Originally published in FoT Issue 105: Oct-Dec 2005
Due back from my annual sojourn at the foot of Golden Cap (see “FoT” issue 93) only two days before the deadline for this issue’s ‘Folk on Line’, I decided to take my laptop with me. I could spend the week sitting in my caravan, listening to the rain on the roof drowning out the sound of my tears, and Sam could get his copy on time. But did I? Did I heck. The sun shone all week, except at night of course, when spectacular meteorite displays would entertain us. I’m afraid the beach, the sea, the rolling hills and the Palmer’s ales all took their toll on my time. After all, it was my holiday. However, on the Wednesday night, at a little known hub of the Dorset folk scene called The George in Chideock, my old friend Steve Black put on a display of stars to rival the night sky. As well as Steve’s finely wrought songs, we had Paul Downes to perform a short set, The Amazing Mr Smith in the audience to watch Viva Smith harmonise, but the star of the show was undoubtedly Jim Almand, from Memphis via Santa Fe. His amazing vocal style and percussive guitar were put to good effect on a range of material, some his own, some Steve’s, and classics such as ‘Tobacco Road’ and ‘Summertime’. Jim has spent 20-odd years on the road in the States in a variety of guises, playing jazz, r&b and country and western, and this experience pays off. He really knows how to work an audience. With a voice at times gruff and gravelly, but then heart-rendingly poignant, and a guitar style one moment rock’n’roll, the next jazzy and lyrical, he had the packed pub audience eating out of his hand. Jim has been over here from his native America seven or eight times and told me he loves it here, but it is time he played to a wider audience. For now though it is worth looking out for his next intimate venue performance in our own deep south. Though he does have his own website, the best place to look for information about UK gigs is the what’s on section of Steve’s site for the i.e. Theatre, a marvellous little performance space that he runs in Axminster. A highlight for the venue (for the folk world at least -- he puts on plays as well) is an appearance by Martin Carthy MBE in November. [Online update 260308: alas the i.e. Theatre is no more, but Steve Black's website is here.]
When I first heard about FolkWISE I thought: "Goody, a new folk website I will be able to check out and write about for "Folk on Tap"." So you can imagine my dismay when I found that folkWISE calls itself “a proactive development organisation run by performers for the benefit of performers” -- which doesn’t sound too promising to the amateurs or audience members among us. But hold on a minute. Since July it has been producing Radio Britfolk, an online radio website, which is where we come in. Pete Coe had the original idea, which was then picked up and run with by 30 or so musicians on the BritFolk Yahoo newsgroup. But as well as discussing it, they put together a business plan, raised funds from among themselves and then went ahead and broadcast the finished article.
There are listings pages, an online shop/links page, a message board, reviews and more, and they promise to add ideas as they occur to them. But the most exciting thing is the 10-20 hours a day of music and speech devoted to British folk music. It’s free to listen, but if you want to access the programme archives there is a small monthly membership fee of £2, for which you can also enter the discussion forum. For £5 a month you can add listings or reviews and post small ads or links to your website. You can even make your own programme. There is a section on the site devoted to what is expected and how to submit a programme proposal. There is a new schedule every week. It likens itself to a festival, with a concert on the main stage, backed up by smaller gigs, sessions and workshops. The stuff on offer when I visited was first class. Presenters of shows and documentaries included Jez Lowe, Jacey Bedford and Brian Peters, so you get a good spread of people from the folk scene. They devote most of their airplay to the music of Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England (which is why the W, I, S and E in folkWISE are in capitals) and actively encourage musicians of these islands to send in CDs for the library. And let’s face it, with people like Jacey involved, you don’t just get passion, you also get efficiency. She told me: “The really great thing about this is that it’s folk democracy in action. As long as it’s the right quality, anyone can make programmes for Radio Britfolk. So if you’ve got a bee in your bonnet about Songs of Sail or whatever, all you do is submit a programme proposal and talk to us about making your own programme.” A licensed trial site has been running since July and as long as it is successful, a permanent site should be launched in the autumn. Though their initial licence only ran for three months, Tom Bliss told me they were “optimistic” about running into 2006 and beyond. Do check the site out -- and join up!
The ezFolk website is a useful resource. Its lyrics and tabs for folk songs are mainly of the campfire singsong variety, but it has good tutorial sections for guitar, ukulele, harmonica and various banjo styles. Its tutorial pages include downloadable pdf (ie you need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed to read them) editions of “A Book of Five Strings”,“The How and Tao of Old Time Banjo” and “The How and Tao of Folk Guitar”, books packed with tunes and information on techniques for banjo and guitar.
I once spent an enjoyable couple of hours in a Sacred Harp workshop at the Bracknell Folk Festival. Though the Manhattan Sacred Harp Singing website, with its “information on Sacred Harp singing in New York City including the Manhattan Sacred Harp Sing, the Brooklyn Sacred Harp Sing, and the Lower East Side singing”, is not much use if you live in Surrey, it has a couple of links to fascinating articles and a pdf introduction to Sacred Harp singing. Just hit the information button.
Well, Golden Cap is now a dim and distant blur, it being three days since I got back -- so I’m only a day overdue -- but I can’t sign off without a few words about the Old Rope String Band website, which has come into its own since Joe Scurfield’s untimely death. There are an overwhelming number of tributes both from people who worked with Joe and people who were entertained by him, pictures of his funerals in Newcastle and Lochem and the good news that Tim Dalling and Pete Challoner are putting on special shows in Joe’s memory. He will live on long in ours.
Wednesday 26 March 2008
Tuesday 18 March 2008
Internet Archives, Demon Barbers, Al Stewart, Topic Records, the late Cyril Tawney and folksongs uploaded to SoundClick
Originally published in FoT Issue 104: Jul-Sep 2005
This must have been how Bob Dylan felt when he plugged into those new-fangled electric amplifiers and brought the house down. Or Keith Harris and Orville as they made man’s first powered flight. Or Jamie Oliver as he tucked into his first plate of Turkey Twizzlers. Objection! Sustained. Strike that from the record. No, ladies and gentlemen, I have not gone mad - I have gone broadband. And just like Mr Zimmerman, there is no looking back. I know I have gone against all my principles, as expounded in this column on a regular basis, but broadband is so fast, once you have tried it you really don’t want to give it up. And all of a sudden there is a whole lot more out there. I guess what I am extolling here is the wealth of multimedia content available on the Internet, but updates also suddenly become do-able. I have updated a lot of my programs, such as Internet Explorer, Real Player and Windows Media Player, which before would have taken too long, but now download in a matter of minutes. Of course, this causes a lot of problems because the programs start taking control of your PC and conflicting with one another, but these are mere teething troubles to be ironed out over a period of time. There, I’ve convinced myself.
When you look at the amount of multimedia content available to download or stream the mind, as they say, boggles. The difference between downloading and streaming depends on which side of the computer you are sitting. Providers will tell you streaming - listening or viewing a file as it arrives on your player - is more convenient. But if you download and save it you can hear it as many times as you want whenever you want without the need to hook up to the Internet. And then the issue of copyright crops up. A quick tip - once you have watched or listened to a streamed file, it is often worth looking in your Temporary Internet Files folder. You will sometimes find the cached file in there, which you can then save.
Enough of this subterfuge. A good place to start looking for content is the Internet Archive. There I found a stunning 15-minute film from 1947 by Alan Lomax called “To Hear Your Banjo Play”. He and Pete Seeger discuss the development of folk music in America and as well as some stunning banjo playing by the man himself, its performances include a rousing ‘John Henry’ by Woody Guthrie, Sonny Terry and Brownee McGhee, and ‘Wondrous Love’ sung at the end of a country picnic. As you would expect, Seeger’s enthusiasm is infectious. This is a little gem, and bearing in mind it is supposed to be the only film in existence of Woody Guthrie in performance, it is extraordinary that it has taken the development of the World Wide Web to prevent it from remaining hidden away.
