FolkOnLine

The Music Well, Musical Traditions, Mike Absalom, the New Rope String Band and Peter, Paul and Mary

2009-04-25T22:27:00.003+01:00

This was the last column I sent off to Folk on Tap. I had previously written it for Issue 108: Jul-Sep 2006, but heard very little from the editor until early 2008 when he let me know there would be another issue coming out, so I rewrote it and sent it off for Issue 108: Spring 2008. I don't know if it ever got published...

I feel I should have lots of news about how things in my hi-tech world have changed dramatically in the 18 months that FoT has been taking a sabbatical, but I’m not so sure they have. The PlayStation 3 is now vying for supremacy over the Nintendo Wii, rather than the PS2 over the DS; Blu-Ray has kicked HD DVD into touch in much the same way as VHS did with Betamax; and my FeedReader is full of stories about Brown letting us down rather than Blair. So it’s all a bit same old, same old. The music industry is still under threat from people sharing their mp3s. Digital rights management is a bit of a hot potato at the moment, especially with video files. If you use the BBC’s iPlayer to download a few performances from the Cambridge Folk Festival - which of course you have paid for with your licence fee - you must watch it within four weeks or it will spontaneously combust. There is a flicker of sanity on the horizon, with a public consultation under way at the time of writing into allowing music to be copied for personal use. We have of course been breaking the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 each time we copy CDs to our PC or mp3 player or make an extra copy to play in the car, let alone share with a friend. The idea is that copying will no longer be illegal as long as it’s for private use. Minister for intellectual property Lord Triesman said the proposed changes would explore “where the boundaries lie between strong protection for right holders and appropriate levels of access for users”. So apparently owners will not be allowed to sell or give away their original discs once they have made a copy. How exactly are they going to police that one? It seems CD burning is killing music where home taping clearly failed. Ecclesiastes 1:9 - “There is no new thing under the sun.” Here endeth the ranting. On with the surfing.

A few folk-orientated sites have been going from strength to strength while we’ve been away. I am pleased to be able to report that although it has a new name, Radio Britfolk is still up and running. Now known as The Music Well, “The site continues to provide the best in traditional and contemporary folk music from Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England and we welcome visitors old and new to share the enjoyment in our cultural heritage.” The best news is that it has moved from being a subscription site to being free - although donations are welcomed. There is an impressive archive of old programmes on subjects ranging from John Connolly, Harry Boardman and Fred Jordan to June Tabor, Nick Drake and Steve Tilston. In fact I defy you to click on the site’s archive and read down the list of programmes without salivating. Much of Tradmusic consists just of links to external sites, such as the BBC Radio 2 Folk and Acoustic news page and online newspaper articles such as a Scotland on Sunday interview with Bert Jansch, but there are also original articles about artists such as our own (ie they are from the Southern Counties) Band of Two. Pete Fyfe seems to be the resident CD reviewer as well. It also has a gig guide, a large database of musicians and a discussion forum. Musical Traditions is the online version of the paper magazine of the same name begun by Keith Summers in 1983 and carried on by Rod Stradling. With an archive of more than 200 articles available as well as regularly updated news and reviews, it is quite comprehensive and well worth the occasional dip. You never know what you might find. There are articles on subjects as esoteric as Ted “Darkie” Duckett, the New Forest bones player and step dancer, or as mainstream - in a folk music sort of way - as Joe Heaney interviewed by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. As well as an obituary for Gordon Hall, the fine Sussex singer who died in 2000, there is the transcript of an interview with him that Vic Smith did for BBC Radio Sussex in 1991. It is interesting to read that when he lived in Horsham he lived “under the same roof” as Henry Burstow. “Recollections of Henry Burstow” has been digitised and is available on the South Ridings Folk Arts Network site, another website well worth a visit. The recollections are a fascinating glimpse into the life of this “celebrated bellringer and songsinger” and include a list of the “400 and odd songs he sang from memory”.

I must confess that I no longer know the words of the National Anthem unless I have a hymn book open, but I do remember “WPc Sadie Stick, hit me again with your big black stick, I’ll have a word with you when I find my dic - tionary,” words from a song which I probably heard only once, when I visited my ex-wife’s cousin in Salisbury in the early Seventies. Delighted to find we shared not only Christian names but also a taste for folk music, he slipped his prized shiny black copy of Mike Absalom’s LP “Henry and Other Peccadillos” on to the stereogram for me. Like it was only yesterday. Every now and then I have googled Mike’s name to no avail, but at last I have found a website dedicated to the legend that is Mike Absalom. After living in Canada for 20 years - which might have had something to do with his disappearance from the folk scene here - he has returned to the UK. You can find out what he has been up to, read the comics and listen to mp3s on his website.

A brief intermission - with no hint of nostalgia for at least 100 words. I was delighted to see the New Rope String Band when they came to Croydon FC. They were superb, as expected. I also bought their ORSB DVD. Though tinged with sadness (the late, great Joe Scurfield is on top form throughout) it is so hilarious that you feel privileged to watch it. The NRSB website has video clips that will remind you of (or introduce you to) just how incredibly inventive they still are.

Back to the nostalgia, and I hope you will forgive me finishing with even more self-indulgence than usual. I would have thought that I had written before about Peter, Paul and Mary, who probably did as much as anyone else during my teens to turn me on to folk music and guitar playing, though I have just done a quick check through past editions and can find nothing. It is good to see that Mary Travers is still campaigning, albeit now for bone marrow donation. Mary was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2005, and received a bone marrow transplant that autumn. PP&M continued their reunion tour late in 2005, and continue to tour now, although their recent “fall” tour was postponed while she had back surgery! These days she is as likely to be found campaigning for America’s National Marrow Donor Program as for peace or civil rights. Having lost my brother-in-law to the disease, I wish her luck, though I am including the web address of Britain’s Anthony Nolan Trust, and encourage you to visit it. Oh, and the PP&M website is cool.

Damien Barber and Mike Wilson @ The Music Institute, Guildford

2009-04-25T00:20:00.006+01:00

Just got back from a superb gig at Guildford Folk Club thanks to Damien Barber and Mike Wilson. All the more astonishing as Damien had only got back from China a couple of days ago so was still considerably jet-lagged. And tomorrow he's playing at Boris's party celebrating all things English in Trafalgar Square along with the Demon Barbers! But it was Mike who had worried organisers reaching for the tranquilisers by getting himself delayed (it's not as if he had any choice) in Guildford's notorious one-way system.

Anywho - the songs, the music and the banter were all as I expected them to be. MacColl's Kilroy was Here and My Old Man; Bellamy's Nostradamus and On Board a 98; The Green Linnet and Westlin Winds from Dick Gaughan, and loads more besides, all sung and played beautifully by two friends who have the knack of breathing new life into songs even though they have sung them many times before - each time it's as if it's only recently come into their repertoire. And as for The Joy of Living, it was majestic. And all without the opportunity for so much as five minutes' practice!

