ITM? What about ETM?!

Hiya sweet cheeks, just a query; I got an e-mail from Jeremy because I started a discussion saying ‘I’m a little boy with a BIG willy’ and he didn’t think it was relevant, (personally I think he’s just jealous). Anyway, in the e-mail it said only to start discussions if they’re relevant to Irish traditional music and I was just wondering if you thought it had to be Irish or whether other types of traditional music could be discussed as I’m more into English, Northumbrian, Scottish and Scandinavian music than Irish music so most of my discussions would be about them but I’m terrified I’ll get kicked off if I do so. What d’ya think?

Would love to ramble on about these but it depends on what Jeremy and other posters think.

They’ll have been gone over in previous discussions. The tendency of subjects to come round again is as regular as the phases of the moon.

Ah ok, thanks, I’ll try to search for the discussions in future to see if it’s already been discussed.

What about Scottish-Hybridised-Irish-Traditional-English music? What would the initials be?

tee he

From what I have seen, this site is about sessions in general, mostly Irish, but we have touched on a lot of musics over the year. So I for one have no problem with discussing other music traditions, especially those that are closely related to the Irish tradition. And this topic certainly is a big improvement over your previous thread…..

Actually, the only "official" comments from Jeremy I’ve seen which relate to Irish music are these

"The exchange of tunes is what keeps traditional Irish music alive. This website is one way of passing on jigs, reels and other dance tunes."

This doesn’t proscribe the inclusion of traditional music from other countries. I think it’s just an assumption that this site is supposed to be for mainly Irish tunes etc as

A) Jeremy himself plays Irish music
B)The majority of trad sessions around the world tend to be Irish.
C)The majority of musicians who check out this site play Irish music.

However, let’s not forget that there are also other kinds of sessions out there and *many* people..even Irish musicians.. will play tunes from other countries and cultures.

By the way, djones257, if you wanted to talk about a certain part of your anatomy you could have started a discussion about "Dick Gossip’s reel" or similar and introduced the topic this way.

There’s always subtle ways to get round the system here. 😉

I’ve just looked to see if there’s any English music equivalent to The Session, and there doesn’t seem to be - the nearest things I’ve found to the discussion forum here are those on Concertina.net and Melodeon.net.

Nicholas, you’ve identified the problem, and the solution is evident.
Any volunteers?

Here’s the solution… 3 simple words… Orange Blossum Special.

what about it?

I’m curious to see how long this discussion lasts…

don’t worry, djones- I’ve gotten grouchy emails from Jeremy like that too in the past..I think most of us have at one time or another…. 😉

I haven’t

nicholas - the reason for that is that nobody likes it - with the exception of a handful of smelly grumpy dysfunctional sad old men with personality disorders, Williams Syndrome or Aspergers Syndrome.



…we might get some replies, now……….

ligg, are you quite serious????

Williams Syndrome? Never heard of it - so that’s what’s been wrong with me all those years..apart from the other things on the list, of course..

OK, I’ll bite: I like English music. I’m not particularly old and I’m certainly not sad, but perhaps I am dysfunctional and occasionally smelly and/or grumpy. I don’t have a beard, either.

You again! 😛

"….. other types of traditional music could be discussed as I’m more into English, Northumbrian, Scottish and Scandinavian music …" Well I’d say that discussions for these could & should exist here, given that Irish Music has been influenced by them all, with the exception of perhaps Scandinavian music.

So all you have to do is discuss your chosen music’s topic with some sort of an ITM flavour.
So for example, you could look at how the Northumbrian Hornpipes have infiltrated, been adopted & become such a significan part of ITM, or how Scottish Music has been adopted & transmogrified by the Donegal dudes, or how the English Morris repertoire has …………. well, maybe not that, but you know what I’m getting at. The possibilities are endless .. have fun.

Oh, by the way - "… but I’m terrified I’ll get kicked off" - You can be sure of one thing - you’ll know exactly where he’ll kick you!
Envy is a terrible thing! 😉

With the scale of viking activity in Ireland, isn’t it possible that there is some common ancestry between Scandinavian and Irish traditional music?

Och of course, silly me, that’s obviously why Murphy, the Cow Horn Bugler at our session, just happened to be wearing a Horny Hat the other night - in honour of his Nordic ancestors! 😛

Rob - I like a fair number of English tunes as well. Smelly grumpy dysfunctional sad old men with personality disorders probably applies to me. I shouldn’t have used Asperger’s or William’s Syndromes as negative examples and I apologise for having done so. William’s Syndrome is not a fun condition: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/units/disorders/karyotype/williams.cfm
but at least those people who have it like music.