The site is really a portal into various web collections, such as the Live Music Archive, which contains more than 22,000 live concert recordings. This is a great place to have a wander - or should that be a wonder? Within a few minutes I had found a recording of Billy Bragg singing ‘World turned upside down’, Warren Zevon singing ‘Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner’ and tons of stuff by Bela Fleck (135 concerts on file at the time of writing!). The Naropa Audio Archives include lectures by musicologist Harry Smith, Helen Adam on topics including repetition, Kipling, poets as music makers and ballads, and a Lorenzo Thomas class on the history, context, and structure of blues songs. Just the sort of thing you need on a summer evening to help you avoid “Big Brother”.
You can always trust Damien Barber to bring something different to folk music - or in fact life in general - so it’s good to see the very entertaining website he has put together to promote the Demon Barbers in their varous guises. His site even includes games such as Asteroids, Space Invaders and Pac-Man. Who says folk music has to stay still?
The Al Stewart website put together by Kim Dyer and Neville Judd is well worth a look, whether for a nostalgic and perhaps at times embarassing trip through his publicity photos, or for the excellent bunch of tabs to a selection of his songs. On the links page, there are even more Al Stewart sites, and you will find a samples page with lots of clips from his songs, which is handy if you have broadband.
Just to show that I haven’t gone exclusively multimedia mad, another useful site is that of Topic Records. Just pages and pages of information, enhanced by the odd picture and a few clips from the Topic catalogue, which Andy Kershaw describes as “the most important record label in Britain”.
I was saddened to hear of the death of the wonderful singer, songwriter and national treasure Cyril Tawney. No doubt it is reported elsewhere in this issue. I first became aware of him in the Sixties through ‘Sally Free and Easy’ on Davy Graham’s “Folk, Blues and Beyond” album, which unfortunately I lent to my old mate Roger Curtis. I never saw it again - but that’s another story. Suffice to say I now own it on CD. Then about 15 years ago I started to see Cyril in person at festivals. I added ‘Sally’ and ‘On a Monday Morning’ to my repertoire - when I had a repertoire - his songs were so easy to sing, so comfortable, if you know what I mean. His excellent website, run by his widow Rosemary, has fascinating articles about the genesis of some of his songs, and also a moving history of his failing health over the past couple of years. Recommended.
Finally, a mention for SoundClick, a site packed with songs people have uploaded, available to stream in both lo-fi and hi-fi and to download if you register. The content is variable, but in most cases you would certainly applaud them at the end of a floorspot. Take Steve Suffet. A dozen or so standard fok songs, delivered with competent guitar. I was going to write a smart remark here about how Steve couldn’t ruin ‘The House Carpenter’ any more than Bob Dylan. But first I listened to “The Bootleg Series, Volume 1”, disc 1. It is superb. Anywho, back to Steve Suffet. I’ll let him explain:
“The three new songs are ‘Tramps and Hawkers’, ‘T for Texas’, and ‘Railroad Bill’, but please don’t limit yourself to them. I now have fourteen songs all together, are you are free to do with them as you wish - stream live, download to your computer or iPod, burn on to a CD, post to another website, etc. All are traditional folk songs, so there are no hassles with copyrights. You can even bootleg them. In fact, someone in Russia already has.
“If these recordings sound like old Library of Congress field recordings, they might as well be. They are completely unengineered. I simply sang into the microphone built into a boom box and then later converted the tape recordings to MP3s. The recordings span a period from 1984 to date. Ain’t computers wonderful?”
Now, where have I heard that before?
This must have been how Bob Dylan felt when he plugged into those new-fangled electric amplifiers and brought the house down. Or Keith Harris and Orville as they made man’s first powered flight. Or Jamie Oliver as he tucked into his first plate of Turkey Twizzlers. Objection! Sustained. Strike that from the record. No, ladies and gentlemen, I have not gone mad - I have gone broadband. And just like Mr Zimmerman, there is no looking back. I know I have gone against all my principles, as expounded in this column on a regular basis, but broadband is so fast, once you have tried it you really don’t want to give it up. And all of a sudden there is a whole lot more out there. I guess what I am extolling here is the wealth of multimedia content available on the Internet, but updates also suddenly become do-able. I have updated a lot of my programs, such as Internet Explorer, Real Player and Windows Media Player, which before would have taken too long, but now download in a matter of minutes. Of course, this causes a lot of problems because the programs start taking control of your PC and conflicting with one another, but these are mere teething troubles to be ironed out over a period of time. There, I’ve convinced myself.
When you look at the amount of multimedia content available to download or stream the mind, as they say, boggles. The difference between downloading and streaming depends on which side of the computer you are sitting. Providers will tell you streaming - listening or viewing a file as it arrives on your player - is more convenient. But if you download and save it you can hear it as many times as you want whenever you want without the need to hook up to the Internet. And then the issue of copyright crops up. A quick tip - once you have watched or listened to a streamed file, it is often worth looking in your Temporary Internet Files folder. You will sometimes find the cached file in there, which you can then save.
Enough of this subterfuge. A good place to start looking for content is the Internet Archive. There I found a stunning 15-minute film from 1947 by Alan Lomax called “To Hear Your Banjo Play”. He and Pete Seeger discuss the development of folk music in America and as well as some stunning banjo playing by the man himself, its performances include a rousing ‘John Henry’ by Woody Guthrie, Sonny Terry and Brownee McGhee, and ‘Wondrous Love’ sung at the end of a country picnic. As you would expect, Seeger’s enthusiasm is infectious. This is a little gem, and bearing in mind it is supposed to be the only film in existence of Woody Guthrie in performance, it is extraordinary that it has taken the development of the World Wide Web to prevent it from remaining hidden away.
The site is really a portal into various web collections, such as the Live Music Archive, which contains more than 22,000 live concert recordings. This is a great place to have a wander - or should that be a wonder? Within a few minutes I had found a recording of Billy Bragg singing ‘World turned upside down’, Warren Zevon singing ‘Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner’ and tons of stuff by Bela Fleck (135 concerts on file at the time of writing!). The Naropa Audio Archives include lectures by musicologist Harry Smith, Helen Adam on topics including repetition, Kipling, poets as music makers and ballads, and a Lorenzo Thomas class on the history, context, and structure of blues songs. Just the sort of thing you need on a summer evening to help you avoid “Big Brother”.
You can always trust Damien Barber to bring something different to folk music - or in fact life in general - so it’s good to see the very entertaining website he has put together to promote the Demon Barbers in their varous guises. His site even includes games such as Asteroids, Space Invaders and Pac-Man. Who says folk music has to stay still?
The Al Stewart website put together by Kim Dyer and Neville Judd is well worth a look, whether for a nostalgic and perhaps at times embarassing trip through his publicity photos, or for the excellent bunch of tabs to a selection of his songs. On the links page, there are even more Al Stewart sites, and you will find a samples page with lots of clips from his songs, which is handy if you have broadband.
Just to show that I haven’t gone exclusively multimedia mad, another useful site is that of Topic Records. Just pages and pages of information, enhanced by the odd picture and a few clips from the Topic catalogue, which Andy Kershaw describes as “the most important record label in Britain”.
I was saddened to hear of the death of the wonderful singer, songwriter and national treasure Cyril Tawney. No doubt it is reported elsewhere in this issue. I first became aware of him in the Sixties through ‘Sally Free and Easy’ on Davy Graham’s “Folk, Blues and Beyond” album, which unfortunately I lent to my old mate Roger Curtis. I never saw it again - but that’s another story. Suffice to say I now own it on CD. Then about 15 years ago I started to see Cyril in person at festivals. I added ‘Sally’ and ‘On a Monday Morning’ to my repertoire - when I had a repertoire - his songs were so easy to sing, so comfortable, if you know what I mean. His excellent website, run by his widow Rosemary, has fascinating articles about the genesis of some of his songs, and also a moving history of his failing health over the past couple of years. Recommended.