A great evening in a nice little venue.

It's the wonder of YouTube...

2008-11-09T01:47:00.015Z

I have realised that I am long overdue to publish something on here. I thought that the print version of FoT was about to be revived but nothing seems to have come through my letterbox. Anywho, I have no time at the moment, but here are some stunning but relevant video clips. (During the course of the post, I have worked out how to embed video clips - just click on the pictures to set them rolling - but I have left the links in here in case you want to go to YouTube itself and see related material - there's loads!)

Take a look at this. I believe the guy's name is Hannes Coetzee. Whoever he is he does wonderful things with a teaspoon and a guitar.

Or this. Peter, Paul and Mary sing Hangman. The boys look just the sinister side if squeaky clean - and you can see why I fell in love with Mary Travers all those years ago.

Here is an old clip of Paul Simon, who stole Anji from Davey Graham in much the same way as he stole Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme from Martin Carthy. Indiana, let it go. In the clip he is playing Anji, and on second guitar: his brother! (I didn't know he had one either.)

And just by way of proof that, in his prime, Davey Graham was the coolest dude on the planet, here is some film of him from a 1959 Ken Russell documentary on the rise in popularity of the guitar.

Last but not least. Bob Franke playing his own composition Hard Love, a beautiful song that I first came to love thanks to the wonderful Martin Simpson.

Funnily enough, despite the adulation that I have bestowed upon Martin Simpson all these years, I don't miss his fancy guitar stylings at all, not even when the geese start honking...

Review: Various Artists: Top Cat, White Tie & Tails (Guide Cats for the Blind, vol 3) Songs and Poems of Les Barker

2008-07-28T07:18:00.003+01:00

This, the third of Les Barker's albums produced for charity, is just as witty and thought provoking as its predecessors. Twenty-seven tracks, from 7 secs to 3:58 in length, guaranteed to raise both a smile and much-needed funds for the British Computer Association of the Blind.

On my first listen, it struck me that no-one can read Les Barker like Les Barker. Fortunately there is one track on the CD where Les reads his poem The Church Of The Wholly Undecided. Even more fortunately I had a second and a third listen. But not until after I had had a revelation. I went to the Mrs Ackroyd website and read the Shipping Forecast. In my head it was still absolutely hilarious. In fact at first I had to stop because I kept laughing out loud and I was at work. So I tried again when I got home. Hilarious. His poetry exists out there and does not depend on him. Perhaps it's just that his sense of timing gives it that certain something.

Anyway, these people gathered to read Les's poetry for charity so even when their timing is a bit suspect, like Dave Cash on a brilliant pastiche of Deck Of Cards, they remain charming.

Highlights are a poem made up entirely of puns on writers' names (The Author's Story), one about the problems inherent in calling your dogs Go, Stay and Fetch (Go, Stay And Fetch) and another about the problems of phoning BT to tell them your phone's not working (My Phone's Out Of Order). Bemusement appears to be Barker's mood de jour. There's Jenny Agutter - prepare to fall in love with her all over again when she reads Bungee Jumping For Lemmings or Garden Waste. You'll never use your composter again. And Prunella Scales is gorgeous (but in a different way to Ms Agutter) with a monologue that we've all heard while waiting to be served by a shop assistant too busy chatting with a friend (No May).

In short, hilarious.

(Published by Osmosys Records, OSMO CD 041)

18th Annual Ruskin House Folk & Blues Festival

2008-07-01T23:08:00.004+01:00

This Saturday, July 5, Ruskin House's Sunday evening Acoustic Club is hosting its Annual Folk & Blues Festival in the gardens of the house in Coombe Road, Croydon, Surrey. The house is much more quaint than that address would lead you to believe.

The festival will feature many of the regular musicians who play at the club, along with a team of dancers from the McPartland School of Irish Dancing, a Scottish pipe band, bouncy castle, barbecue and real ales. Noon to 11pm. Admission £3, accompanied children (up to age 16) free.

See here for a map. Or here for more details of the club. A donation will be made to St Christopher's Hospice.

Podcasts, the Folk Revival and the New Rope String Band

2008-04-25T22:50:00.002+01:00

Originally published in FoT Issue 107: Apr-Jun 2006

Now here’s a sentence I never thought I’d begin a column with. Not that, this: I have a podcast to recommend. A few issues ago, it would have been meaningless, but now, with the increasingly rapid advance of civilization (smiles ironically) it means we can acquire infotainment while on the move and looking hip (removes tongue from cheek). First, a word or two hundred of explanation. If you know all about podcasting, and don’t know how you managed to survive without it until last Christmas, feel free to skip to the next paragraph. Even if you haven’t, you will I am sure have realised how important podcasts are because the state broadcaster and the national press have all jumped on the bandwagon and told you so. But I’ll let you in on a little secret. Podcasts are essentially rather old-fashioned, because they are little more than a radio programme. An “on demand” radio programme admittedly, but for “downloading a podcast” read “taping off the radio”. Back in the last century I used to use an old reel-to-reel tape recorder to record programmes to listen to later. Then I progressed to cassettes. Only the technology has been changed, to protect the self-image of the upwardly mobile society. You don’t need an iPod or even an mp3 player. You do need a computer with a soundcard and speakers. You don’t need any fancy software. You would be better off with broadband, just because the size of some podcast files are on the large side. And listening to anything at a time that’s convenient to you seems admirably well organised, especially if it’s enjoyable and informative.

Which brings me back to FolkCast, which claims to be the first folk podcast, and I certainly wasn’t aware of any others. And really it’s just a very good radio show. Presented by Phil “Widds” Widdows and Ken Nicol, who promise “the best new music, interviews with artists, behind the scenes soundseeing tours at festivals and fun and frolics from the broad world of folk”. Ken is a musician, Widds a journalist. There is a new edition on the first Saturday of each month, produced in Ken’s studio in Preston, with songs, interviews (Ken in edition 001, Simon Nicol (no relation) in 002) and articles. Bits of it are great. Bits of it are not. Bits of it were not my cup of tea but may be yours. But if you like folk-rock, FolkCast is for you. And they certainly introduced me to people who I will be looking out for. And it’s free! In 001, I found a really interesting arrangement by London trio 3 Blind Mice. There was also an overlong interview with Ken Nicol, but as it’s his studio, I suppose that’s allowed. He is currently with Steeleye Span, so I guess he does come under the umbrella of folk music. I say that because a lot of the show is geared towards the singer-songwriter and folk-rock genres, rather than traditional songs or tunes. Issue 002 actually gets into traditional mode quite early on, with an effective Jock o’Hazeldean from left-handed Scottish guitarist Dave Gibb, but that’s almost it. Also the programmes do have a tendency towards American acts, but that’s because there is oodles of US stuff available. As more British acts realise they can put their music online, more of it will come onstream. And people are invited to send songs, comments and information in to them, so as FolkCast becomes more well known, there should be more British material available.