Yes, the Pats stole "The Boys Of North Tyne" and called it "The Boys Of Blue Hill", didn’t they? Northumbria’s finest went over to investigate but Chief O’Neill squared them with little difficulty and the tune remains in alien hands.

(Actually, that might be easier to believe if the tune bore any resemblance to any other Northumbrian hornpipe living or dead…)

Come to think of it, the 4/4 hornpipe is supposed to have kicked off in mainland Britain and was especially associated with Newcastle. The 1770 Vickers MS. contains one called The West Indian, very similar in feel to those James Hill was to write on Tyneside more than 50 years after.

Was that The Blue Boys of Hill?

You mean The North Lads of Tyne, Danny?

I never knew this was exclusively for ITM and don’t see the problem with chatting about ETM or STM or any other TM but as people have noted Jeremy is quite protective of what he considers ‘his’ website, so if what you submit doesn’t meet his standards then it’s not gonna get included.

As for submitting a discussion about your willy djones, you were asking for trouble there, Jeremy doesn’t seem to have much of a sense of humour when it comes to this site.

I submitted a mock event there called ‘The Great Session in the Sky’ featuring Willy Clancy, Seamus Ennis et al and he quickly took it down and sent me an angry email telling me to stop messing with his database! So I guess we’ve got to be careful with Jeremy who is a bit precious when it comes to this site I think, it’s become such an open forum it’s a shame there has to be censorship on it, but what can you do?

I wonder how long this post will last!!!

What is the problem? This is Jeremy’s site. He designed it, runs it, is responsible for its content. He can do what he likes with it, including scrapping it. We are lucky to have such a resource and someone dedicated enough to put it together.

As far as postings on here. I am sure Jeremy would be happy for threads discussing Scottish, English, Welsh or Scandanavian music and so forth. As long as it links in with the tradition then you are on good ground. Ask yourself: Would you hear/see what you are posting in an Irish session/concert./album, etc. If the answer is yes then it is relevant.

If you post something about your apendage being really great then you are liable to trip up. :-S Likewise threads along the line of - "Just so you know, I am really great."

If the thread descends into politics or becomes too hostile then it will be deleted. I have certainly lost comments due to threads being deleted. Sometimes I would have rather the thread stayed but that is not my call. I do appreciate though that by controlling this site quite tightly it helps it stay on track and avoids it becoming flooded with adverts for grunge music or penis pumps (sorry if this fails the automatic censor).

I am certainly fed up with messages on Myspace like:

"Hey, I have just signed up for this new site. It is exactly like Myspace but far better. You get to meet lots of like-minded people who are interested in meeting you, for fun and other stuff. I am going to delete my Myspace site and go there instead." etc etc etc

This is a good resource lets not waste it.

Alistair

P.S. The problem with events like "The Great Session in the Sky" is that there will be a rush of folk at airports all over America trying to get a ticket. 😀

I agree that Jeremy has put together a great site and he deserves credit for it, the only thing with Jeremy is that he can be quite rude in the way he deals with you if you do something he doesn’t like, even if it is a genuine mistake in submitting something or if you are trying to have a harmless laugh. It’s fair enough for him to give abuse to someone who puts something very offensive on here but I don’t think many people do that.

So I think Jeremy deserves a lot of credit for setting this resource up and I’m sure it’s hard work keeping it going, I just wish he’d lighten up a bit, for someone running a site primarily for traditional Irish music, he doesn’t really seem to understand Irish humour.

Irish humour does not equal idiocy!

That comment is not aimed at anyone in particular. There is nothing wrong with wanting a database that is accurate and reliable though or a discussion forum that is pleasant and relevant. Stuff is not deleted that often but when it is it tends to come in waves with nothing deleted for a while and then lots at once as silliness overtakes the forum.

If Jeremy was very strict then "Twit" would not have lasted two posts.

Totally right in both your last two posts, NCFA.

And I’m with you, I think, in saying we should be very grateful indeed that Jeremy is prepared to maintain this site … and also that he’s prepared to police it, and in a relatively moderate way.

