Taking stock

Time to get this blog active again! The research hasn’t been dormant since the last entry but it hasn’t been very systematic either – gathering sources, making notes but not really getting engaged with any debate since my visit to Newcastle.

However, I did receive confirmation that the process of undertaking a PGCE – as a requirement for registration of the research at UCE – has been successfully completed. Part of that process was an initial literature review. I’m going to set it out here in this blog but in instalments and with hyperlinks and tags – partly to remind me of what I’ve covered so far and, possibly, to stimulate some discussion – who knows?

So here is the introductory section, which seeks to (pardon the cliché) ‘map the terrain’.

... / ...

My research addresses practices of ‘amateur’ music performance and consumption within the network of folk clubs and music and song sessions across the UK. It identifies discourses inhabited by organisers, performers and audiences and studies their motivations to share folk music in an informal setting.

In tackling these issues, this study addresses a concern raised by Brocken on the contemporary folk scene in Britain in the wake of (at least) two folk revivals.

This folk discourse has become caught up in a consolidation and a permanence that has relations only to, or with, the images created at its own inception. … In what was originally a space for absence of rules, a rejection of music rules, the folk club has now become caught up in the revival’s own rituals. … [It] has now become the tradition, only resembling itself.
(Brocken 2003:124)

While reaffirming this self-contained, self-referential aspect of folk clubs, my research considers evidence of tension between the largely unregulated practices of amateur performance and encroaching institutional, political and cultural contexts in which they operate.

The activity of reviewing scholarly literature on folk music reveals an irony in defining the object of study as ‘music of the people' (BBC, online) – in a literal sense, ‘popular’ music. A clear paradigmatic distinction exists between an extensive body of research on ‘folk’ music as a traditional or vernacular form (e.g. Pickering 1982, Bohlman 1988, Nettl 1990, Russell 1997) and research since the 1980s into ‘popular’ music as a product of a cultural industry (e.g. Frith 1988, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c, Toynbee 2000, Wall 2003). Both approaches agree on the notion of music as a form of cultural expression but much of the history of research into folk has veered towards anthropology and the study of ‘folklore’ while the concept of ‘culture’ in studies of ‘popular’ music is often aligned with post-Marxist conceptions, following a trajectory established by Adorno’s (1941, 1991) interests in agencies and practice of cultural production of music as a commodity (see Witkin 1998 and 2002).

Hesmondhalgh and Negus identify 1981 as the year that popular music ‘began to emerge as a recognisable field of academic study…with the establishment of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and the launch of the academic journal Popular Music' (2002:3). While folk music’s place as a style and influence is acknowledged in some studies of the ‘popular’ (see for example Kassabian, 1999:116-7, Bennett 2001:24, Wall 2003:30-31), a cursory browse through the journal suggests that rock, jazz, hip hop, punk and, in particular, blues are more likely to attract scholarly attention as ‘popular’ forms of music.

1. The New York Times, 7th July 1971, credits Louis Armstrong with the infamous statement, “All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.”

literature review    folk music    amateur music     folk clubs    
music sessions     folk revival     folk culture    popular music    Michael Brocken    Theodor Adorno    IASPM    Popular Music journal

Analysing amateur musicmaking - reporting work-in-progress to the BFE

The BFE Conference at Newcastle was something of a hit-and-run event for me. I was only able to attend the first day of the 4-day event and inevitably there were several items that I would have enjoyed attending, including Eoghan Neff's talk on the 19th century fiddle-playerEdward Cronin and a cylinder recording of his performance of Banish Misfortune - scheduled for Day One but got put back last minute to Day Four.

I was fortunate to attend Simon McKerrell's talk: Modern Scottish bands (1970-1990): 'Cash as authenticity'. This raised some fascinating (and for my research, highly relevant) points on how financial considerations proved to be a driving force in the popularisation of traditional Scottish music. He referred to the success of bands such as Silly Wizard, the Battlefield Band and Capercaillie to demonstrate how the priorities of making a living, touring, producing albums and playing through a PA system have become dominant factors in the revival of traditional music in Scotland. Quoting from his abstract:

...commercial success [is] measured through record sales and cash from gigs, as the new authenticity which eventually prevailed over the earlier, ideological revivalist model of success based upon repertoire and style.