And by the way, despite having been listening to the Watersons’ “for pence and spicy ale” while rewriting most of the above, I just had a screen break and put on ‘Ducks on a Pond’ by the Incredible String Band and John Martyn’s ‘Outside In’ and ‘Solid Air’, so I agree, I have no right to champion traditional song over contemporary.

It will probably not have escaped your notice that early in the year BBC4 honoured the British Folk Movement with some cracking programmes which will hopefully be repeated on a regular basis, including showings on the more widely available BBC2. It’s surprising what early footage can be dredged up when people make the effort. There were quite a few goosebumps of nostalgia round my place, I don’t mind confessing. But for the purposes of this column, the series also threw up shed-loads of information on the BBC website as well as links to a lot more, and lots of attention in the press. But to keep it all in context, my cynical half must share this “nail on the head” summary with you, from uk.music.folk contributor William Black:

“The current 'folk revival' is being powered by the people who fell in love with the late Nick Drake last year and then suddenly realised that he wasn’t a ‘lone genius’ but part of something else. It’s not folk music, it’s more like the singer/songwriter thing that was popular thirty-five years ago.
“Apart from a sort of reflex genuflection to the Seegers and Cecil Sharpe they’ll ignore the folk scene, probably because there’s obviously no money in it, and concentrate on manufacturing a new generation of ‘singer/songwriters’ (anyone noticed how Donovan is currently being rehabilitated?) who’ll be high profile and exploitable, and disposable...
“It’ll run for a year or so, the usual suspects will put on a few big concerts with manufactured ‘stars’, and the folk festivals will get a few more customers who’ll wander about wearing fashionable clothes, looking slightly puzzled and drinking bottled lager.
“Next year it’ll be something else and we’ll be left alone with our beards, beer that tastes of something and even less money because the predatory manipulators of the media and music industry have taken a proportion of it. If we’re lucky none of the big festivals will go broke thinking that the increased ticket sales will happen again next year and so overspend...
“Oh yes, and folk will be uncool again...”

Now let’s finish on a more uplifting note. I was delighted to see that the Old Rope String Band have put their annus horribilis behind them and undergone a sort of reformation, with Tim Dalling and Pete Challoner joining forces with Jock Tyldesley and Vera van Heeringen as the New Rope String Band. Their new website is in its formative stages but includes forthcoming gigs and festivals. Do visit it, and if you can, stop surfing and go and see them.

Teach yourself guitar and piano with tablature and KlavarScript

2008-04-02T22:35:00.004+01:00

Originally published in FoT Issue 106: Jan-Mar 2006

Despite being an old dog, I am always ready, willing and able to learn new tricks. As if there wasn’t enough clutter round here already, I even bought a rather nifty electronic keyboard, so for this issue, just to get a bit of a theme going, I thought I would explore the world of online music lessons. My first instrument is the guitar, which I have been playing since I was seven, self-taught except for an enjoyable couple of terms at evening classes back in the Sixties and occasional workshops at festivals. And apart from the version of ‘Anji’ our evening school tutor Stephanie Syers taught us and which has stood me in good stead as a party piece ever since, I have never learned more than when sitting as close to the front as possible in small folk clubs, watching the hands of Davy Graham, Isaac Guillory, Martin Simpson, I could go on but you get the picture. Invariably I was also enjoying myself.

The “Passion For Jazz” website is a bit dry and even a bit daunting when it comes to music theory, especially when you see a page full of chords written in real music notation, but fortunately it has several handy diagrams and charts about harmony, chords, the circle of fifths and so on. And it has very useful virtual guitar and virtual piano chord finders. With these you click on the chord name on the page and you get a graphical display of that chord for guitar or piano. Alternatively you can click on a few notes on the virtual piano keyboard or guitar fretboard and find out what that chord is called. Nice. The “Jazz Guitar” website is even better, because a bit more thorough and dare I say generous in the information it shares. There are highly informative essays about such things as jazz guitar chord theory, blues chord progressions and guitar warm-up techniques. And of course a virtual chord finder. You have to be online for these chord finders to work, but “Piano Chord Helper” is downloadable and free so you just run it on your PC and tell it which chord you want, for example F#min6/9 (!) and it shows you where to put your fingers. If you have a MIDI compatible sound card it even lets you hear what it should sound like.

There are plenty of guitar lessons for the picking (sorry!) at sites such as “Acoustic Guitar”, the online version of a US-based magazine. The lessons from the past year’s issues come in a variety of styles, such as clawhammer, jazz, and so on. I was particularly interested to find a lesson focusing on open tunings. David Hodge, the author of the article, writes “...exploring different chords and chord voicings can help you find new approaches to songwriting and arranging, and trying an alternate tuning, which will immediately make you search for new chords, is a good way to make you think and experiment. And that’s always a good thing.” I entirely agree. The lesson talks you through a very simple tuning, EADF#BE, which is one which I have not unreasonably spent most of my guitar-playing life ignoring, yet which surprisingly has quite a lot of potential. After half an hour with the lesson I was noodling along - teacher’s words, not mine - with ‘Handsome Molly’, trad arr Hodge, and a jolly good time was had by all.

Another good site is the ubiquitous “Mel Bay's Guitar Sessions”, which obviously wants you to buy as many of the zillion Mel Bay books as you can, yet is generous enough to give you a free online edition which again covers a variety of styles, jazz, resonator, classical and so on. Some of the lessons are mere tasters for the books, but more usefully there is a whole series of lessons on guitar scales, positions and shapes, or a complete guide to French polishing for the acoustic guitar, written by a luthier from St Louis, Karl Markl.

Mel Bay’s site has links to numerous other Mel Bay sites - Guitar People, Mel Bay Downloads etc - which are also worth exploration but one section that particularly caught my eye was “Tab Rehab”. This is dedicated to weaning guitarists such as myself off of tablature and on to “proper” music notation. Point of order! A noble sentiment I am sure but I’m afraid there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Now if you can give me something like tablature for the piano... Fortunately help is at hand. “Klavarskribo”, or Klavar Script, notation is a Dutch invention which is much easier to read than standard notation. Just like tablature it gives a graphical display of your instrument and the direction in which you are playing, so you don’t have to make that mental leap from what you see on the page to what you do with your fingers. All very decadent and symbolic of our short attention span age I am sure - except tabs have been going since the Renaissance and Klavarskribo was designed between the last two World Wars, so there is no need to apologise for using them. I have not yet found a free tab writer, although there are plenty of reasonably priced ones out there, but I have found an excellent free program which enables you to open any MIDI file and it appears in Klavar form which you can play on screen or print out. You can even edit it, or write your own pieces from scratch.

