn't really mean no...

I'm driving in my car, I turn on the radio
I'm pulling you close, you just say no
You say you don't like it, but girl I know you're a liar
'Cause when we kiss, Fire

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: Ragman
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 06:33 PM

Streets of London, Willie McBride, Fields of Athenry, ...

A few years ago at one of my sessions, I proudly delivered John Martyn's "May you Never", followed by "October Song" only to be told that many years ago they had put these songs on the IAF list, (Interesting As F***)! That was me put in my place!

I also occasionally make the mistake of thinking that because I had had a good response to one particular song, that I could sing it every week!

There is usually nothing wrong with these songs. If they are crap to start with, they will be forgotten very quickly. Most songs have a time and a place and become so popular that everyone seems to want to sing them. Many of the singers obviously like the song, but not in the way you first liked it... Eventually you find yourself wanting to slit your wrists/go for a crap/test the tuning of your guitar/have a sleep, whenever someone starts up the song.

Strangely enough, there are often (though not always) actually quite good songs which just don't work any more. One of my favourite examples of this is "The Fields of Athenry". If you start this song up in a Glasgow pub, you can start a fight, or be thrown out. It's a great pity, because it's really not a bad song, and it's a great tune, but it has become associated in Glasgow with football fans of a certain persuasion. Some day maybe it will become generally acceptible once again, but not for some time I fear.

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 07:08 PM

Familiarity breeds contempt. But there's an awful lot of times when people use songs as tokens to put down in a game of "I'm smarter than the rest" one-upmanship. The Rawhide phenomenon - "Move along, git along, keep those dogies rolling..."

And as often as not the songs that are seen as worn to death tend hardly ever actually to get sung, not in folk clubs or folk sessions anyway. When they do get sung it's a toss-up whether the reaction is going to be a knee jerk "Oh not that old one again" or a more considered "I haven't heard that one in yonks".
..............................

Streets of London? As I read it, the words are directed at comfortable self-centred whingers who don't really have anything going wrong, so they make the most of what there is to build-up into something. That's most of us from time to time, which is why the song does work, because people recognise themselves in it. (But then it manages to flip the listeners over so that identify with the singer, and get their awakened conscience cleared. Clever stuff.)

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: Leadfingers
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 07:26 PM

Athen Rye is a good song , but can be TOTALLY kiled when done as a Dirge or (even worse) as an Up Tempo Rocker !
Streets of London also has been done SO badly SO often !
'Alice' WAS a pleasant country song till Chubby Brown got hold of it - Who The F*** Is Alice !!
Sadly it is too true that over exposure can do a good song a lot of no good , especially on the Folk Scene !!
However , we STILL tend to finish a gig with Wild Rover !! The True Blue Folkie may hate it , but the Punters still Love it !!

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: Effsee
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 07:46 PM

Re the Dubliners thread did yez ever hear a better rendition than Luke Kelly's of The Wild Rover? Keep it up Leadfingers!

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 27 Apr 06 - 06:15 AM

Just for the record, Leadfingers, Alice, by Smokie, was part of the ban's regular set. A few years before the Chubby Brown recording the band was playing regularly in Ireland. It was the audiences who started to respond with the "Who the **** is Alice" line. This led to Smokie re-releasing the song (in ireland) on an E.P. CD containing the original version, the live "Who the....." version and a couple of other tracks.
I presume that their record company thought it would sell more copies if they released it in England with a well known foul mouth putting in the line.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Learning to dislike a good song
From: GUEST,HSA
Date: 27 Apr 06 - 07:33 AM

Agree on Mary Ellen Carter but for a different reason
- let's salvage the ship for the MONEY (not for the love of the ship) "she's worth a quarter million" as salvage...

Still that's real life!