Originally published in FoT Issue 94: Jan-Mar 2003
As I surf the World Wide Web in search of sites worth waxing lyrical about for this article, Tony Blair and George Bush are flexing their muscles, the monarchy is in disarray and firefighters are on a national strike for the first time in 25 years. It’s pouring with rain too. It gets worse. The Queen’s Speech - I presume that was a flak jacket she was wearing under her robes - sounded the death knell for live music in bars, the Albion Band have announced they are splitting up and Lonnie Donegan has stuck the last ever piece of chewing gum on his bedpost! On a personal front, this has been my own special annus horribilis. My girlfriend dumped me on my 50th birthday, I am about to be made redundant before the year is out and I keep getting a fierce shooting pain when I kneel. But hey - I’m a professional - I’ll keep looking for interesting sites to write about. At least at 3 o’clock in the morning no-one else needs to use the phone! In the meantime I must confess I did buy myself a beautiful Taylor guitar this year. (Not a Martin after all - “Folk on Line” issue 91 refers). And my girlfriend and I are trying to work things out, so life ain’t all bad. But my knee still hurts.
It was the firefighters’ strike that led me to check out Roy Bailey’s new site. I wasn’t expecting any topical remarks, just a feeling of solidarity. Not that I necessarily agree with the firefighters. Indeed I intend to stay firmly on the fence on the issue until one of them comes along and rescues me. Preferably with a turntable ladder. And a fireman’s lift. Aah yes, solidarity. The quotes from the likes of Billy Bragg and Tony Benn did the trick. It’s a lean site, with few frills, but what there is is pleasantly designed and worth reading, which is not always the case. As well as gig dates and a discography, Roy publishes his latest newsletter on the site. The August issue - Roy does apologise for not updating it as often as he’d like - included the delightful news that he seems to have changed his mind about not making any more CDs. He says of his recent work with John Kirkpatrick: “John is a fantastic musician and our programme is well received. His style of playing seems to generate an energy in me that I thought had faded! We’re also thinking of recording a CD together. We’ve not decided finally but I am certainly tempted even though I said I wasn't making any more CDs. Well... maybe a duo one is different...? Isn’t it?” Roy also includes a few extras alongside his newsletter, including a chilling poem by Australian poet Keith McKenry about what one might describe as the “real meaning” of September 11. He has also added a brilliant and moving prose poem called ‘Questions’ by Les Barker written I suspect in the wake of the Bali bombing, which asks a lot of very powerful questions about the true nature of Bush’s War on Terror. Questions like: “Would you trust a nation that has weapons of mass destruction - nuclear, chemical and biological - and has already used all three against other nations? Would you trust a nation that has given arms to both Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussain?”
Of course I had to sneak a peek at John Kirkpatrick’s site, which has also undergone a bit of a transformation. A bit more snazzy than Roy’s, though in Netscape Navigator the menu buttons don’t quite work the way they should. Which is usually held up as an argument for not having snazzy bits, but with Netscape’s share of the browser market down by September to 3.4%, according to Internet researcher WebSideStory, I guess the webmasters among us can stop worrying so much about cross-browser compatibility. But don’t tell Dick Gaughan I said that! In fact I take it back immediately - but you get my drift. As well as the obligatory gig guide and discography, John has posted on his site various articles he has had published over the years, including one on English folk music for the 2001 edition of Alan Bearman’s directory of folk music and arts “Direct Roots”, which ends: “The raw material of English traditional folk music is sensational. Let’s do it justice, let’s be proud of it, let’s cherish it. Let’s listen to all those field recordings of singers and musicians and wonder at their strangeness. Let’s use our brains and our hearts, and get out there and build up something unique to where we live, like they do in Allendale or Abbots Bromley, or Bampton or Abingdon, or Handsworth or Grenoside, or Helston or Haxey. And if these names mean nothing to you, then join the English Folk Dance and Song Society and support the work of The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library - one of the best folk music libraries in the world - and go there and find out.” Rousing stuff!
And speaking of rousing stuff, Paul Brady’s site has the lyrics to ‘Arthur McBride’ among others of his songs, which I learned such a long time ago that I’ve forgotten it. But no matter - he also has a tablature transcription on the site! He has perhaps moved quite a way from the folk club scene, as has Barbara Dickson. But check out her web site. She’s made loads of albums of, shall we say, folk club standards, and the lyrics are all there on the site, from ‘Parcel of Rogues’ via ‘Fine Horseman’ to ‘Love Hurts’. The fanzine site, that is. The official site has fewer lyrics but several sound samples, its aim being to sell stuff rather than worship its heroine. (Online update 070208: The sites appear to have merged into one - the fanzine is now BD's official site and as such appears quite comprehensive. Couldn't find any lyrics there though...)
Finally, I have found just the site for those occasions when a tune keeps going around in your head and you can’t remember its name. The Melodyhound uses a melody recognition system developed by Rainer Typke in 1997. For a while, it was known as “Tuneserver” and hosted by the University of Karlsruhe because Rainer was a student there when he wrote the system. It uses a form of notation called “Parsons Code” devised by Denys Parsons, who published “The Directory of Tunes and Musical Themes” in 1975 with Spencer Brown. This strips away everything but the fact that each note in a tune is higher, lower or the same as the one before. So key something like *uuddrduruu, where u means up, d down and r repeat, and the search engine will come right back at you with the umpteen possibilities that have used that sequence. Mind, you, its database includes 15,000 folk songs and it didn’t know I meant ‘The Banks of the Bann’. There is a java applet on the site that allows you to whistle your tune into your PC and get a response, but could I get it to work? The chances are like me you will have to configure your java settings first, and like me you are probably too busy. After all I have an article to write!
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