Finally, I must give a mention to the “Folk Map”. Jim Lawton, who edits “Filofolk”, a folk music club and event listing for West Yorkshire, has created a highly useful site - as long as everyone keeps it up to date. Basically it is a giant Google map, into which you can stick virtual pins to signify where there is a folk club. You can also add times and contact details. The afternoon I added the Ram Folk Club in there were already quite a few, and they are growing daily, so hopefully by the summer I’ll be able to see where the best clubs in Dorset and Cornwall are. You have to register but it is quite painless and of course free. Now, on with the practice.

Steve Black, Jim Almand, Radio Britfolk, ezFolk, Sacred Harp and the Old Rope String Band

2008-03-26T21:37:00.004Z

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.

Internet Archives, Demon Barbers, Al Stewart, Topic Records, the late Cyril Tawney and folksongs uploaded to SoundClick

2008-03-18T22:45:00.004Z

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?

Wonderful PCs, John Fahey, Albion Magazine, poets' graves and poetry, Tom Paxton and Sid Kipper

2008-03-15T16:42:00.004Z

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?

Dick Gaughan, Les Barker, Jacey Bedford, digitising your vinyl and the Bodleian Library

2008-03-15T16:08:00.001Z

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.

Confession: a piece hastily cobbled together from uk.music.folk when I realised I had missed my deadline. It's all about sessions...

2008-03-12T21:21:00.004Z

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!

Ten favourite - and useful - web sites

2008-03-10T10:36:00.004Z

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.

The Child Ballads, nostalgia and scholastic research

2008-02-16T15:06:00.003Z

Originally published in FoT Issue 99: Apr-Jun 2004

If, like me, you long ago gave up searching second-hand book shops in the hopes of finding a Traditional Music section, let alone an affordable edition of the “Child Ballads”, I have good news. Bill Gates has yet again come to our rescue. Well, not Bill Gates exactly, but you know what I mean. An American company, The Heritage Collectors, has developed the complete set of Child’s works on CD-Rom. The digital edition offers fully searchable text of all 305 ballads and their notes, with enhanced study aids, including a glossary and a new place names index, ballad maps, computer-playable midi files and new essays on the ballads as literature, and on folk-music collectors and collecting. There is an audio CD in the package containing ballads and interviews with contemporary interpreters, preservers, and collectors of the tradition, including Jean Ritchie, Martin Carthy and Louis Killen. At the time of writing, negotiations are under way with a UK distributor. But check the web site, and if this has still not been sorted out, you can order direct from the US.

And if, like me, you frittered away your adolescence in the golden decade of the Sixties, then a few names from Fifties television - such as Prudence Kitten, Four Feather Falls and Mr Pastry - will probably ring those Pavlovian bells and take you back to a time when Blackjacks were a farthing each. Please wallow to your heart’s delight in Whirligig’s 1950s Television Nostalgia web site. See test cards, which 24-hour programming of course killed off, interludes such as the potter’s wheel or London to Brighton in four minutes, adverts (you’re never alone with a Strand) and information about the programmes themselves, in some cases with stills, clips or theme tunes. There is also a companion radio site with facts on everything from Al Read to Workers’ Playtime.

There is also a wealth of nostalgia (or social history if you are feeling serious) at the British Pathe Film Archive. You can preview items from the entire 3500-hour archive, which covers news, sport, social history and entertainment from 1896 to 1970. You can also pay for higher resolution copies. Schools can download content free of charge for use in the classroom. To steer matters back on-topic, you can download a 1962 clip of Princess Margaret watching a traditional English folk dance and then joining in. I searched the expression “folk music” and came up with 26 results, including the first National Colliery Music Festival at Harringay Arena, London, in 1948; musicians and dancers at the 1952 National Eisteddfod; and the annual blessing of the circus performers and animals at Chessington Zoo in 1955. Such are the vagaries of Internet searching.

Even more on-topic is the Traditional Music in England project at the British Library. About 1,500 hours of recordings of folk songs, sea shanties and children’s rhymes from the library’s Sound Archive are available. You can search the catalogue online - it includes various collections such as those of Bob Davenport, Carole Pegg and John Howson - but unfortunately you must travel to London or Boston Spa to listen to the songs and interviews. The web site has a couple of downloadable songs, including ‘Generals All’, sung by Walter Pardon, and the interview summaries make for fascinating reading.

Now you would hardly credit ‘The Wild Rover’ with being an object of fascination. Surely it is one of those songs that has been done to death and would arouse scorn among folk music enthusiasts. But no. For when David Dalton in a newsgroup asked: “Anybody know who wrote this or if not, approximately when it was written and maybe where? The House Band also do a slower version to a different tune, entitled Wild Roving. Jackie Sullivan does a nice version as does Dermot O’Reilly. Who else sings it to your liking?” David goes on to suggest some rather esoteric interpretations of the song. He writes: “Now in the past I speculated that “ten sovereigns bright” poetically means shamanic knowledge” and “the term landlady may mean earth goddess or Gaia or in Irish tradition maybe Anu or Danu or Eriu or Queen of the Fairies though that is debatable.” I don’t think that was what the Dubliners were thinking as they sang the version I have on CD, but not only did the posting elicit sensible replies, but also rather erudite ones.

Wade Miller wrote: “As has already been noted, it’s English and at least a couple of centuries old. At the height of their fame and influence the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem had a song-spotter working for them looking for likely material in the folk clubs of England, and it was brought to them by one of these folks who heard the great Lou Killen singing it.” And I thought it originated in an Irish theme pub. Wade continues: “It may be unfashionable to admit to a fondness for the Clancy Brothers, but the fact is that they’re the ones who put the song on the map, at least in Ireland and North America. And they do a terrific version.”

But now step forward Malcolm Douglas. This is where the erudition comes in. He wrote: “In an earlier thread on uk.music.folk, Jack Campin quoted a reference in the Bibliotheca Lindesiana Catalogue of English Ballads (#578 p211) to a broadside song entitled ‘The Good-Fellow’s Resolution,’ beginning “I have been a bad Husband this full fifteen year”, and dated 1680-82. There is a copy of this in J W Ebsworth’s “Roxburghe Ballads”, which I’ve now had a look at, and it is pretty clearly the basis of the later ‘Wild Rover’.” Malcolm goes on to quote verses 1, 8 and 9 from ‘The Good Fellow’s Resolution’ by Thomas Lanfiere - it is 13 stanzas long - but I’ll just quote from the eighth verse:

I went to an Hostiss where I us’d to resort,
And I made her believe that money was short;
I askt her to trust me, but she answered “Nay,
Enough of such Guests I can have every day.”
Then quoth she, “Pray, forbear, there’s no staying here,
Except you have money, you shall have no beer.”