My own presentation was well attended, with some interesting follow-up questions on my research work-in-progress. Here is the abstract that appeared in the programme:

Regulating the amateur: traditional music and cultural control

This paper examines the discourses of folk music within the ‘amateur’ network of folk clubs and music and song sessions across the UK. It provides details of research in progress into the tensions between the largely unregulated practices of amateur folk music and three external agencies which appear to impinge upon them:

1. The music industry as a commercial enterprise setting 'professional' standards in performance, organisational practices and technical resources.

2. Administrative and bureaucratic practices of regulation ranging from the PRS, local authority licensing, etc. to cultural agencies seeking to promote folk as a form of creative or community artistic expression.

3. 'Mainstream' popular culture and its transformation of 'folk' culture into commodity forms, e.g. for Irish theme pubs, medieval banquets, etc.

I argue that these agencies represent a form of cultural control seeking to regulate amateur music practices and the experiences of performers and audiences. Based primarily on participant-observation study of folk clubs in the English Midlands the research examines how discourses of ‘mainstream’ culture, commodification and political management are apparent in amateur folk events and asks whether these undermine the perceived integrity of amateur music as a genuine form of cultural expression.

The research acknowledges studies of folk music as forms of cultural expression (e.g. Blacking, 1974; Finnegan, 1992) and of generic and structural developments in forms of traditional music (e.g. Oakley, 1977; Sweers, 2005). It develops themes identified in Brocken’s study of the British Folk Revival (2003) through its localised focus on a folk music circuit and its experiential, ethnographic approach.

The bottom-line argument that I tried to put across was the surprising lack of research that currently exists on folk music as performed in small, non-commercial, back room folk clubs. There is plenty of literature on folk music as folklore, folk music as a social and cultural phenomenon and folk as a style or genre but I argued that my research would be filling a gap in the understanding of 'amateur' folk music as a social practice.

Feedback from fellow delegates included some good constructive support and advice. I was reminded of one, albeit dated, study of a folk club in action - Smith, J.L., 1987, ‘The Ethogenics of Music Performance, a Case Study of the Glebe Live Music Club’, published in Pickering and Green's Everyday Culture, Popular Song and Vernacular Milieu. It was also suggested that I refer to former BFE chair, Jonathan Stock - this is one item by him that I've found useful.

It was also reassuring (if slightly alarming at first) to speak to one delegate who had actually performed at two of the folk clubs that I referred to as case studies of social and cultural spaces for amateur music practice. She recognised and supported points I'd raised about room layout and proxemics for 'concert' style and 'singaround' events. I may blog on that more later.

BFE Conference    Eoghan Neff    Simon McKerrell     amateur music    
traditional music     popular music     folk revival    folk clubs

The day the music died

While preparing for the Newcastle Conference (see previous item of this blog), I thought it would be useful to consider sub genres and hybrid genres of 'folk' music. There are of course many, ranging from roots and world music through to folk rock, punk folk, acid folk, folk metal, folktronica, neofolk and 'anti-folk' - click here for the Wikipedia entry on this latter concept!

I've only recently become familiar with the idea of'anti-folk'. One of my UCE colleagues, Mark Sampson runs Iron Man Records in Birmingham and regularly manages UK tours for New York band with anti-folk tendencies, Dufus (pictured).