Finally, a mention for SoundClick, a site packed with songs people have uploaded, available to stream in both lo-fi and hi-fi and to download if you register. The content is variable, but in most cases you would certainly applaud them at the end of a floorspot. Take Steve Suffet. A dozen or so standard fok songs, delivered with competent guitar. I was going to write a smart remark here about how Steve couldn’t ruin ‘The House Carpenter’ any more than Bob Dylan. But first I listened to “The Bootleg Series, Volume 1”, disc 1. It is superb. Anywho, back to Steve Suffet. I’ll let him explain:
“The three new songs are ‘Tramps and Hawkers’, ‘T for Texas’, and ‘Railroad Bill’, but please don’t limit yourself to them. I now have fourteen songs all together, are you are free to do with them as you wish - stream live, download to your computer or iPod, burn on to a CD, post to another website, etc. All are traditional folk songs, so there are no hassles with copyrights. You can even bootleg them. In fact, someone in Russia already has.
“If these recordings sound like old Library of Congress field recordings, they might as well be. They are completely unengineered. I simply sang into the microphone built into a boom box and then later converted the tape recordings to MP3s. The recordings span a period from 1984 to date. Ain’t computers wonderful?”
Now, where have I heard that before?
Saturday 15 March 2008
Wonderful PCs, John Fahey, Albion Magazine, poets' graves and poetry, Tom Paxton and Sid Kipper
Originally published in FoT Issue 103: Apr-Jun 2005
Reading about Sam and Sandy’s technical difficulties with issue 102 caused me to reflect on the problems I have been having with connecting to the Internet since November 2003. Problems that would resolve themselves when they felt like it, but would invariably pop up again when I had something important to do - well, important to me, anyway. And it was only when I realised that I had been putting up with those problems for more than a year that I thought I ought to do something about them once and for all.
It is always best to adopt a methodical approach when troubleshooting a problem with your PC. One of the few sensible things I do is to keep a record of any programs I install and any problems that crop up. That way you can more easily identify which program has caused the problem - which won’t necessarily happen straight away, and more often than not involves a combination of factors. When you are investigating a problem, a good idea is to make one change at a time and see if that fixes it. It might take a bit longer, but in the long run you will be able to pinpoint the cause and therefore find the solution much more readily. And stroking your left mouse button won’t necessarily enhance your machine’s performance, but I find it helps soothe the nerves.
My particular problem first arose when I tried to download e-mail. A few e-mails would download, then my e-mail program would freeze and eventually time out. I would then get a winsock failure message. Don’t ask. Reconnect, try again and it would stop in exactly the same place. I found that if I created a new folder to receive e-mails, it would work - for a few days at least and then I would have to go through the whole process again. I moved house and the problem came with me, so I ruled out the phone line as the cause. I bought a whizzo wireless modem and at first everything was OK, but a couple of days later the problem came back. So I ruled that out too. But then my system started freezing when using a web browser. Then with my ftp software. This was getting serious. I tried a different ISP. At first it worked, but then the same problem resurfaced. Convinced I was the victim of a virus, or some sort of parasite, I tried to download various diagnostic programs. It took ages of course because the system would keep dropping the connection. I managed to download a free program called WinsockFix. I ran it and everything started working again. Excellent! Guess what. The same old problem came back. I was on the verge of moving to another country or reinstalling Windows when I thought I would give my old modem a second chance. I knew that wouldn't solve the problem of course, but I would give it a go. I had to run WinsockFix again first but imagine my surprise... It has now been a fortnight and that is the longest period of trouble-free computing I have enjoyed since November 2003!
***
I must admit it is good fun to be able to take a stroll along the information superfootpaths once again. John Fahey was a great site to stumble upon. Tunings, tablatures and even mp3 files of the first 30 seconds of loads of tunes - just enough to give you a flavour of what you should be sounding like. There are also numerous articles about the American primitive guitarist himself, by all accounts a fascinating man.
Another site new to me was the Albion Magazine Online. It is a biannual magazine “dedicated to investigating English identity, character and culture, and giving a voice to modern English people” and is only available online. Interviews with Ashley Hutchings and Eliza Carthy nestle happily among explanations of English customs such as apple-tree wassailing and reviews of the Molesworth books, “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” and “Kes”. Editor Isabel Taylor invites contributions for future publication. It has only been going since the beginning of last year, but long may it run.
I don’t think I am straying too far off-topic if I recommend the Poets' Graves site. After all, you often hear Kipling or Burns sung in our clubs and here you can find their poetry, biographies and photographs of their graves. The site has information on more than 100 poets from Auden to Yeats (I bet Benjamin Zephaniah can’t wait). To hear poets reciting their own poetry you can venture to the Academy of American Poets’ Listening Booth. And it doesn’t just have American poets - it’s worth a visit to just to listen to Dylan Thomas reading ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’.
Back in issue 90 I bemoaned the fact that Tom Paxton did not have an official website. So I was delighted to find that as well as winning a lifetime achievement award from the BBC, Tom has become web savvy. Apart from news and information, there are a few mp3 downloads available of what Tom calls “short shelf-life songs”.
If ever you are in need of a pick-me-up, you need look no further than Sid Kipper’s website. Several colleagues of mine regularly check out his site and sit there chuckling to themselves while they are supposed to be working. It shouldn’t be allowed. It’s surprising I haven’t mentioned it before as I have long been a fan and of course Chris Sugden is a fellow writer for “Folk on Tap”, though what relevance that bears I couldn’t say. Anyway, among other things the entire collection of Sid’s hilarious letters to “Folk on Tap” is included. Here is an excerpt:
“I’m just writing to warn you that I’m getting ready for the lunch of my new book, ‘Crab Wars’. Mind you, it’ll have to be a late lunch because it isn’t happening till early evening. Then after lunch I’ll be doing a big singing tour all over everyone’s parts to go with the book, so I’m available for book bookings, if you see what I mean. Actually I’m still available even if you don’t see what I mean.”
Like I said, it shouldn’t be allowed.
My latest gadget (my home is full of them) is a Roberts RD-1 digital radio. Not only can I pause programmes in mid-air, I can back-pedal to a bit I missed and record straight chunks of broadcasts on to a data card. With a card reader hooked up to my PC, I can copy them on to my hard drive - a half hour programme takes less than 30 seconds. They are saved in mp2 format, which is how they are broadcast. We’ll leave an explanation of the difference between mp2 and mp3 files for another day - preferably another magazine. And with a software program I downloaded for free called mp3DirectCut, I can edit the file at will and end up with a particular song I want to learn or a programme I want to hear - though BBC2 relegates folk music to a couple of hours on Wednesday evening, BBC7 has classic comedies every day, and even transmits Garrison Keillor’s show. I heard some great Leo Kottke recently - and I’m only time-shifting, your honour. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to try to get to grips with John Fahey’s 'Brenda’s Blues'. Aren’t computers great?
Reading about Sam and Sandy’s technical difficulties with issue 102 caused me to reflect on the problems I have been having with connecting to the Internet since November 2003. Problems that would resolve themselves when they felt like it, but would invariably pop up again when I had something important to do - well, important to me, anyway. And it was only when I realised that I had been putting up with those problems for more than a year that I thought I ought to do something about them once and for all.