And for comparison:

I went to an ale-house I used to frequent
And I told the landlady my money was spent.
I asked her for credit, she answered me “Nay
Such a custom as yours I could have any day.”

He’s not wrong, is he? And if you want to read the full thread, as usual my advice is to visit the Google Groups site and do a search on, for example, “Roxburghe Ballads”. You might be lucky. Or you might get the annual blessing of the circus performers and animals at Chessington Zoo.

Spam, spam, spam, the state of folk clubs, the search for song lyrics and guitar lessons at Old Bridge Music

2008-02-13T09:03:00.008Z

Originally published in FoT Issue 98: Jan-Mar 2004

As I sat down to write this column, events seemed to be conspiring against me. Had my PC been attacked by some mystery virus? So much spam (see “Folk on Line” issue 96) was clogging up my inbox my email was virtually unusable and my computer was starting to play up. Software that used to give me hours of pleasure now did nothing but generate error messages. I had started going for long walks just to reduce the percentage of each day spent at my keyboard before there was no more hair to tear out. But as my cursor froze for the third time in as many hours I had a sudden and thankfully lateral thought. I put fresh batteries in my cordless mouse and voila! - it’s a new dawn.

Filled with renewed hope, I perused the newsgroups. In uk.music.folk Jacey Bedford, Artisan’s very own cyberbabe, raised an issue dear to all our hearts - and therefore bound to get keyboards rattling:

“... we’ve discussed this subject before, but it seems to me that some folk clubs are dying on their feet while others thrive ... we’re in the 21st century now and with declining club audiences, we need to bend before we break. What can we do to make folk clubs or their equivalent more palatable to both current folkies and potential ones? Let’s face it - a proportion of current folkies are an ageing audience and know that I, for one, am not happy to fight my way through a crowd of underage drinkers in the bar, find an unmarked (secret) staircase that’s sticky with spilt beer and then perch on a hard bar stool for three and a half hours in a cold room - whatever the standard of entertainment.”

It was at this point that bells began to ring. I’ve been up that sticky staircase! Though if I remember correctly there were no hard bar stools left and I had to stand behind the tallest bloke in the room.

“I know we’ve had the floorsinger debate recently - but what about venues? Is it about time we abandoned the scruffy pub in favour of something more comfortable? With lottery funding there are now plenty of places with swish, new or refurbished village and community halls. There are also plenty of arts centres that might be grateful for a regular event, midweek, in their bar. I’m not saying all pubs are lousy, some are excellent, but as we travel round, there’s a definite correlation between low audiences and scruffy or intimidating pubs. The gigs I run in our village hall - mostly well supported, occasionally not - are not a prime example of what’s right with the world because although we’re not in a scruffy pub, our hall is in need of refurbishment. However, we’ve had lots of nice comments about our new upholstered chairs which make the whole evening much more comfortable - so I’m guessing that comfort matters to more than just me. We pay a small amount for the hire of the hall - but we get a good enough audience to cover that. What do you think? Should we be looking for nicer surroundings? Does it really make a difference, or could all the comfy chairs in the world not prevent a folk club decline?”

I was tempted to add some of the responses here, but kept finding myself at first agreeing with the various arguments put forward, then tearing them apart. It was as if I was turning into a grumpy old man before my very PC. OK, an older grumpy old man. If you want to read them, do go to the Google Groups site where the thread will be easy to find. The important thing is that Jacey has thrown the topic open for discussion, and the aspect that caught my attention, but did not seem to be picked up on by many others, is that any avenue we can go down to get lottery money used to support traditional live music should be explored.

One of the respondents in the thread was Hamish Currie, the webmaster (Onine update 130208: at least he was then. Click here for Hamish's Lombardy pages, here for the TFC) for the Tudor Folk Club in Chesham, Bucks, who includes on his site an excellent guide to setting up a folk club along with sections on Floorsinging For Beginners and Joining Your First Session. Here is the introduction to Hamish’s Starting A Folk Club section:

“This is an edit of a thread started by Dave Thackeray, who asked, in uk.music.folk: ‘I’m intending to start up a folk club shortly and wondered if those running established clubs might offer me some (positive) advice about the best way to go about it’ ... which raised one of the more enthusiastic threads in recent years - these pages are a consolidated and edited version of that thread. Read, learn, enjoy! There’s lots to think about: and as many opinions on each and every aspect of running a club as there are versions of John Barleycorn.”

I have mentioned the Mudcat Cafe in these pages before, most recently in issue 89, but then only its Internet radio pages. Originally the Digital Tradition Folk Song Database, it specialises in folk and blues. I was pleased to learn that it seems to be going from strength to strength and is an excellent resource for lyrics, chords and tablature of traditional and contemporary song as well as discussion groups with a lot of UK content. In the 10 minutes or so that I visited the site I managed to find the lyrics to ‘She Moved Among Men’, ‘Slip Jigs And Reels’ and ‘The Galway Shawl’. I even downloaded a couple of midi files of variant tunes for the latter. And let’s not get involved in a heated debate about copyright. I could stick on my June Tabor CD and type out the words to ‘The Barmaid’s Song’ as an aid to learning it and nobody would mind. If I can download it, I don’t have to type it. I admit to laziness, not theft.

No need to steal from Chris Newman’s Old Bridge Music site, for not only has he got a new address - he’s obviously gone broadband - but he is giving away guitar lessons. Yes I know it’s just a trailer for his book but there is an exercise and a James Scott Skinner tune to download so if you will forgive me, dear reader, I feel the need to go and practise. Like I said, it’s new dawn.

Heatwaves, virtual banjos, music notation, the Carpenter Collection, Sara Grey and heatwaves

2008-02-12T22:43:00.001Z

Originally published in FoT Issue 97: Oct-Dec 2003

At the time of writing, gentle reader, it is too hot to surf the Internet, let alone write a column about it. I know that by the time you read this, the heatwave of 2003 will be no more than a memory, and, if you’re anything like me, you probably won’t even remember which year it was. But if you’ll forgive my audacity, I will just relax with a cooling pint or two while my random article generator does the work for me.

Desktop Banjo is a great little shareware program for anyone learning the banjo. It’s a tuner, tablature generator, accompaniment player and MIDI file generator. The software allows you to see and hear chords, scales and songs on an animated banjo neck. You can use the sample song files to start learning new material right away or you can easily create songs and lessons for yourself. For the uninitiated, being shareware means you can download it from the Internet and try it without paying for it. But that doesn’t mean you can get away with using it forever at the programmer’s expense, because its save facility is disabled unless you pay the asking price, though it can still print tablature and output Midi files. But for just $29.95 (about £18.50) you can’t really complain. It comes with five different tunings, plus a custom tuning that you can set yourself. It’s very easy to use, as the notation is generated or written in a text editor. It can create ASCII tablature for uploading to Internet newsgroups or graphic tablature for printing. A full chord dictionary is included. (Online update 120208: The program seems to have grown. It is now just over £25 but includes guitars, pianos, bass, banjo, mandolin and drums. Here is the main site.)