Jason Toynbee discusses genre in popular music and argues for an understanding of ‘genre as a social process’, rather than simply as a set of textual properties:

…social formations often have a strong affiliation with musical genres and may invest them with intense cultural significance. (Toynbee 2000:103 - see references below)

This is an important point. Genres are often seen as a set of properties inherent in the music itself, or self-referential categories. People who talk about genres often ignore the social processes that brought them about in the first place. From other texts I've been looking at (Georgina Boyes 1993, Niall Mackinnon 1993 and, in particular, Dave Harker 1985 and Michael Brocken 2003), a view is emerging of a post-revival folk scene, at least in the UK, appropriated by the middle-classes imposing their own definitions of 'folk' as a musical genre. Their 'cultural capital' and skills in academic research of folklore have produced a huge reservoir of folksongs and tunes (and dances and mummers plays) which can be preserved, covered and arranged, often by new blood folk musicians with access to modern instruments, digital recording studios and the short list to Radio 2's Folk Awards.

This is great if you don't mind the 'folk music' genre affiliated with bourgeois myths reinforced through the 'preservation' of 'traditions' (folk-as-heritage). But this masks the essential revolutionary act of performance that folk music represented in the 1950s and early 60s as a back-room-of-the-pub alternative to an encroaching, glitzy and commercialised pop music culture. Think of Ewan McColl in the UK and Woody Guthrie in the US.

Preservation techniques for any 'museum' piece could include embalming or even taxidermy, but for processes like these to be applied, the original life force must first be removed. So here's something to think about - by preserving 'folk', are the middle classes essentially killing it and stuffing it?

'Anti-folk' suggests a convergence of traditional music and punk mentality, rejecting the polish and professional gloss that folk music has had to acquire to get accepted by mainstream media propomoting 'populist' tastes. The author of the Wikipedia entry refers to:

music that sounds raw and poorly executed, but mocks the seriousness and pretension of the established mainstream folk scene and also mocks itself.

This appeals to the revolutionary sentiments that my own middle class upbringing didn't quite succeed in suppressing. Some who know me may argue that this description is not a million miles from the sound of The Oddsods - a band that I know has been accused by some as not a 'serious' folk band (although we're seriously not 'anti' folk - we just see folk music as something that should be fun and broad in appeal!)

The trouble with 'anti folk' as a sub genre is that it could end up heading in the same direction as 'punk' - a category of commercial music that has its own section in the CD displays of HMV and Virgin Megastores.

genre    anti-folk    Dufus     Iron Man Records     preservation of folk     Oddsods    
folk music     middle-class




Boyes, G., 1993, The Imagined Village: Cultural Ideology and the English Folk Revival, Manchester: Manchester University Press

Brocken, M. 2003, The British Folk Revival: 1944-2002, Aldershot, Ashgate

Harker, D., 1985, Fakesong: The manufacture of British ‘folksong’ 1700 to the present day, Milton Keynes: Open University Press

Mackinnon, N., 1993, The British Folk Scene: Musical Performance and Social Identity, Buckingham, Open University Press

Toynbee, J. 2000, Making Popular Music: Musicians, Creativity and Institutions, London: Arnold

Where does 'folk' become 'popular'

Does 'folk' equal 'popular' (i.e. 'of the people')? If only it were that simple. I'll be attending and speaking at a conference in Newcastle which explores the spaces between these two concepts. Where does folk end and popular begin? Perhaps I'll find out, courtesy of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology.

I'll be reporting on this event when it happens in April. Meanwhile, check out the conference website and definitive programme.

Also the 'Round Table' papers makes interesting reading for those who argue on the definitions of folk - I'll be posting more shortly on a recent heated argument on that topic here on the normally tranquil Coventry and Warwickshire folk scene...

BFE Conference    ethnomusicology    popular music    folk music

Music PR – a dynamic topic where even the teachers are learners

Here's the text of my article that was published in the PR magazine, Behind The Spin - archived here for reference, and with additional hyperlinks. The magazine also used this pic of the band's 2005 line-up, taken by Chele Willow

Pete Wilby is acting Degree Leader for the Public Relations strand of UCE Birmingham’s degree in Media and Communication. In his spare time he plays guitar for a folk band. Introducing the course’s new module in Music Promotion and PR has given him a golden opportunity to bring these two interests together.

'Rock journalism,’ pronounced the late Frank Zappa, ‘is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read'.