It is always best to adopt a methodical approach when troubleshooting a problem with your PC. One of the few sensible things I do is to keep a record of any programs I install and any problems that crop up. That way you can more easily identify which program has caused the problem - which won’t necessarily happen straight away, and more often than not involves a combination of factors. When you are investigating a problem, a good idea is to make one change at a time and see if that fixes it. It might take a bit longer, but in the long run you will be able to pinpoint the cause and therefore find the solution much more readily. And stroking your left mouse button won’t necessarily enhance your machine’s performance, but I find it helps soothe the nerves.
My particular problem first arose when I tried to download e-mail. A few e-mails would download, then my e-mail program would freeze and eventually time out. I would then get a winsock failure message. Don’t ask. Reconnect, try again and it would stop in exactly the same place. I found that if I created a new folder to receive e-mails, it would work - for a few days at least and then I would have to go through the whole process again. I moved house and the problem came with me, so I ruled out the phone line as the cause. I bought a whizzo wireless modem and at first everything was OK, but a couple of days later the problem came back. So I ruled that out too. But then my system started freezing when using a web browser. Then with my ftp software. This was getting serious. I tried a different ISP. At first it worked, but then the same problem resurfaced. Convinced I was the victim of a virus, or some sort of parasite, I tried to download various diagnostic programs. It took ages of course because the system would keep dropping the connection. I managed to download a free program called WinsockFix. I ran it and everything started working again. Excellent! Guess what. The same old problem came back. I was on the verge of moving to another country or reinstalling Windows when I thought I would give my old modem a second chance. I knew that wouldn't solve the problem of course, but I would give it a go. I had to run WinsockFix again first but imagine my surprise... It has now been a fortnight and that is the longest period of trouble-free computing I have enjoyed since November 2003!
***
I must admit it is good fun to be able to take a stroll along the information superfootpaths once again. John Fahey was a great site to stumble upon. Tunings, tablatures and even mp3 files of the first 30 seconds of loads of tunes - just enough to give you a flavour of what you should be sounding like. There are also numerous articles about the American primitive guitarist himself, by all accounts a fascinating man.
Another site new to me was the Albion Magazine Online. It is a biannual magazine “dedicated to investigating English identity, character and culture, and giving a voice to modern English people” and is only available online. Interviews with Ashley Hutchings and Eliza Carthy nestle happily among explanations of English customs such as apple-tree wassailing and reviews of the Molesworth books, “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” and “Kes”. Editor Isabel Taylor invites contributions for future publication. It has only been going since the beginning of last year, but long may it run.
I don’t think I am straying too far off-topic if I recommend the Poets' Graves site. After all, you often hear Kipling or Burns sung in our clubs and here you can find their poetry, biographies and photographs of their graves. The site has information on more than 100 poets from Auden to Yeats (I bet Benjamin Zephaniah can’t wait). To hear poets reciting their own poetry you can venture to the Academy of American Poets’ Listening Booth. And it doesn’t just have American poets - it’s worth a visit to just to listen to Dylan Thomas reading ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’.
Back in issue 90 I bemoaned the fact that Tom Paxton did not have an official website. So I was delighted to find that as well as winning a lifetime achievement award from the BBC, Tom has become web savvy. Apart from news and information, there are a few mp3 downloads available of what Tom calls “short shelf-life songs”.
If ever you are in need of a pick-me-up, you need look no further than Sid Kipper’s website. Several colleagues of mine regularly check out his site and sit there chuckling to themselves while they are supposed to be working. It shouldn’t be allowed. It’s surprising I haven’t mentioned it before as I have long been a fan and of course Chris Sugden is a fellow writer for “Folk on Tap”, though what relevance that bears I couldn’t say. Anyway, among other things the entire collection of Sid’s hilarious letters to “Folk on Tap” is included. Here is an excerpt:
“I’m just writing to warn you that I’m getting ready for the lunch of my new book, ‘Crab Wars’. Mind you, it’ll have to be a late lunch because it isn’t happening till early evening. Then after lunch I’ll be doing a big singing tour all over everyone’s parts to go with the book, so I’m available for book bookings, if you see what I mean. Actually I’m still available even if you don’t see what I mean.”
Like I said, it shouldn’t be allowed.
My latest gadget (my home is full of them) is a Roberts RD-1 digital radio. Not only can I pause programmes in mid-air, I can back-pedal to a bit I missed and record straight chunks of broadcasts on to a data card. With a card reader hooked up to my PC, I can copy them on to my hard drive - a half hour programme takes less than 30 seconds. They are saved in mp2 format, which is how they are broadcast. We’ll leave an explanation of the difference between mp2 and mp3 files for another day - preferably another magazine. And with a software program I downloaded for free called mp3DirectCut, I can edit the file at will and end up with a particular song I want to learn or a programme I want to hear - though BBC2 relegates folk music to a couple of hours on Wednesday evening, BBC7 has classic comedies every day, and even transmits Garrison Keillor’s show. I heard some great Leo Kottke recently - and I’m only time-shifting, your honour. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to try to get to grips with John Fahey’s 'Brenda’s Blues'. Aren’t computers great?
Dick Gaughan, Les Barker, Jacey Bedford, digitising your vinyl and the Bodleian Library
Originally published in FoT Issue 102: Jan-Mar 2005
Well - what can I say? Bush is back in the White House, Blair thinks he is staying on for another four years (he’s probably right) and by the time you are reading this the Black Watch will all have returned home for Christmas (at the time I am writing it I already know it isn’t possible). In other words we are waist deep in the Big Muddy and the damn fool says push on. Guess who’s been back to Dick Gaughan’s web site for a visit! It’s one of those sites that you can rely on for an enjoyable half an hour or so’s browse, and not just to check his gig list or discography, which is all the information too many artists want to share with us. Most of his songs are there, music and/or text, though for copyright reasons there are some he can’t include. He has a little rant about that. His rants and ramblings always give pause for thought - there is a new and lengthy one about the events that gave rise to his song ‘Ballad of ’84’ - and are almost as provocative and entertaining as he is in performance. Dick made a point of getting into the spirit and the technique of the Web at an early stage in its development - I’ve visited and written about his site many times and no doubt will continue to do so.
I have not written about Les Barker’s site before, though he also takes the Internet seriously, having embraced the medium in a similar way to Dick. Les’s site is a bit like the html equivalent of a compendium if games. If you are acquainted with Les, you will know what to expect. A couple of poems. Photographs of trains. And a comprehensive though quite bizarre list of eateries, usually coffee bars in superstores, mostly conveniently close to motorways, but which enable you to eat and drink around the country while “avoiding motorway service areas”. Useful? Not so sure. Entertaining? You bet.
Jacey Bedford is a name you will often come across if you visit the uk.music.folk newsgroup, to which she regularly contributes. Jacey’s site is of course largely devoted to the a cappella group of which she is a part, Artisan. There are also a few extracts from Jacey’s sci-fi writing, although they tend to end with a message such as “if you want to read on, you’ll have to buy the book”. So it’s all very business-like, about which I am not complaining, because she has to make a living. But it’s not what I surf the Web for.
I’ll come back to the main reason I found my visit to Jacey’s web site invaluable. Can it really be as long ago as ‘Folk on Tap 84’ that I wrote about archiving your record collection? It can. CFB Software has produced a rather useful utility for recording from vinyl into CD audio format. There are usually so many bells and whistles attached to such programs that they can be a bit daunting to the computer newbie. LP Recorder is very basic, so is extremely simple to use. And it’s free. With the program installed on your machine you just need to connect your gramophone - remember those? - to the line input of your PC. Play a loud part of the record to set the record levels and you are away. It checks and covers up for loss of system resources and has an Auto Level feature to avoid distortion. You can’t remove hiss and crackle - for that you have to pay - but if your vinyl collection is in reasonable condition, and you don’t want to get involved in the intricacies of noise reduction and so on, you can transfer it to CD and stick the records in the loft. If you can convert it to MP3 files you’ll be able to get about a dozen LPs on to each CD, but that’s getting technical again. If simplicity is what you are after, LP Recorder is for you.
