475: Folk (English)

When Stewart Lee talks, about anything really, I listen. Occasionally he will put out a radio documentary about something or other, interesting to himself, and I will think ooh that's interesting and follow along with piqued interest. His 2005 episode of the radio show Chain Reaction where he interviewed graphic novel author Alan Moore was almost solely responsible for creating my interest in Moore's output, and in modern graphic novels as a whole. Before that my interest in comics had dwindled as I grew up and left Asterix, Tank Girl, and Beano/Dandy behind me. Thank you Mr. Lee.

Watching his Mastermind appearance with the specialist subject of improvisational guitarist Derek Bailey, helped push along my re-interest in Captain Beefheart and its companion interest in avant garde and general weirdness. Stewart Lee's radio documentary White Face, Dark Heart, on the obscure phenomena of the Hopi Native American Clown Ceremony during which the nominated clowns break all normal conventions of behaviour, got me interested in the intellectualisation of the base nature of comedy (or whatever): stuff is funny... why... Anyway, point I'm trying to make is that Stewart Lee is interesting, interested in disparate subjects, and able to make strange and unexpected subjects exciting.

Stewart Lee's latest radio documentary is It's Got Bells On, part of Radio 2's Dance Season, is on the subject of Morris, rapper sword, clog, and other forms of traditional English folk dancing. Now, I must at this point state that I am a Morris dancer; it's true. OK, it's not true, but it once was. At primary school we did a Morris dance and performed it at Lancaster town hall, probably circa 1989. We had little white costumes, like cricketers but you know cool. Bells on our knees, and wooden sticks we clashed together like sparring martial artists. That fact allows me to say I was doing it before it was cool; so fuck you hipsters. Etc.

Strange how English folk is uncool (except amongst mustachioed hipsters who are all to aware of its cool/uncool paradox, and people interested in steam trains who are oblivious to coolness), yet American folk and Irish folk is very cool, and other traditional forms of World music are always popular. English folk, especially Morris music seems highly accordion based. To me this is very reminiscent of shanties, chanties, sea music. England was a seafaring nation; Ireland wasn't. Maybe the distaste for English folk is a kind of post-colonial guilt. Perhaps it is part of the same phenomena that makes a traditional fish n chips hard to find whereas Chinese food, curry, pizza, burger and fries, and even sushi are incredibly easy to find. The fact that so many "full English" breakfasts are missing the black pudding.

As with anything now, in order to make old things relevant again, the go-to cliched way is to mix everything with hip hop elements. As with English folk, clog dance has been mixed with hip hip dance. The documentary has led me to Time Gentleman Please, a recent collaborative effort 'tween cloggers and hip-hoppers, and watching the following video it works so amazingly unexpectedly well. It shows how hip-hop and folk are both raw, improvised, un(high)cultured, competitive.

So at this moment, while its firmly in my mind I am totally pro-Morris, pro-English folk. I want a big tankard of ale and some bells for my knees. Let's, in all seriousness, have 5000 Morris dancers for the opening ceremony of London 2012.

280: In which I post many videos of Murder Ballads.

Illustration by Arthur Rackham of The Twa Corbies

Murder Ballads are a traditional folk music form depicting a murder and possibly also the events leading up to and after the event.  Possibly the most famous folk song in this genre is Bob Dylan’s Hurricane which I haven’t included here as copyright stuff is keeping Dylan off YouTube.  Hurricane tells the story of boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter who was wrongly convicted for a triple murder.

The Wikipedia article on Murder Ballads is pretty short, but sums the whole thing up fairly well, and if you want to read more, many were collected and researched by some fellow called Francis J. Childs (1825-1896), and published many years ago as the Child Ballads (wiki).

It’s not a subject I can pretend to know much about, but I do know what I like, and simple grim tunes about death seem to be right up my street.  And I’m not the only one.  Look at the popularity of hip hop, from N.W.A. to whoever the kids are bumping to nowadays; swearing, and rip=rapping about guns, n all that.

For all the right reasons I have collected together a huge swathe of YouTube videos representing many different Murder Ballads, and of course including two tracks from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Murder Ballads album.  Gorge yourself to death on all that follows:

150: Ticky Tacky

Just one more day at work, stretching out further ahead than I care to contemplate, and then I’m away for Christmas.  Two long weeks of alcoholic inactivity, festivity and holly and ivy, and stuff.  It feels like weeks since I last wrote a blog post but it’s actually just one long day stretching behind me further than I can remember.  I can barely remember how to write; the basics of sentence structure, syntax, punctuation...  I’ve heard those words before, I think, but what do they mean?  Critical error, restart, sleep.  Can’t think cos I just have the refrain from Little Boxes going around and around in my head.  It’s a super smashing great old folk song I loved as a kid.  I never paid any attention to the words back then, but hearing it now the words are fantastic.

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky...

And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf-course,
And drink their Martini dry,
And they all have pretty children,
And the children go to school.
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same.

And the boys go into business,
And marry, and raise a family,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same...

I wasn’t going to print that all, but decided I might as well stick it in.  It has a hint of cloying cuteness, but it coyly masks a face twisted with rage against mediocrity.  Listen to the original (with spotify) by Malvina Reynolds here, and the fantastic cover by Devendra Banhart here.  PS Spotify Open is available again for free users; if you don’t have it get it here.  I think this song has leapt back into my mind, from the depths of my childhood, in response to the waves of identical over-privileged families that make up my customers... but enough about that...

So anyway what can I say that isn’t about work, the customers, my lack of brain activity, or sleep?  Shouldn’t talk about Christmas too much otherwise what would I write about on Christmas day?  I’ll just line up the American classics of folk and country on spotify and let my imagination take me to a time and place I know nothing about.   If I get to far away with my imagination there are always the adverts for Barclaycard and Wilkinson’s to remind me where I am and who I am.

Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos), Committed to Parkview, American Remains, Born and Raised in Black and White, Angels Love Bad Men, Desperados Waiting for a Train, Highwayman.  I don’t care what idiotic negative preconceptions you have about Country and Western; if you don’t love these songs your opinion on everything, from politics to food to your own family, is worthless.  I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve heard people say ‘I love all kinds of music, except Country and Western’.  Yeah, and I love all kinds of people, except you.  Country isn’t some bland uniform blob that can be entirely tarnished with the same crap.  It is massive, complicated, brilliant, rubbish, simplistic, varied and evolving.  If you say ‘I don’t like Country,’ what I hear is ‘I am entirely unable to make differentiations between good and bad in a genre I am unfamiliar with, and as a result must make a sweeping negative stereotype in an quivering cowering attempt to push my own inadequacies away from myself’.  Word for word; that is what I hear.  Word?

What was I talking about before that digression in defence of Country?  Oh yeah, nothing much.  Anyway, Country doesn’t need defending.  It can stand up for itself.  It’s not one of those weak house-of-card concepts that need defending by rabid fanatics terrified of dissidents and critics.  You know like religion or god.  Night.