“Has there ever been a musical genre as prickly and suspicious of mainstream success as English folk?” asks Alexis Petridis of the Gaurdian. He continues.. “Battered by decades of public mockery, folkies understandably pulled up the drawbridge and developed a fiercely protective siege mentality long ago. The merest hint of wider interest in one of their artists and they’re filling their pewter tankards with bile and singing sell-out in harmony.”
When someone claimed as a folky crosses the line of purity the backlash is biting.No matter what dues the individuals have paid to folk; their duty, for some, is to avoid at all cost the temptation to become popular, or even different. Seth Lakeman has just made the mistake of getting an album into the charts and suffered a lashing from the lot up at the Mudcat Cafe folk forum as is the norm whenever a folk musician does something that brings a hint of commercial success. At the last count, there were 290 messages on the thread, from the gushing opener “great news for folk music” through to “he’s crap” variations, including this classic putdown:
“Seth Lakeman has sold over 100,000 CDs to people who mostly don’t give a toss about folk music.His songs are currently heard by several million listeners tuning in to Radio 2.
multiply the figures by ten (or more) and you could be talking about Kylie! Cor, what a recommendation!
Coming to his defense by way of a lengthy posting was none other than Eliza Carthy, who has had her fair share of bleatings from the purists. You can read the whole shambles here, but for now an excerpt where she firmly points out:
“The man is from a folk music-playing family,writes in a modern folk music style, on acoustic instruments, about the area where he is from-why on Earth isn’t it folk music? What the hell else is it? Why are some of you people so narrow minded about this? Honestly, why and how do you think to define him out of “your” chosen arena simply because you don’t like what he does? What precious, horrible arrogance.”
She has just signed up again with Topic and already her new self penned C.D. release ‘Dreams Of Breathing Under Water’ have caused those toxic tongues to wag. Here’s a clip and interview snip
So said English novelist Cathy Hopkins. I could quite happily strangle her this morning as I wake to the ‘Lord of Hangovers’ and that quote framed all Victorian like, staring at me from the opposite wall.
The plan was to spend the weekend fishing way out in the harbour, meander around small islands and have a bit of a barbie at the end of the day. Mistake No1 was a bottle of Jaegermeister. Mistake No2 was drinking it! Who drinks that stuff? I thought we were going to use it to polish the brass work not swallow it…….
It’s a long weekend here in New Zealand. There’s an excellent folk festival held down in Wellington . A great atmosphere with a good deal of music, singing, and the odd home brew concert thrown in. I also like the Glistening Waters Storytelling Festival held in Masterton. A weekend of sharing stories, laughter and the odd glass of sherry. But I’ve chosen to spend this Labour Weekend with a couple of old friends from out of town. Looking back, I wish they’d stayed out.
I’m in a boat bobbing about in the ocean. We’ve only been here two hours and I’ve already lost count how many time I’ve thrown up . I briefly consider throwing myself over along with my morning tea, welcoming the ocean water into my lungs allowing it to carry me away from all this. Instead I chunder once more.
The trip out is fine. We stop for a few supplies and beverages, chatting to the locals about lovely weather, as you do, and how it might get a little choppy later. Outside people are streaming up the hill from the direction of the ferry building as the early morning joggers jog their healthy way home. As we pull away from the jetty and into the morning sun I watch the city shapes dissapear and look forward to a few days peace and good fishing. Cruising along I’m as happy as Popeye chuckling to myself and enjoying the air.
“Do you fancy a Jaergbomb mate?”
“What’s that then ?”
” A shot glass of the old jaegermeister there dropped into a pint glass of Red Bull…. it’ll set you up for the day mate”
It’s late morning by the time I open my eyes and the lads have had the rods out since sun up. I can see them from the window of the hostel where they dropped me off last night. We’d drunk the bottle and more plus half a box of chateu cardboard. The end of the world wasn’t nigh …. it had arrived. Staying on board any longer for me was totally out of the question so they’d crewed me ashore and set me up in this small hostel to die. I suppose I never really got over my first experience of a hostel. I’d stayed in one in North Yorkshire the first year I started touring and arrived alongside a bus load of Italian schoolboys, we were all in the same dormitory. I remained awake for the next 72 hours whilst the ‘Italian Stallions’ wore off their pent up testosterone by running through the building screaming ……….in Italian! On the third day I broke the spell at 3am picking up a baseball bat, screaming at them they were bastards, throwing the bat at the wall where it caught a fire extinguisher setting it off in a rush of foam. I thought it was a disaster but they thought it was ‘coolio’ and shut down till I left the following day.
Since then I’ve always avoided hostels. telling myself they’d be full of over friendly hikers with creases in their shorts or young hip backpackers swapping girlfriends. Downstairs the reception is staffed by two plump young women who appear to live solely on fried food. One of them takes me through to a small dining room with white stucco walls and plastic flowers on each table. Today there are only two other guests both with their backs to me which suits me fine. I can’t stand small talk at the best of times…… and this is not even close to one of those.
“Full breakfast is it?”
I nod for some reason, thinking that I’ve got to get something nourishing into me after losing all of the previous days meals overboard. I hear the loud ping of a microwave, always a show stopper, and she presents me with a red hot plate of hard fried eggs looking for all the world like tiny silicone breasts and semi raw twisted bacon. I can’t face the food and ask for tea. She returns with one of those silver teapots well known the world over for pouring more tea onto the table cloth than into the cup. I have a sudden Jaegermeister flashback and a sea of nausea hits me. I pay by bill say goodbye to the fried food twins and hurry back down to the beach. The lads spot me and wave . ” No rush ” I shout……. and sink into the sand. I’m about as keen to get back on the boat as I was to eat the breakfast.
I was pleased to get this link to an article cleverly masked with an ad for the Marriott hotel, (wasn’t pleased to get that so persevere) about recordings of shanties made in the 1920’s. On the whole the Carpenter family descendants seemed fairly happy with the day out but if folk music is not their thing I’m not sure how much of a discovery they realized had come to hand. I so wish I had recorded my own father singing over the years. Both he and my grandfather were wonderful singers but sadly I never did anything about it till the old man was in his nineties, living in a nursing home and losing his memory, which is fairly useful if you’re attempting to recall lyrics. At that stage he could only remember one song which he repeated every ten minutes or so much to the annoyance of everyone in ear shot apart from the Alzheimers cases who thought they’d never heard it before and called out ” Be good Charlie and give us another one”
Listening to the singers got me feeling all nostalgic and maudlin about ‘regrets’ how my family history is not on any form of recorded documentation and how easily, after we’ve gone, we can slip beneath the waves ….forgotten.
To cheer up I tootled around and came across this strange and bizarre story of a man who had cut off his penis and no, before you ask, he wasn’t a seaman, just some disgruntled customer who took it through to the kitchen just in time for the police to arrive. (where he was going to tell the chef to stick it remains unclear) but to brighten my day again was this gem!!