And I mean the above toally genuinely … even though I could also do with the brownie points. 🙂

OHMIGOD frisbee you made me laugh sooo hard with the Great Session In the Sky thing….I never saw it when you put it up, but ahh that’s hilarious!! and what’s worse right now is that i’m on a public computer right now and folks are giving me wierd looks cuz i keep laughing at all the hilarious stuff you all are posting…
keep it up!

god save thy spleen!!

Okay, Mr djones, you’ve drawn me out on this subject. I like English trad, and Scottish trad, but I would honestly like to be able to come here and know that the discussion are going to be Irish music related.

If somebody starts a good forum on English trad or for that matter eclectic trad then I might enjoy going there and discussing that. My feeling about forums like these is that if the topic is kept more specific it will attract and hold the interest of more members who are knowledgeable and/or deeply interested in that topic.

Americans can already get tickets for the Great Session in the Sky. I think they are called draft cards.
And another correction: the hornpipe under discussion is the Boys of Hill Street Blues.

You can talk about Northumbrian/English/Scottish/Irish tunes pretty freely without risking offending anyone. There’s so much overlap among the "traditions." Just don’t mention anyone with the surname Rusby or Carthy or anyone else who thinks they’re God’s gift whilst simultaneously singing affectedly down their nose. 😀 This wouldn’t be a great place to get heavy about Morris either.

Maurice ? Who said he was putting on weight ?
Is that why the roof of his British Leyland car is dented in, from all the Maurice dancing ?
Don’t knock Morris Dancing. Apparently it is exempt from the music licence aspect of the new Licensing Act, so if you are playing in an unlicensed pub, them tie a bell around each knee, and say you are a morris dancer, and they can’t touch you for it !

Well I am not really a fan of either Carthy but what is wrong with Kate Rusby? She has a great voice. Don’t know about the God’s Gift comment though - I presume you must know her personally to declare that. Otherwise…

I find myself clenching my ample buttocks whenever I hear Ms Rusby singing in that awful twee Yorkshire accent for more than two minutes. Cloying or what. Mind you, I hate Parky too, and I am after all a Lancastrian. That’s probably my problem. It’s only my opinion and I respect your right to differ.

Now Pete, I can hardly comment on Morris dancing. I know for a fact that members of two or more rival sides who know where I live will be reading whatever I say, and these people can turn pretty violent, you know…😉

I thought all the British Leyland cars had fallen to pieces on the motorway yonks ago, to judge by the two Allegros I’ve driven.

I like the singing of KR, aka The Barnsley Nightingale, except for the fact she makes all her songs, from shanties to weepies to ballads, sound the same.

You know that KR has an electric fan on stage to blow her hair?

There are lots of wonderful ETM tunes, Mrs Saggs, Jump at the Sun, Woodland Frolics, to name a few, and lots of good English sessions at festivals such as Chippenham, Sidmouth, Swanage, and Whiby. I play all sorts of music, English,Scottish, Irish, French, Scandinavian, American, I just enjoy playing beautiful tunes,All cultures have a musical heritage which should be explored

Kate Rusby has a brilliant voice! How can you possibly think someone is bad when they manage to attract musicians like Ian Carr, John McCusker and Andy Cutting to their band?! Never really heard enough Eliza Carthy to judge her music but she’s a very nice person 🙂

And I agree with David, there’s never much discussion of English music on the website and we’re over looking brilliant players like Andy Cutting, Julian Sutton, Kathryn Tickell etc.

You might be able to guess I’m a bit of an Andy Cutting fan…

Chris Wood and Andy Cutting were the absolute dog’s danglies in their heyday, and Andy’s collaboration with Julie Murphy in Fernhill was magic (though that was slightly Welsh). Count me in the fan club with you!

I have a much-cherished recording of my then 12-year-old son playing the bodhran with Wood ‘n’ Cutting in the Tree Inn folk club in 1993. 😀

The first time I met Andy Cutting was in a session at Wimbourne many years ago.He was stood listening when someone gave him a box and asked him to play a tune.My mate Nigel Churchill, who plays box and is a big fan of John Kirkpatrick, was most impressed and asked him how long he’d been playing. He said a couple of years " I saw you playing a few years ago and thought that looks an interesting instrument" His one claim to fame

ETM’s really come on technically with the growing up of younger people who learned to play early in life, often with "folkie" parents. In the Seventies there were plenty of very good guitarniks, but it took longer for fiddlers, bagpipers and melodeon players to catch up - the latter two instruments were still waiting re-invention by enthusiasts and clued-up manufacturers.