The art - or is it a science? - of music notation has come on leaps and bounds thanks largely to the Internet, by virtue of the number of users wanting to swap tunes. We’re not talking about piracy here, just the same sort of sharing of melodies that goes on at a session but conducted at a distance. Recently cyberbabe Dick Gaughan put forward proposals for a new newsgroup - called uk.music.notation - for the discussion of all matters related to musical notation from a UK perspective. To quote from Dick’s proposal on uk.music.folk: “On-topic discussion includes notation systems, software used for notating and transcribing, problems such as transposition, scoring techniques and other general questions relating to notation. Discussions relating to musical criticism are strictly off-topic.” As I write this, the newsgroup had been approved and created on Usenet, but the only posts relate to its setting up, for which there is a strict and quite rigorous procedure. But hopefully by the time “Folk On Tap” drops through your letterbox there will be healthy discussions going on.

The catalogue of the James Madison Carpenter Collection has been made available online courtesy of the University of Sheffield’s Humanities Research Institute, for anyone to search or browse. The collection is one of the largest and most important collections of folk song and folk drama ever made in Britain. Carpenter was born in Mississippi, but travelled 40,000 miles around the UK in an Austin Seven between 1929 and 1935. He searched for singers of sea shanties, traditional ballads and folk songs and performers of mummers’ plays and recorded their performances, as well as noting down their words. The collection is held at the Archive of Folk Culture, in the American Folklife Centre at the Library of Congress, but it had never been catalogued and was largely overlooked - until now, that is. The papers in the collection were microfilmed shortly after they were bought by the Library of Congress from Carpenter in 1972 and the discs copied on to tape. Copies of the microfilms and tapes are available at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, Cecil Sharp House, and a copy of the microfilm is available at the Central Library, Aberdeen. The eventual aim, once all the permissions have been obtained, is to make the collection generally available online.

While on the subject of Americans who put us Brits to shame when it comes to keeping an eye on the tradition, the delightful Sara Grey - along with her son, Kieron Means - has a web site which is well worth a visit. Articles and information about the gigs, workshops and various educational projects she is involved in are included. By the way, on the EFDSS web site is another new resource - the Sessions Page. (Online update 120208: not any more it doesn't.) When I looked, there were only three sessions, so if you know or attend a regular session, make yourself known to the webmaster, and get some free publicity.

Error message: Explorer caused an invalid page fault in random article generator.dll. Please save all work and restart your computer. I’ve got a better idea. See you next time.

Old Time Radio, Pete Seeger and spam

2008-02-10T21:30:00.000Z

Originally published in FoT Issue 96: Jul-Sep 2003

With your permission, gentle reader, I will begin by going off-topic - because this item, just for a change, has nothing to do with folk music. If you can remember when Sunday lunch was a time for the family to get together, eat roast dinner and listen to the Clitheroe Kid on the wireless, RadioLovers.com is a must for your favourites list. It is an American site, offering “old time radio shows” which can be downloaded for free, so the likes of “Amos & Andy”, “Bing Crosby Entertains” and “I Love Lucy” are all here. But it also includes “Educating Archie”, “Frankie Howerd” and - yes, you’ve guessed it - “The Clitheroe Kid”.

Presumably there is a copyright issue here. The site gets round it (and I can forgive myself for listening to it) by stating that it believes the copyrights have lapsed or didn’t exist to begin with, and in any case doesn’t charge for downloading or access to the site, but is “just trying to bring the exciting world of Old Time Radio to a whole new generation of listeners”. And it offers to remove any recording which can be shown to violate copyright. I just hope the suits at the BBC don’t find out or they’re bound to object. In fact - please forget that I ever told you about the site. The Beeb also has its own nostalgiafest on BBC7, a digital radio channel where you can listen to old episodes of “The Goon Show”, “I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again” and “Round the Horne”, where of course you can hear the traditional ballads of Rambling Sid Rumpo. So you can see I have almost brought myself back on-topic again.

And indeed as I write this, I am listening - thanks to the Internet - to the fine Radio 4 programme “Across the Divide 2”, which I missed when it was broadcast in May, but which remains available for seven days on the Web. Bob Copper interviewing Pete Seeger. One legend chatting to another. Folk music heaven! By the time you read this it will be long gone, but there are always a few gems around, and with Internet radio you are not limited to your own area when it comes to the regional broadcasts - though the powers that be have axed without warning a Radio Humberside folk programme, Henry Ayrton’s “Folk and Roots Show”. Thanks to the Web, the likes of Terry Wogan and John Peel get emails from listeners in Florida - but it works just as well for we southerners if we want to listen for instance to any of Radio Scotland’s folk programmes - and they are many.

Speaking of Pete Seeger - I was, wasn’t I? - Jim Capaldi runs a fabulous site dedicated to the man, the music, the monument. Not *the* Jim Capaldi you understand, just *a* Jim Capaldi. An unofficial web site, it is clearly a labour of love, but gathers together a wealth of material about Pete and you can even download some of his songs. It is worth looking at just to read the comments page. Harry Belafonte got it right at Pete’s 1996 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, when he said: “If they ever decide to put a fifth face on Mount Rushmore, I would nominate Pete Seeger. He is one of the great sons of this country.” Rock and Roll? Well I ain’t ever heard no horse sing it.

There - have you noticed the way I have seamlessly arrived on-topic? Folk on the Internet indeed. And here is one of the most interesting, if bizarre, examples of the use of online folk music I have found. If you have an email account, you will probably have noticed the recent increase in spam. If you don’t, I had better explain that these days the term “spam” means Internet abuse, particularly unsolicited email and junk postings to newsgroups. It was 25 years ago this May, when there were only a couple of thousand people on what was called the Arpanet, that someone realised that instead of sending 600 emails to invite people to see some computer systems being demonstrated, he could send one email to all 600 of them. His name was Gary Thuerk (pronounced Turk) and he was in marketing. Hmmph. As the Arpanet was intended for scientific research purposes only, he got into big trouble. He was reprimanded. When the Internet came along and his idea had been seen to have worked (his company sold 20 computer systems - at about $1million each) advertisers quickly realised they could use mass emailing software (which had been around for decades to handle mailing lists) and use it to send junk email to large audiences who hadn’t asked for it. Which is why more and more Internet users are finding their email accounts almost impossible to handle.

