Freak folk facts

Posted on 18/02/2016 by admin

I don’t know any. As I gather, musicians use acoustic instruments but take their songs and performances into unusual directions. To this end, in repurposing recent samples here, we can see that We’ll Take Them In has the subject matter for a conventional folk song but the lyrical approach that is both dense ‘We’ll absorb the orb of their undoing’ and has multiple points of indeterminacy.

Rather than being a combined voice that a political event can get behind, the first verse is a clumsy reach to understanding and sympathy and the second is both self-condemnation and a lash out at other ways. It then leaps again, in the third verse, to the viewpoint of those captives who are just to glad to experience freedom but ends with a couplet that examines the debate itself and what fuels it.

Would this be freak folk if you played it on a guitar and a set of bongos, or would it constitute something different again? I think the subject matter gives it the license it needs to remain in the freakier fields of folk. We’ve been crying out for that old firebrand folk that picks up on issues and it wasn’t like you could escape it; other premiers got on board and there were protest groups spouting up on street corners across the region. Whether the folk groups are okay with the ambiguity is another matter.

There’s a couple of Berkoisms that threaten the plain speaking of folk rock in Barbed Wire Blues. I deliberately chose an object from my childhood in the broader landscape and wanted to use it literally rather than to, say, engage in a metaphor for the plight of those asylum seeker children or – stretching it further – a kind of mental imprisonment. And there is a rambling feel that is troubled at the same time.

It is the double meaning of the third verse that freaks the folk then the fourth eases out of it only to freak out completely in the fifth. I mean, what the heck does ‘I’m green to the mean‘ mean, man?

III

Careful of the Freak

Hail the hairlip let the truth slip  
grasp what you clasp close in your grip
Sneak up on the snaggletooth
wagers in stages the solemn sleuth 

Jumps at the bumps leaps at the lumps
packs in acts all wearing pumps
Jaws that jut and see sore strut
The reason you'll find you're anything but
Shiny dome in gnomic pose
tip of ear to bridge of nose
In tatters that matters
a taste for waste and seldom chaste
The guidance of the guards replaced

The nurses in nightsweat have noticed   
the way that they fit in the photos
Clubfoot closeness humpback humility
what harm to the charm of humanity

Revival tenterhooks

Posted on 08/02/2016 by admin

When I read about the American and British folk revival(s) it does get me thinking that I am a listener and not a composer. All of my information is second hand; either through the media saturation or visitors from those climes.

I did, however, write a song based on the Victorian premier stating he would take in the refugees. It takes its title from this and is called We’ll Take Them In

We’ll Take Them In

We'll absorb the orb of their undoing
a little bit of what they've been through-ing
We're in such a state
where we can relate
 so we'll take them in

We'll redirect the rude aspect
Negotiated as benign neglect
The faith you hold a bride's scold
which culture could you   leave in the cold
 so we'll take them in

No mistaking free for fear
in that sense where we can disappear
It's that incessant intersect
both sides saying they protect

Faux crock

Posted on 23/01/2016 by admin

I already feel as though Terse, which is a poem, and Lived Experience have a strong dose of anti-folk without knowing it, but that was always going to happen.

If I was meant to be more influenced by Michele Shocked than Pete or Peggy Seeger then I wasn’t aware of this. As for folk rock, well let’s see if the next piece manages to meet the mandate

Barbed Wire Blues

It's one way to get nimble
as you scramble for safety
through all of these obstacles
Out there barbed wire

in coils and strands
tightened neck height
and hidden 
barbed wire

It's mostly how we negotiate
where barbed wire is drawn straight
relay across hills so we relate

It's getting inbetween & not being caught up
not being stuck in a chorus of fuck
boots best placed planted astride
barbed wire

If someone can lift it off
though I'm green to the mean 
I wouldn't wager my wage on the gauge
or even settle over metal
barbed wire

Filk if

Posted on 22/01/2016 by admin

There are too many genres to canvas. Electronic alone would take over the entire blog. I hadn’t heard of this folk variant but apparently it’s played at sci fi and fantasy conventions and combines traditional folk instruments with an electronic keyboard. Sometimes it overlays themed lyrics using existing tunes but not always.