(Well, the standard Hohner DG melodeon was OK for playing Morris, but not a very good instrument for fast stuff - and I don’t mean by that that there are no fast bits in Morris!)

Ha I know - it’s pretty impossible to play fast bits on a DG Hohner! I think organisations like Folkworks have done a lot to help the situation of ETM as well. I learnt the melodeon through a folkworks project and then my parents got into it through me! There seems to be more development happening in ETM at the moment, though I haven’t been to Ireland in a while so I couldn’t say for sure! Is this the case? Is it that ETM is moving forward more while ITM is more stationary?

I think ETM has been more up for grabs than ITM, because so few traditional players and singers were left when the folk revival kicked in. Except maybe in Morris there was no burly guardian of tradition saying what you should or shouldn’t do with the material. There wasn’t a huge repertoire of tunes which had been played, and recorded, for generations.

The over-maligned English Folk Dance And Song Society predates Comhaltas and has done a huge amount of research and collection. But it hasn’t got political clout and hasn’t tried to control the folk revival - has probably never wanted either of these things. But its resources will have helped many performers.

Individuals and bands have recast chunks of the tradition in their own image from one generation to another. Ewan MacColl was the prototypal hand-over-the-ear unaccompanied singer, and wanted folk to serve the left-wing cause; Fairport Convention - couldn’t be more different, fey folk-rock; The Oyster Band in the 80s - post-punk folk with the classic English 4/4 rock beat and grungey lyrics (very exhilarating live); and so on, so people generally have very different ideas about what English folk is, according to which performer/ band they’ve encountered in what decade.

A friend gave me some ETM downloads recently, mainly melodeon and concertina; pleasant background music but a lot of the tunes rather dull and samey. ITM has fewer dull tunes per hundred, in my experience.

A lot of French tunes have been coming in, possibly pioneered by Blowzabella (1980s); and throughout the folk revival a huge number of good (and also not-so-good) songs and tunes have been written in traditional styles or on traditional themes. John Kirkpatrick’s Jump At The Sun, mentioned above, could easily have come from Playford, if it hadn’t come from John Kirkpatrick.

I collected some Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, Pentangle, Sandy Denny & John Renborn albums in the early 70’s. I also liked Jethro Tull and Traffic. I was living in Illinois at the time. Clannad was the first Irish album I could get my hands on……. after that the Chieftains and Bothy Band, of course. For some reason Irish albums were hard to come by before that.
Speaking of the session in the sky…….. you know the joke about the guy in Heaven who decided to go down to Hell to play with the great Irish players? He was having a grand time until they got to The Old Favoite jig……. and they kept playing the end over and over dge dge dge dge.

Anybody heard John Kirkpatrick / Sue harris album Facing the Music, wonderful English tunes. Why isn’t it available on CD

"Ha I know - it’s pretty impossible to play fast bits on a DG Hohner! "

Have a listen to the late Simon Melia playing irish tunes on his pokerwork Hohner DG: http://www.acrosstheborders.com.au/cdshop-melia.htm

That’s certainly impressive.

Hmm… to be honest I’m just not a fan of the clicking noises it makes when you play a pokerwork.

Great music dogbox, thanks for posting it.

Squeezyjoe, I’m sorry but I just don’t agree with you. Those clicking noises are as much a part of the instruments sound as the notes themselves. To remove those would be like editing out those lovely little gasps you hear when Pipers & Concertinas are played or those scrapes & scratches you hear from plectrum toting string players. They are also, for me, akin to the scratches you hear on old 78’s & LPs too for that matter.

I prefer my music to sound real, warts & all!

I think that’s why some CDs just don’t work for me ….. they have been sanitised!

Agreed. Just compare clean-as-a-whistle John Williams with warts-and-all Julian Bream. I know whom I prefer!

Ah thanks for reminding me Steve. Examples:

John Williams:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPfZVflJdp0

play video

Julian Bream:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUT-2tU2Yk

play video

& Two Masters at work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeHJ1DxjnSY&mode=related&search=

play video

Wonder if they ever tried a Planxty?

But melodeons like Castagnari don’t have the clicking noises - are you saying that when you play tunes on there it’s not the real thing? I just prefer the clean sound personally… But the player is amazing on the video!

I rate June Tabor very highly- saw her the other night with Andy Cutting and Mark Emerson. Eclectic in her choice of material (French, Irish, Scottish inputs, as well as English), extremely well-versed in the origins and meaning of the songs, and that voice… sheer quality. In my view, simply the best.