In January, more than half of the email arriving at the world’s biggest Internet service provider, AOL, was spam. By May it was rising above 80%, or more than 2.5 billion pieces of spam a day. Other ISPs said the same - Yahoo was handling five times more spam than a year ago. I receive around 50 emails a day, 45 of which go straight into the trash. I am offered ways to make $$$cash$$$, guaranteed enlargement of certain body parts - unmentionable - and reduction of others - weight or wrinkles. I can get credit, a university degree and - gosh, how exciting - 80% off PRINTER CARTRIDGES. Not to mention all the porn I want. (I said not to mention all the porn I want!) Go away for a couple of weeks and there could be 700 emails in your inbox. You can see why people are giving up on their email accounts. Try looking for something important in that lot.

The reason for this year’s sudden increase in spam rather perversely is down to the successful blocking of it by ISPs. A spammer used to send 100,000 emails touting, say, generic Viagra in the hopes of getting one reply. If 90,000 of those emails are now being blocked, he needs to send out a million emails just to find that one customer and keep his response rate the same. Did I say that I was on-topic? So where does folk music come in? Anti-spam - “You know, if one person, just one person, does it, they may think you’re really lame and won’t take you off their spam list. And if two people do it - in harmony - they may think you’re both jerks and they won’t take either of you off the spam list. And if three people do it! Can you imagine three people hittin’ Reply, typin’ a bar of ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ and hittin’ Send? They may think it’s an organisation! And can you imagine ten per cent of spam victims per message? I said two hundred thousand replies per message - hittin’ Reply, typin’ a bar of ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ and hittin’ Send? They may think it’s a MOVEMENT, and that’s what it is: THE ALICE’S RESTAURANT ANTI-SPAM MASSACRE MOVEMENT!”

The ARA-SMM claims to have actually had spammers closed down. It’s a dangerous tactic, because one of the last things you want to do is reply to a spammer. Then he knows you have an active email address. But if everybody did it... Who was it who sang ‘We Shall Overcome’?

Dodgy backs, Damien Barber and the folk club web sites of south-east England

2008-02-08T00:14:00.000Z

Originally published in FoT Issue 95: Apr-Jun 2003

First a health warning. Look after your back - it’s your best friend. Don’t sit hunched over your keyboard for hours on end. Back straight, keyboard and mouse within easy reach. Forearms parallel with the ground, knees slightly lower than the hips. And take regular breaks, even if it’s just for five minutes an hour. Ten is better. It’s not just your eyes that can suffer strain, you can do a lot of damage to your spine if your posture is all wrong. Take a look at the posters on the Advanced Seating Designs web site if you want to read more. That is the end of this public service announcement.

One wonders in any case if it is all worthwhile. Imagine how Chris Dalrymple must have felt when he read the following post on the uk.music.folk newsgroup. I should first say that Chris runs the web site for Damien Barber, and had posted an announcement inviting people to have a look. This is what Andrew Wigglesworth had to say about the site.
“IF (please notice the IF) Damien has parted with good money (and hard earned for a folk musician) for this web site, then he should be asking for a refund. IF (please notice the if again) this has been put together by a “professional” then they ought to be ashamed. The code for the web site is a shocking mess, with strange effects on some pages. This is not up to standard... The basic design ideas are good (I do mean that), but you need to have someone run their eye over it to sort out the code, apply a whole raft of nesesary (sic) HTML standards etc.”
Andrew seems to be being careful not to hurt anyone’s feelings, bearing in mind the number of brackets he uses, but hurts them anyway. The web site does admittedly start to do strange things when viewed with the Netscape browser - not with Internet Explorer or Opera though - but “a shocking mess”? I don’t think so. The site is helpful, informative and easy to navigate - a lot more so than many others. There were several more responses to that effect in the newsgroup. What more does Andrew expect? And incidentally the site is maintained for free by Chris “in lunch hours at work”. He admits that the code is bad, but you don’t need to look at the code, just the site, which does largely what was intended, “to give info about Damien and what he’s up to”. No average viewer in his right mind sees the code anyway. He or she wants to read pages, get information, and perhaps be entertained, amused or provoked, and keep his phone bill down. Did I mention that I quite liked the site? (Online update 080208: Chris's site is long gone - Damien and his Demon Barbers can now be found here - I recommend a visit.)

With this in mind I’ve taken a look at several sites belonging to folk clubs in the Sussex area. If my own experience is anything to go by, these will be run by well-intentioned enthusiasts with a little too much spare time on their hands. The Famous Willows meets on Wednesdays in the pavilion at Arundel cricket club and has a good, welcoming site. Each page is relatively small, so is quick to download. The webmaster has taken the trouble to put photos and short biographies of their guests up, though I thought Derek Brimstone had more than an air of Allan Taylor about him, or perhaps he just looks more than good for his age. There is also a page listing the guests over the past five years, which is impressive, though with a little effort could have provided links to the artists’ web sites.

The 6 Bells Folk & Blues Club meets at Chiddingly, near Hailsham. Its web site includes helpful advice for potential floorsingers. It includes the all-important encouragement policy also followed at the Ram: “Don’t worry too much if a song goes wrong, re-start it or abandon it - it won’t be the end of the world. You might be kicking yourself but come along again next time and that time get it right.” A good policy to follow - and I speak from experience. And the site has the eminent good sense to include the Ram’s web site on its links page. Did I mention that I run the Ram Club’s web site? Online update 080208: Not any more, I don't.) The site for Horsham Folk Club sticks more or less to the one page and is little more than a flier - though if that’s its job it does it well. Chichester Folk Song Club meets at The Gribble Inn, Oving. Its site has a bit of information about its residents, but not much else. The Lewes Arms Folk Club has just a guest list and a list of workshops, along with a page of links.

The Wellington, Steyne Road, Seaford, goes into quite a lot of depth on the one page and carries large pictures. The Royal Oak has a good amount of information on guests and the policy of the club, but its pictures are also full-sized, so take a while to load. Far better the approach taken by the Harbour Sessions which meets at Southwick, West Sussex. (Online update 080208: Neither the sire nor the sessions appear to have survived.) It just has thumbnails on the main page, which you can click on to see the bigger picture. Mind you, the information on guests is a bit short, and when I looked there were some broken links to pictures.

The Lamb Folk Club meets on the first and third Wednesday of each month at the Lamb Inn, Old Town, Eastbourne. Or it list it did. I can only guess that it is still running, as if you click on the link to find out what’s on, the programme of events for 2001 is displayed. Which is the problem with web sites, as Damien Barber can tell you, as Mo Bradshaw still has a web site in his name on the web, which still gets picked up by search engines, but is also two years out of date. My thanks to Vic Smith for his Sussex Folk Guide site, which I used for the links to all the pages here. His monthly round-up is invaluable. Text only, a bit harsh on the colouring-in, but all the information you need.