Finally, a word of advice. Never fail to explore the links page when you visit a site, if there is one. On Jacey’s site I found a very rewarding link. The Bodleian Library’s collection of more than 30,000 ballads has been gathered into a searchable online catalogue, along with a scanned image of each ballad sheet, for the Broadside Ballads Project. It is absolutely fantastic. Many of the ballads are illustrated, usually with woodcuts, and if they include music notation, you can click on a midi version of the tune. The search engine could do with being a bit more user-friendly, but it has obviously been put together with scholars in mind rather than oiks like me who are in a hurry to write a column, or pick a tune to learn for a forthcoming floor-spot. In fact the copyright restrictions are such that you can download images from the library for “private study” or indeed for the purposes of an “academic lecture or seminar”, yet nowhere does it say you are allowed to sing them. So I can only recommend the site, and recommend it I do, for academic purposes. I don’t want any of you getting me into trouble by singing ‘The Bonny Milk Maid’ and knowing all the words.
Seriously though, can you imagine how difficult looking for a ballad would have been 10 or 15 years ago? For a start you would have had to go to Oxford. During opening hours, assuming you had permission, you would have had to rummage through catalogues and boxes full of paper and, if you found what you wanted, write it out. How much easier it is now they have been digitised, to search or browse through them at any time of day or night, wherever you are in the universe. OK, I might be getting a little carried away, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - hurrah for Bill Gates! Oh yes, and God bless America. In fact, God bless us every one.
Well - what can I say? Bush is back in the White House, Blair thinks he is staying on for another four years (he’s probably right) and by the time you are reading this the Black Watch will all have returned home for Christmas (at the time I am writing it I already know it isn’t possible). In other words we are waist deep in the Big Muddy and the damn fool says push on. Guess who’s been back to Dick Gaughan’s web site for a visit! It’s one of those sites that you can rely on for an enjoyable half an hour or so’s browse, and not just to check his gig list or discography, which is all the information too many artists want to share with us. Most of his songs are there, music and/or text, though for copyright reasons there are some he can’t include. He has a little rant about that. His rants and ramblings always give pause for thought - there is a new and lengthy one about the events that gave rise to his song ‘Ballad of ’84’ - and are almost as provocative and entertaining as he is in performance. Dick made a point of getting into the spirit and the technique of the Web at an early stage in its development - I’ve visited and written about his site many times and no doubt will continue to do so.
I have not written about Les Barker’s site before, though he also takes the Internet seriously, having embraced the medium in a similar way to Dick. Les’s site is a bit like the html equivalent of a compendium if games. If you are acquainted with Les, you will know what to expect. A couple of poems. Photographs of trains. And a comprehensive though quite bizarre list of eateries, usually coffee bars in superstores, mostly conveniently close to motorways, but which enable you to eat and drink around the country while “avoiding motorway service areas”. Useful? Not so sure. Entertaining? You bet.
Jacey Bedford is a name you will often come across if you visit the uk.music.folk newsgroup, to which she regularly contributes. Jacey’s site is of course largely devoted to the a cappella group of which she is a part, Artisan. There are also a few extracts from Jacey’s sci-fi writing, although they tend to end with a message such as “if you want to read on, you’ll have to buy the book”. So it’s all very business-like, about which I am not complaining, because she has to make a living. But it’s not what I surf the Web for.
I’ll come back to the main reason I found my visit to Jacey’s web site invaluable. Can it really be as long ago as ‘Folk on Tap 84’ that I wrote about archiving your record collection? It can. CFB Software has produced a rather useful utility for recording from vinyl into CD audio format. There are usually so many bells and whistles attached to such programs that they can be a bit daunting to the computer newbie. LP Recorder is very basic, so is extremely simple to use. And it’s free. With the program installed on your machine you just need to connect your gramophone - remember those? - to the line input of your PC. Play a loud part of the record to set the record levels and you are away. It checks and covers up for loss of system resources and has an Auto Level feature to avoid distortion. You can’t remove hiss and crackle - for that you have to pay - but if your vinyl collection is in reasonable condition, and you don’t want to get involved in the intricacies of noise reduction and so on, you can transfer it to CD and stick the records in the loft. If you can convert it to MP3 files you’ll be able to get about a dozen LPs on to each CD, but that’s getting technical again. If simplicity is what you are after, LP Recorder is for you.
Finally, a word of advice. Never fail to explore the links page when you visit a site, if there is one. On Jacey’s site I found a very rewarding link. The Bodleian Library’s collection of more than 30,000 ballads has been gathered into a searchable online catalogue, along with a scanned image of each ballad sheet, for the Broadside Ballads Project. It is absolutely fantastic. Many of the ballads are illustrated, usually with woodcuts, and if they include music notation, you can click on a midi version of the tune. The search engine could do with being a bit more user-friendly, but it has obviously been put together with scholars in mind rather than oiks like me who are in a hurry to write a column, or pick a tune to learn for a forthcoming floor-spot. In fact the copyright restrictions are such that you can download images from the library for “private study” or indeed for the purposes of an “academic lecture or seminar”, yet nowhere does it say you are allowed to sing them. So I can only recommend the site, and recommend it I do, for academic purposes. I don’t want any of you getting me into trouble by singing ‘The Bonny Milk Maid’ and knowing all the words.
Seriously though, can you imagine how difficult looking for a ballad would have been 10 or 15 years ago? For a start you would have had to go to Oxford. During opening hours, assuming you had permission, you would have had to rummage through catalogues and boxes full of paper and, if you found what you wanted, write it out. How much easier it is now they have been digitised, to search or browse through them at any time of day or night, wherever you are in the universe. OK, I might be getting a little carried away, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - hurrah for Bill Gates! Oh yes, and God bless America. In fact, God bless us every one.
Wednesday 12 March 2008
Confession: a piece hastily cobbled together from uk.music.folk when I realised I had missed my deadline. It's all about sessions...
Originally published in FoT Issue 101: Oct-Dec 2004
An interesting discussion on sessions unravelled in uk.music.folk recently - indeed may be unravelling still. Chris Rockcliffe started the ball of yarn rolling with the following question: “We’ve been quite successful with the local folk and roots club at getting musicians in a mixed-bag acoustic night to play together, collaborate on tunes and songs and have fun but, no matter how hard I try, I am unable to get very many of the local traditional tune session and melody instrument players here to participate in, or even come as listeners to, any other type of folk and roots music evening. I’m talking about nights where the performance is shared with, by and for an audience - that is either a come-all-ye type session; a local freebie concert slot with just beer money on offer; or even a properly advertised and paid support slot to an appropriate ticketed concert. I like all kinds of music and thoroughly enjoy listening as well as playing - although when I go to some better tunes sessions, I’m often just a listener by preference. The inclusion of many Celtic style, traditional - diddly - musicians from local sessions would really add to the mix of local folk and roots music; create all kinds of collaborations. Many are very good or at least adequate musicians indeed - playing English, Scots, Irish with also bits of eastern European, klezmer, old-timey, gypsy jazz, western swing and bluegrass in there too. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m flogging a dead horse (no jokes please) to even try. I’ve been trying to understand the mindset(s). I can understand the need to have different kinds of nights - singer’s sessions and tune only sessions. But all I’m trying to do is to create one or two interesting additional evenings and get the two distinctly different groups of musicians mingling just a little more. The Monday session here which used to be a real mix and fun, has now turned into a purist early-evening tunes - eastern European and broadly Celtic - bash (and leaving to go who knows where) with other elements of old-timey and jazz, which used to be mixed-in, taking the late-evening slot. The Thursday session here - a tunes-only do - is really very serious and never seems to get past the warming up and ticking over stage. Somehow it seems to be a rather po-faced running-through-the-motions rehearsal in front of pub regulars who don’t take a blind bit of notice and who - when they do comment - can be very scathing. Some people are impatient only wanting to play themselves - all evening - (there’s always someone who hogs the limelight isn’t there?) and not quietly listen to others. Some don’t support any music evening which has any kind of entry charge applied to it; some are music purists who don’t want to listen to much else but their own narrow perspective. There is some musical snobbery there - I’ve heard it first hand, but many of the participants are also singers. So where’s the logic? Why the stand-off by those who play melody instruments? Maybe someone can explain it to me.”