I don’t propose to write with any melody in mind as that is counter to how I work but I can certainly work with a large bank of comic book material stored away.

Let’s bypass The Flash and Wolverine and anyone else who has seeped into the mainstream as that no longer specifies the song as filk.

Heck with it, filk isn’t always science fiction or fantasy themed, let’s just roll

Terse

Creators were grateful  
when their creatures came good
Finely limned or lit up on screen
behaving the way they should

Artists have parted
the red, see, the green brown and blue
Colourists clarify 

Producers do so directors reflect
a stand-in's understanding
a pop culture prop assault

Vanity projects itself
with inspiration straight off the shelf
veterans can do nothing but watch

Folk: us

Posted on 16/01/2016 by admin

Folk music exists around the world and maintains its currency regardless of changes in musical fashion. That is, the whole globe continues to produce musical outfits that could reasonably be described as folk-oriented.

But there is no point in attempting to learn the entire cultural backdrop and different instruments when folk has at its base lived experience. We write about a place we traverse with people we recognise. Only historical reconstructions put the lie to that. And folk music is big on celebrating and documenting the past.

But, right, there is something that ‘clicks’ (in Australia’s case, shears 🙂 )

We’ve just looked at skiffle and that’s a kind of folk music. Then, for we colonials, there are Irish, Scots and Welsh folk songs aplenty. Let’s write one of those songs that is not going to satisfy any of these categories – even if accidentally

Lived Experience

I've felled forests fallowed fields 
I've worked like a jerk for minimum yield
Breaking my back and stretching my neck out
Design in my spine is there til I check out
this lived experience

The best that we can be
is the test as you can see
we make the most of mystery
it's a lived experience

A force that courses through
when they cancelled that taboo
choose who she chews
chews who she choose
set as lived experience

I've moved mountains measured mounds
I've sorted my surrounds
Bracing my shoulders facing my foes
Yes it's keeping me on my toes
such a lived experience

Scofflaw skiffle

Posted on 05/01/2016 by admin

Yet another piece that works as a song (though more as a poem) but not as an exemplar of the music genre that informs it.

Skiffle is another genre strong on narrative storytelling. Bands like Herman’s Hermits struck me as having remnants of the genre and, if Ray Davies wasn’t a genius, one could even point to influences on his songwriting.

It’s too knockabout to be so far above the chimney pots. It wouldn’t know what to do with dense allusion and words turning in on themselves, and neither should it have to. It doesn’t need changing; it’s already a curio.

I’m thankful this boom tish has been preserved but I’m not sure if we’d still see the appeal of songs about dustmen and window cleaners anymore than we’d watch On The Buses for more than nostalgia.

Current songwriters only have claim to Now since that is when they are active. The present is turning into the past as reliably as always, and this makes the poem or song age instantly; sometimes even before it’s complete.

The movement from past, present, future are all intrinsic parts of songwriting armoury. The fact that you can cover vast tracts of time in the space of a song is most useful.

The quality of music being produced in each era cannot be said to travel in one direction of time’s arrow.

III

Hoverboard Blues

Someone fetched the future 
and found this in the flames
bought a hoverboard for Christmas
and it set the house alight

All things bright and beautiful 
should not be left plugged in
recharging when not in use

Someone stretched the truth but not this time
It really was a hoverboard in the kids room
Who'd ever thought
How high does it hover?

The fireman warned us after the fact
our research said it was safe
we thought it  would be
harmless fun
Someone fetched the future 
 but we were trapped in frames                                     If we could have escaped by hoverboard oh wait

A scuffle at the scaffold with skiffle playing

Posted on 28/12/2015 by admin

Skiffle was a little before my time. What you see in Them Blinkin’ Jets is that, despite choosing an approach and a title that superficially reflect skiffle, a poem emerges that relies on its own pattern to tell its story. Here the device is in the ‘sendin jets’ line whereas surely a skiffle group would feel compelled to put the title to good use. Subtlety is not a byword for skiffle.