So what have I learned in this trawl through the local area? In short, keep the information up-to-date, and make it quick to download. It’s so easy to persuade your readers to click away to another site if they get fed up waiting for pictures to appear, and you don’t want to give them that opportunity. Make the pics thumbnail - a smaller version - in the first instance, and the punter can click on the thumbnail if they want a better view. If they don’t, you’ve still got their attention. And always set the picture size on your html page, so the text will load into the page around the space without waiting for the picture to download. If you want to see a site which does it all wrong, go to Croydon Folk Club’s site. Everything there is in graphic format, even the text. It takes forever! And the webmaster is a friend of mine. I must have a word with him. (Online update 080208: I did and he ignored me - but since I now have broadband along with the rest of the civilised world (!) the site is fine.)

And did I mention that alcohol is bad for you? Mind you, it makes everything else seem bearable, so perhaps we can leave it be. It’s even quite good for back pain.

Bad luck and trouble, Roy Bailey, John Kirkpatrick, Paul Brady, Barbara Dickson and melody recognition

2008-02-07T09:17:00.000Z

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!

Blogs, farewell to Hamish Henderson, Alan Lomax and Fred Jordan, Joni Mitchell tunings, useless Wap phones and virtual hi-jacks

2008-02-03T22:12:00.001Z

Originally published in FoT Issue 93: Oct-Dec 2002

Tempus fugit when you’re having fun - which Sandy Denny so eloquently translated from the Latin as ‘Who knows where the time goes?’ And it seems the older you get, the quicker it fugits. I recently noticed that I have now been running the Ram Club’s web site for five years, which I thought was quite a long time until I realised I have been writing this column for six! But hold the applause - the reason I am drawing this to your attention, however much I may enjoy bathing in the warm glow of your good wishes, is that when I was proof-reading through the Ram’s links page, consisting of all those artists who have visited the club during that time, it struck me that what I was reading was a remarkable roll-call of the turn-of-the-Millennium folk scene - and not just from the UK - from the Albion Band to the Wrigley Sisters. So of course I thought I should do something about it. By the time you are reading this, I should have completed said project, which will be an alphabetical index of all the Ram’s guests since 1997 whether they have a web site or not, and if they do, a link to their site. If they don’t, you can check out the blurb heralding their visit. It could be quite useful to someone who is trying to make contact with, or find out a little more information about, an artist or band.

I don’t think I have mentioned blogs - otherwise known as web logs - in this column before. Though of course I might just have forgotten, which also seems to be happening more frequently. Blogs are effectively online journals, in which the writers sometimes do little more than shoot the breeze, but often also share with the reader links to web sites they have found interesting or provocative. In a way they are like the online version of a treeware column such as you are holding in your hands right now, except they are usually witty. Find one written by a folk enthusiast and you have a ready source of folk-related links. I have included a few examples in the panel at the end of this column. (Online update 030208: The blogs are here, here and here). I used to write one, until my ISP blocked uploads from anywhere other than its dial-up number, which is how blogs are invariably written, using freeware such as Blogger. So my blog is now written quarterly and first appears in “Folk on Tap”!

It’s been an annus horribilis for folk music royalty, what with the loss of Hamish Henderson, Alan Lomax and Fred Jordan. I dare say if it hadn’t been for Alan Lomax the repertoires in clubs up and down this country would be a lot smaller than they are. The Alan Lomax Collection web site is full of information about the man and his work, including his research papers and the Alan Lomax Archive. There are also links to relevant pages about topics such as folk music collecting, or how Lomax’s cutting-edge approach enabled the Coen Brothers to use a 1959 field recording by Lomax in their film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”. Being American, the site is pretty sophisticated. Being British, sadly Hamish and Fred are poorly represented on the Web.

I recently stumbled upon a couple of fascinating Joni Mitchell sites, Wally Breese’s very thorough fan site Joni Mitchell.com and the Joni Mitchell Discussion List. While I have always known Joni used a variety of open tunings, and have long been aware of her innovative yet under-rated technique, I have never really attempted to emulate her style of playing. What I wasn’t prepared for is the extraordinary variety of tunings she uses. And the best bit is - and this was completely new to me - she even uses her own notation system, and it is one which actually makes a lot of sense. Instead of writing out tunings using the note names for each string, she uses a letter for the pitch of the bass string, which is followed by numbers representing the fret numbers to which you tune the next string. So standard tuning EADGBE becomes E55545 and DADGAD becomes D75535. Bearing in mind this ties in with the way most of us tune our guitars, it is surprising this system isn’t used more often. Former classical guitarist Jim Leahy has compiled a list of the tunings for more than 90 Joni Mitchell songs for Wally Breese’s site. (Online update 030208: That link no longer works, but there is a database of Joni tunings here.) The Discussion List goes even further, with words and chords or tablature for 160 of her songs.

The autumn issue’s column by the way is the one I write each year while preparing to spend a couple of weeks in my low-tech caravan at the foot of a little piece of heaven on the Dorset coast otherwise known as Golden Cap. A pint of Palmers 200 in my favourite pub, the Telegraph crossword and a view of God’s own country by day, or another pint, the same crossword and local artists knocking out transatlantic folk and blues standards by night. Splendid. So I had an idea. I could write a paragraph or two about how useful my fancy new Wap phone is. Surely I could download song lyrics or guitar tunings. Forget it. Two years ago reviewers were complaining about how slow and how prone to collapse the system is, despite the heralding of this great innovation by the people who wanted us to buy them. More people would be accessing the Internet with Wap phones than with PCs, they insisted. Sadly, two years on, the system still stinks, and as a result not that many people are inclined to make their content available on it. What is the point of labouring over a web page if you know no-one can read it? The Internet grew out of a vast group of people sharing information. The text messaging boom grew out of a vast number of people wanting to communicate with each other. Then it all went horribly wrong. A few people realised they could make a lot of money by inventing a system where you could check your share prices on the train to work. How inventive. Anyway, I don’t expect to be able to locate anything useful for my guitar practice, kite flying or lying on the beach. Weather reports maybe - but then I can always find out what the weather is like by opening my eyes.

Finally, a word of warning. It is becoming quite common for web sites to be “hijacked”. This seems to have taken over from cyber-squatting, where someone would register a domain name such as www.folkontap.com - obviously a highly desirable cyber-residence - and wait for Sam to cough up. Some people have gotten away with it, some have not. With cyber-hijacking you need a little more patience, because you wait a couple of years for Sam to forget to renew his subscription and then you leap in and take over the name. And wait for Sam to cough up again. This is what happened among others to John Renbourn. His replacement site has bags of information, with exclusive merchandising of signed CDs, sheet music and of course live dates, as well as a particularly interesting section on John’s guitars. But of course it has had to be re-written more or less from scratch, because these hijacker chaps don’t tend to leave the pages around for you to copy. So the message is - don’t forget to pay the rent. Which reminds me...