Roger Gall was first to respond with these thoughts: “As a contributor to all of the events you describe, I will try. The tune session (in the UK anyway) is the rarer beast. Ones devoted to particular types of tunes are even rarer. It is really just for the musicians to trade and learn tunes in public, where anyone can drop in, than for the entertainment of any non-participants. It may sound and look like performing but it is not that, the main object is to play tunes together, not to play so fast or to find obscure tunes to blow everyone else away - but that can and does happen, sadly ... The singing events can be similar but are more a collection of individual performances and of waiting one’s turn. Some singing events are open to everyone joining in (at least the chorus) but not all welcome any instrumental help. Some indeed are very anti-instruments. The tune session is less a stand-off by melody players than them choosing to attend (the rarer) events where they will know there will be a welcome and they will be able to join it all night - if they know or can contribute to the tune being played. It is sad that attempts to keep tune sessions to that, in the face (sometimes) of many singers who insist, or are encouraged by non-participants, to ‘give us a song’, are seen as being a stand-off. Similar attempts to inflict session tunes upon a singing event, would probably not be made but if they were - would also not be met with general approval.”
David Kilpatrick followed on from Scotland with the encouraging observation that young musicians within his experience are approaching singers wanting to learn songs, and vice versa: “They are equally able to suggest to guitar-toting singers that they ‘give us a tune’ - not a song - because the same is happening in reverse. Young folk/trad guitar/zouk/etc players are learning decent tune repertoires as well as accompaniment and singing it they do it. Newcastle University folk music degree course, Dundee’s courses, and the Royal College in Glasgow are all helping with this because the ‘performing arts’ aspect forces the students to do a lot of different things. The kids can go and do their degrees and get permanent careers in music from a trad-folk background, which is a relatively new development. In the process they are being prevented from taking a narrow view.”
Roger Gall makes another important point: “What occurs is simply the nature of the event that has been suggested to the licensee and accepted by them for that night, in much the same way as a request for a darts evening or a quiz night. If the casual non-participants in these kind of pub events were to demand something else from the participants rather than respecting that arrangement, it would be thought bad-form.”
Paul Burke made an interesting comment: “I don’t like mixed song/tune sessions usually. For a satisfactory tunes session, you need to get a head of steam going, so the tunes and ideas start to flow. When each tune (set) is played in isolation, it’s as though you are starting from cold each time. Remember, a session is NOT a performance, it’s a co-operative.”
But David Kilpatrick also had a valid counter-argument: “Songs can be just as much an inspiration for the next tune as a tune can be - and vice-versa. They don’t have to involved stopping, clearing the throat, mumbling for two minutes and then singing something which breaks the pace or changes the key. A good singer can fit into a fast session.”
And Jon Freeman added: “I think the problem is that it can take time for players, even those who play together regularly, to start fitting in well together. If you get too many interruptions, the tune side may never reach this point. The difference is perhaps not noticeable to a singer or a listener but the musicians know and feel when the session is as Paul Burke describes as ‘in full flow’.”
I’ll let Paul Sullivan - in the past a regular musician from the Buxton scene from which this thread emanates - enter the fray with some perceptive comments: “Funny thing is, I seem to be singing all the time... The session is not about arrangements and finer detail, but about immersing yourself in the isolation tank of the trad tune continuum. As someone has pointed out elsewhere in this convoluted set of threads, when it’s really working well the players know it, and there are very few musical thrills to compare. Maybe the central point is that the session players don’t mind if it’s a full room or an empty one - the atmosphere is (nearly) always generated by what happens amongst the musicians. I’ve seen several not-too-hot players come up with wonderful stuff when the mood is right. Personally, I’ve sometimes surprised myself by rattling through tunes that I didn’t realise I knew, only to find the intricacies fled the following day. It’s a very modest piece of magic, the session. It’s also like a drug, and I’m not making this point lightly. Sessions are terribly addictive. They’re not always particularly sociable, either - I don’t entirely understand why they play such a central role in my life. Perhaps its as simple as this - the musicians who attend come-all-ye nights and clubs want a generous and sharing night of social intercourse, whereas session players are inherently anti-social, and play largely to avoid the intricacies of conversation. They hide behind their instruments until the beer has numbed their senses enough to re-emerge into the outside world. I say this as a form of catharsis, you understand.”
Admittedly this column has been distilled from some more than 70 messages posted to the newsgroup, and perhaps not distilled enough for the editor’s requirements, but I hope it gives some idea of how much food for thought newsgroups can give. It’s not all swapping insults, Viagra and kiddie porn, honest!
An interesting discussion on sessions unravelled in uk.music.folk recently - indeed may be unravelling still. Chris Rockcliffe started the ball of yarn rolling with the following question: “We’ve been quite successful with the local folk and roots club at getting musicians in a mixed-bag acoustic night to play together, collaborate on tunes and songs and have fun but, no matter how hard I try, I am unable to get very many of the local traditional tune session and melody instrument players here to participate in, or even come as listeners to, any other type of folk and roots music evening. I’m talking about nights where the performance is shared with, by and for an audience - that is either a come-all-ye type session; a local freebie concert slot with just beer money on offer; or even a properly advertised and paid support slot to an appropriate ticketed concert. I like all kinds of music and thoroughly enjoy listening as well as playing - although when I go to some better tunes sessions, I’m often just a listener by preference. The inclusion of many Celtic style, traditional - diddly - musicians from local sessions would really add to the mix of local folk and roots music; create all kinds of collaborations. Many are very good or at least adequate musicians indeed - playing English, Scots, Irish with also bits of eastern European, klezmer, old-timey, gypsy jazz, western swing and bluegrass in there too. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m flogging a dead horse (no jokes please) to even try. I’ve been trying to understand the mindset(s). I can understand the need to have different kinds of nights - singer’s sessions and tune only sessions. But all I’m trying to do is to create one or two interesting additional evenings and get the two distinctly different groups of musicians mingling just a little more. The Monday session here which used to be a real mix and fun, has now turned into a purist early-evening tunes - eastern European and broadly Celtic - bash (and leaving to go who knows where) with other elements of old-timey and jazz, which used to be mixed-in, taking the late-evening slot. The Thursday session here - a tunes-only do - is really very serious and never seems to get past the warming up and ticking over stage. Somehow it seems to be a rather po-faced running-through-the-motions rehearsal in front of pub regulars who don’t take a blind bit of notice and who - when they do comment - can be very scathing. Some people are impatient only wanting to play themselves - all evening - (there’s always someone who hogs the limelight isn’t there?) and not quietly listen to others. Some don’t support any music evening which has any kind of entry charge applied to it; some are music purists who don’t want to listen to much else but their own narrow perspective. There is some musical snobbery there - I’ve heard it first hand, but many of the participants are also singers. So where’s the logic? Why the stand-off by those who play melody instruments? Maybe someone can explain it to me.”