The ‘endin jets’ pattern falls down in any case on that ‘that’s us end in jets’ line; clumsy enough to draw the listener’s attention to the device. A real no-no.
Here though it’s just a matter of editing. The stanza would then read

Pose for a product that costs like a planet
breaks the sound barrier by request
worth the existing infrastructure
lets us end in jets

I know there’s risk here because one could read too literally into what or how it ‘lets us end in jets’. Perhaps one cannot invoke the ‘being allowed to/being given permission to’ element without it distracting or detracting from the rest of the message.
But ‘thats us end in jets’ will never fly

Let’s try another approach

Pose for a product that costs like a planet
breaks the sound barrier by request
worth the existing infrastructure
intents end in jets

Too dramatic and not what I was thinking of so

Pose for a product that costs like a planet
breaks the sound barrier by request
worth the existing infrastructure
interests end in jets

Again with the Cowpunk

Posted on 13/11/2015 by admin

The problem with the previous effort is that what starts out being a mildly novel take on the naming of US states, the roadtrip song, and ends up sounding more like the cross between an oily crooner and a fratboy than anything cowpunk could throw up.

That doesn’t mean we need to abandon this taxing subject. It’s just sometimes not the best move to be led by the pun.

Folk is interested in the plight of the commoner when the rich are not paying their share and punk is angry at the system. Country could certainly canvass the application of tax on fresh food since their audience are the growers.

Is there more of a rootin’ tootin’ angle to take on tax? It’s not the most promising subject since no one wants to be reminded why they’re already so down when they’re getting down.

Very Taxing Times

They tax the air
of my despair
The circled oircus isn't fair
These are very taxing times

They tax the packs
of fictive acts
suggestive tracts
selective facts

They take a part of every art
chart the ads add to the cart
saw before it starts to smart
Very taxing times 

They press the button get their cut in
on the lam dressed as mutton
shoulders back and suck your gut in
Very taxing times

They leave some figures at your door
Accounts amount a numbered score
saying you'll be paying more
in these very
taxing times

Cowpunk

Posted on 06/11/2015 by admin

Tempering the maudlin and sentimental of country and the snottiness and aggro of punk while bursting with its own energy, this is a form to be reckoned with.

Let’s fit in the constraints of our former approach of letting outside events choose our subject matter or inspiration for a song. For instance, taxes are in the news. Another ‘great big new tax’ but lets just play with this idea

Start with a couplet

They tax us in Texas We never a tenner see in Tennesee

and then you just somehow build

I let a lass go in Alaska in the end Idaho

Alt who goes there

Posted on 31/10/2015 by admin

I Can’t Be Scene 2 could be alt-country because it uses familiar heartbreak territory from traditional country and blends it with imagery a little wilder and at turns whimsical.

Alt-rock is exemplified in It’s Your Loss

See if you agree

I Can’t Be Scene 2

I can be the opening shot
on some as yet empty lot
I can draw you out or I can draw you in
beg something big for the chance to begin

But I can't be scene 2
fall apart
I can't be scene 2
 return to start

I can advance the plot
 be something that I'm not
Emerge unscathed with this demiurge 
the hour is now a powers purge 

[Chorus]
I can stem the tide I can stop the rot
  and more besides what have you got
Place the case inside the zone
 A catalyst to call my own

[Chorus]

It’s Your Loss

If you'd led with your head
What you've said given cred
But now you're stuck with this instead
    It's your loss
 
If you pulled apart the stop and start
 The dearth of earth as sudden art
 Certain that was the pertinent part
   Well it's your loss 

In describing the bribing of those still subscribing
 to the pitch of the rich how they're arriving
  at first in best served survival
     there's always a cost
        and it's your loss

As those you love have moved above
The ebb and flow the push and shove
Foot in mouth goes hand in glove
           your loss
              it's

From the Sound of It

Tag Archives: genres