Roger Gall was first to respond with these thoughts: “As a contributor to all of the events you describe, I will try. The tune session (in the UK anyway) is the rarer beast. Ones devoted to particular types of tunes are even rarer. It is really just for the musicians to trade and learn tunes in public, where anyone can drop in, than for the entertainment of any non-participants. It may sound and look like performing but it is not that, the main object is to play tunes together, not to play so fast or to find obscure tunes to blow everyone else away - but that can and does happen, sadly ... The singing events can be similar but are more a collection of individual performances and of waiting one’s turn. Some singing events are open to everyone joining in (at least the chorus) but not all welcome any instrumental help. Some indeed are very anti-instruments. The tune session is less a stand-off by melody players than them choosing to attend (the rarer) events where they will know there will be a welcome and they will be able to join it all night - if they know or can contribute to the tune being played. It is sad that attempts to keep tune sessions to that, in the face (sometimes) of many singers who insist, or are encouraged by non-participants, to ‘give us a song’, are seen as being a stand-off. Similar attempts to inflict session tunes upon a singing event, would probably not be made but if they were - would also not be met with general approval.”
David Kilpatrick followed on from Scotland with the encouraging observation that young musicians within his experience are approaching singers wanting to learn songs, and vice versa: “They are equally able to suggest to guitar-toting singers that they ‘give us a tune’ - not a song - because the same is happening in reverse. Young folk/trad guitar/zouk/etc players are learning decent tune repertoires as well as accompaniment and singing it they do it. Newcastle University folk music degree course, Dundee’s courses, and the Royal College in Glasgow are all helping with this because the ‘performing arts’ aspect forces the students to do a lot of different things. The kids can go and do their degrees and get permanent careers in music from a trad-folk background, which is a relatively new development. In the process they are being prevented from taking a narrow view.”
Roger Gall makes another important point: “What occurs is simply the nature of the event that has been suggested to the licensee and accepted by them for that night, in much the same way as a request for a darts evening or a quiz night. If the casual non-participants in these kind of pub events were to demand something else from the participants rather than respecting that arrangement, it would be thought bad-form.”
Paul Burke made an interesting comment: “I don’t like mixed song/tune sessions usually. For a satisfactory tunes session, you need to get a head of steam going, so the tunes and ideas start to flow. When each tune (set) is played in isolation, it’s as though you are starting from cold each time. Remember, a session is NOT a performance, it’s a co-operative.”
But David Kilpatrick also had a valid counter-argument: “Songs can be just as much an inspiration for the next tune as a tune can be - and vice-versa. They don’t have to involved stopping, clearing the throat, mumbling for two minutes and then singing something which breaks the pace or changes the key. A good singer can fit into a fast session.”
And Jon Freeman added: “I think the problem is that it can take time for players, even those who play together regularly, to start fitting in well together. If you get too many interruptions, the tune side may never reach this point. The difference is perhaps not noticeable to a singer or a listener but the musicians know and feel when the session is as Paul Burke describes as ‘in full flow’.”
I’ll let Paul Sullivan - in the past a regular musician from the Buxton scene from which this thread emanates - enter the fray with some perceptive comments: “Funny thing is, I seem to be singing all the time... The session is not about arrangements and finer detail, but about immersing yourself in the isolation tank of the trad tune continuum. As someone has pointed out elsewhere in this convoluted set of threads, when it’s really working well the players know it, and there are very few musical thrills to compare. Maybe the central point is that the session players don’t mind if it’s a full room or an empty one - the atmosphere is (nearly) always generated by what happens amongst the musicians. I’ve seen several not-too-hot players come up with wonderful stuff when the mood is right. Personally, I’ve sometimes surprised myself by rattling through tunes that I didn’t realise I knew, only to find the intricacies fled the following day. It’s a very modest piece of magic, the session. It’s also like a drug, and I’m not making this point lightly. Sessions are terribly addictive. They’re not always particularly sociable, either - I don’t entirely understand why they play such a central role in my life. Perhaps its as simple as this - the musicians who attend come-all-ye nights and clubs want a generous and sharing night of social intercourse, whereas session players are inherently anti-social, and play largely to avoid the intricacies of conversation. They hide behind their instruments until the beer has numbed their senses enough to re-emerge into the outside world. I say this as a form of catharsis, you understand.”
Admittedly this column has been distilled from some more than 70 messages posted to the newsgroup, and perhaps not distilled enough for the editor’s requirements, but I hope it gives some idea of how much food for thought newsgroups can give. It’s not all swapping insults, Viagra and kiddie porn, honest!
Monday 10 March 2008
Ten favourite - and useful - web sites
Originally published in FoT Issue 100: Jul-Sep 2004
It is quite reassuring that - just for the love of it - about 35 people keen to safeguard the future of traditional music sit down very three months and bash out copy on their old Olivettis to send off to Sandy for publication in this august magazine. Or even this July to September magazine. Mankind hasn’t gone off the rails after all, despite what the “Daily Mail” may tell us. Unlike the rest of “Folk on Tap”, this page is written not at a battered portable but at a state-of-the-art home computer. And while I work, that same PC is able to entertain me with the DVD or CD of my choice. I find it a bit difficult to concentrate while watching a DVD, but it’s a cross I have to bear as the writer of the column dedicated to surfing the World Wide Web. Over the years I have been doing this there have been a lot of developments and quite a few comings and goings, but despite the best attempts of certain jackanapes to hijack the Internet for financial gain, there are still plenty of sites that reflect the same philosophy as the “Folk on Tap” crew, amateurs happy to share their love of whatever with whoever is interested.
And whether your main interest is traditional English, Scottish or Irish songs or music, Morris, Blues, Appalachian - the list is endless but the items all relate to music performed not to make a lot of money but to satisfy basic human needs such as story-telling, information-sharing or sheer pleasure - there is more available now than ever before. Along with, or perhaps because of, the explosion of the Web, advances in ways of storing data have had to be made. Researchers at the University of California reckon that during 2002 and 2003 about 36 billion gigabytes of information were stored - more data than had previously been stored throughout the history of the human race. It’s just a shame it didn’t happen a couple of hundred years earlier. If only Cecil Sharp had used a tape recorder instead of pencil and paper. Or Alan Lomax had visited Stovall’s Plantation armed with a DVD-cam. Or the BBC hadn’t wiped those tapes... But it’s no use crying over evaporated milk. Instead, let’s enjoy the cream of the Internet. As it’s a bit of a special occasion, I thought I would draw your attention to ten of my favourite sites. They have all stayed the course, and though they are not exclusively folk orientated, they would be of interest I am sure to the folk enthusiast and they invariably display the philosophy demonstrated above.
1 BBC: This is not the place for a debate about whether this site costs us anything. Just make use of it. It is of course packed with information about TV and radio programmes as well as news. But it is also a gateway to information and news about folk music, whether through the Hitchhiker’s Guide - h2g2 - Mike Harding’s programme pages or the site’s music section. And with regional radio programmes now available anywhere, we folkaholics are no longer limited to an hour every Wednesday evening.
2 The Mudcat Cafe: As well as a forum for sharing folk-based news - and with a strong UK contingent sending messages - this is the home of the Digital Tradition Database, which at the time of writing contains about 9000 songs. It also has a good section - the Mudcat Blues Museum - dedicated to the Blues.
3 OLGA: The Online Guitar Archive has had its ups and downs, not least because of threats from the recording industry, yet it is *still going strong. It mainly has tablature or chord charts for songs in various rock categories, but also includes classical music and folk. A must for the guitar enthusiast, though not so useful for lyrics due to the piracy problem. The home page has a link to an excellent guitar chord generator. (*Online update 100308: Olga was eventually taken down but I have left the link alive as there is a page there with information about the legal situation and a couple of useful links. Who knows, maybe one day common sense will prevail and it will return.)
4 The Prairie Home Companion: Although you can now listen to Garrison Keillor’s radio show on BBC Radio 7, the archives on the web site provide hours and hours of music and humour in Keillor’s good-natured style. You’ll find Kate Rusby there, John Renbourn and lots of nice Americans. And why not?
5 Google: Not only a search engine for the Web, it also gives searchable access to Usenet, which is often a useful source of information. The on-topic newsgroup here is uk.music.folk where you often get advance notice of folk acts who have a TV or radio appearance coming up, live gigs, recordings and news of cancelled gigs or deaths. Google also has a useful News section.
6 Free Agent: A great email and newsgroup reader. I must admit I have actually spent money on upgrading to Agent, which has enhanced features, but both versions are not so open to security problems as the more common Outlook Express (mainly because hackers are more interested in embarrassing Bill Gates) and it doesn’t have a Send to All button. There are a growing number of people who wish they hadn’t pressed their Send to All button.
7 DVD Genie: Enhances most PC-based DVD players and more importantly allows you to play Region 1 DVDs.
8 Multimap: Show me a folk enthusiast who doesn’t need directions to clubs and festivals and I’ll show you someone who should get out more often.
9 Internet Movie Database: You know when you see someone in a film and can’t remember where you’ve seen them before? It’s called getting old. It comes to us all sooner or later so we all need the Internet Movie Database. Just type in the name of the film, and when the cast list comes up, click on the actor’s name and see all the films in which they have ever appeared.
10 Dick Gaughan: These sites are in no particular order, though I have saved the best until last. Dick is a bit of a whizz kid when it comes to technology but places particular emphasis on accessibility, so whichever browser you use, you are guaranteed an enjoyable visit. You will find information about and in most cases the lyrics of all the songs Dick has recorded. You can find about the man himself, not just a list of his gigs, but also his thoughts on war, economics and web sites.
I went to the memorial service for Bob Copper in Rottingdean in April. It was a fantastic event, a very moving celebration of Bob’s life and work, and one of the highlights for me was to see the Copper Family still singing - of course with Bob’s generation no longer represented but in its stead there were numerous grandchildren. As they finished their first song John gave a big thumbs-up towards heaven. But we must give a big thumbs-up to the family. In Sussex at least the future of English traditional music is quite safe.
It is quite reassuring that - just for the love of it - about 35 people keen to safeguard the future of traditional music sit down very three months and bash out copy on their old Olivettis to send off to Sandy for publication in this august magazine. Or even this July to September magazine. Mankind hasn’t gone off the rails after all, despite what the “Daily Mail” may tell us. Unlike the rest of “Folk on Tap”, this page is written not at a battered portable but at a state-of-the-art home computer. And while I work, that same PC is able to entertain me with the DVD or CD of my choice. I find it a bit difficult to concentrate while watching a DVD, but it’s a cross I have to bear as the writer of the column dedicated to surfing the World Wide Web. Over the years I have been doing this there have been a lot of developments and quite a few comings and goings, but despite the best attempts of certain jackanapes to hijack the Internet for financial gain, there are still plenty of sites that reflect the same philosophy as the “Folk on Tap” crew, amateurs happy to share their love of whatever with whoever is interested.
And whether your main interest is traditional English, Scottish or Irish songs or music, Morris, Blues, Appalachian - the list is endless but the items all relate to music performed not to make a lot of money but to satisfy basic human needs such as story-telling, information-sharing or sheer pleasure - there is more available now than ever before. Along with, or perhaps because of, the explosion of the Web, advances in ways of storing data have had to be made. Researchers at the University of California reckon that during 2002 and 2003 about 36 billion gigabytes of information were stored - more data than had previously been stored throughout the history of the human race. It’s just a shame it didn’t happen a couple of hundred years earlier. If only Cecil Sharp had used a tape recorder instead of pencil and paper. Or Alan Lomax had visited Stovall’s Plantation armed with a DVD-cam. Or the BBC hadn’t wiped those tapes... But it’s no use crying over evaporated milk. Instead, let’s enjoy the cream of the Internet. As it’s a bit of a special occasion, I thought I would draw your attention to ten of my favourite sites. They have all stayed the course, and though they are not exclusively folk orientated, they would be of interest I am sure to the folk enthusiast and they invariably display the philosophy demonstrated above.
1 BBC: This is not the place for a debate about whether this site costs us anything. Just make use of it. It is of course packed with information about TV and radio programmes as well as news. But it is also a gateway to information and news about folk music, whether through the Hitchhiker’s Guide - h2g2 - Mike Harding’s programme pages or the site’s music section. And with regional radio programmes now available anywhere, we folkaholics are no longer limited to an hour every Wednesday evening.
2 The Mudcat Cafe: As well as a forum for sharing folk-based news - and with a strong UK contingent sending messages - this is the home of the Digital Tradition Database, which at the time of writing contains about 9000 songs. It also has a good section - the Mudcat Blues Museum - dedicated to the Blues.
3 OLGA: The Online Guitar Archive has had its ups and downs, not least because of threats from the recording industry, yet it is *still going strong. It mainly has tablature or chord charts for songs in various rock categories, but also includes classical music and folk. A must for the guitar enthusiast, though not so useful for lyrics due to the piracy problem. The home page has a link to an excellent guitar chord generator. (*Online update 100308: Olga was eventually taken down but I have left the link alive as there is a page there with information about the legal situation and a couple of useful links. Who knows, maybe one day common sense will prevail and it will return.)
4 The Prairie Home Companion: Although you can now listen to Garrison Keillor’s radio show on BBC Radio 7, the archives on the web site provide hours and hours of music and humour in Keillor’s good-natured style. You’ll find Kate Rusby there, John Renbourn and lots of nice Americans. And why not?
5 Google: Not only a search engine for the Web, it also gives searchable access to Usenet, which is often a useful source of information. The on-topic newsgroup here is uk.music.folk where you often get advance notice of folk acts who have a TV or radio appearance coming up, live gigs, recordings and news of cancelled gigs or deaths. Google also has a useful News section.
6 Free Agent: A great email and newsgroup reader. I must admit I have actually spent money on upgrading to Agent, which has enhanced features, but both versions are not so open to security problems as the more common Outlook Express (mainly because hackers are more interested in embarrassing Bill Gates) and it doesn’t have a Send to All button. There are a growing number of people who wish they hadn’t pressed their Send to All button.
7 DVD Genie: Enhances most PC-based DVD players and more importantly allows you to play Region 1 DVDs.
8 Multimap: Show me a folk enthusiast who doesn’t need directions to clubs and festivals and I’ll show you someone who should get out more often.
9 Internet Movie Database: You know when you see someone in a film and can’t remember where you’ve seen them before? It’s called getting old. It comes to us all sooner or later so we all need the Internet Movie Database. Just type in the name of the film, and when the cast list comes up, click on the actor’s name and see all the films in which they have ever appeared.
10 Dick Gaughan: These sites are in no particular order, though I have saved the best until last. Dick is a bit of a whizz kid when it comes to technology but places particular emphasis on accessibility, so whichever browser you use, you are guaranteed an enjoyable visit. You will find information about and in most cases the lyrics of all the songs Dick has recorded. You can find about the man himself, not just a list of his gigs, but also his thoughts on war, economics and web sites.
I went to the memorial service for Bob Copper in Rottingdean in April. It was a fantastic event, a very moving celebration of Bob’s life and work, and one of the highlights for me was to see the Copper Family still singing - of course with Bob’s generation no longer represented but in its stead there were numerous grandchildren. As they finished their first song John gave a big thumbs-up towards heaven. But we must give a big thumbs-up to the family. In Sussex at least the future of English traditional music is quite safe.
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