If any statement was designed to point out glaring skills gaps in contemporary information society, this was it.

From the perspective of teaching PR, it was the ‘people who can’t talk’ bit that particularly concerned me. Rock bands, or any type of musical act for that matter, should be just as keen to hit the right buttons of public opinion as a large corporation or a political party. It’s a skill that’s equally as important as performing on stage. Sadly, being able to sing is no guarantee of being able to talk to journalists or indeed to fans.

Wearing my other hats as a musician and a music journalist, I had to agree that here was one industry that attracts a lot of people who really could do with a better understanding of media relations and reputation management.

I play for a folk band. There – I’ve admitted it. And I’m willing to concede that as a genre, folk music needs to put in a lot of work to develop its own PR, but that’s a topic for another article in a future edition. Suffice it say that I have had many years experience of promoting The Oddsods, arranging gigs and media interviews and encouraging audiences to turn up and buy CDs.

This experience has taught me many things. For example, you won’t get much press coverage without a good quality, eye-catching photograph. You need a simple catch-phrase to describe your sound (ours is ‘music for a rare old time’). And don’t expect daytime radio presenters to know anything about your style of music or ask anything more complex than ’What do you call that vertical drum thing? (answer: a bodhran.)

As a writer and broadcaster in folk music I have also recognised the difficulties experienced by many up-and-coming acts in getting their message across. Like any other source of potential media interest, musicians need to come up with good news angles and be able to engage audiences with simple, direct and above all, interesting messages.

Even the best music journalists find it a challenge to say something worthwhile about acts whose biographies are self-indulgent metaphor with no substance, whose image relies on low-resolution poorly-composed photographs and whose entire PR strategy seems to be based on a website that’s tortuous to navigate and offers little reward for anyone who tries.

So when the chance came to launch a module on Music Promotion and PR for UCE’s Media and Communication degree, I grabbed it with both hands. The timing was perfect. We had established a successful specialist route in public relations and had just introduced a new specialism in The Music Industry. The module would fit neatly into both routes and could also be offered as an option module to students focusing on broadcast, print or web-based media. Here was one way to provide a reality-check for musicians seeking fame and fortune and to enable them to identify and apply the communication skills needed to succeed. It was also an opportunity to bring together my own passions for PR and music performance.

The module’s objectives are to explore the practices and techniques of music PR and promotion and help students develop a working knowledge of PR and marketing theory in the context of today’s music industries. The classes have been taught jointly by myself and Mark Sampson, whose independent record label, Iron Man Records is based in Birmingham specialising in rock, punk and ‘anti-folk’. We were determined to cover the broad spectrum.

For both of, this was a classic journey of discovery. Surprise number one was that very few of the 17 students who enrolled were actually musicians. One or two were, or had partners who were. The majority, however, were students who were primarily interested in PR as a career and the possibility of building up the skills and knowledge for this more glamorous area of the profession. Not for them the risks of struggling to survive as touring performers – musicians may come and go, but the demand for music promoters lives on forever.

This proved a distinct advantage for the delivery of this module. While the students may have had personal musical preferences, we were able to encourage them to consider the art of engaging publics for a wide range of musical genres – from choral to country, traditional singers to tribute bands, blues to barber shop quartets. Some of them, without any prompting from me, even undertook critical analyses of promotional tactics adopted by folk bands and their agents.

Surprise number two was the extent of the learning curve that we all had to travel. For Mark, teaching students in the company of a university academic turned out to be something of a business investment, enabling him to pick up on some useful ideas. Ours was a ‘good cop/bad cop’ approach with Mark as the ‘practice’ man and me as the ‘theorist’. However he found himself tuning in to my presentations on diffusion theory and game theory as offering new ways to think through the day-to-day challenges of his job.

Mark believes that the traditional marketing theories, such as E.Jerome McCarthy’s four P’s marketing mix model, will always be relevant to music promotion. However, he also admits that developments in online music promotion – blogs, podcasts, YouTube and viral marketing – have caused him to rethink his own promotional strategies from scratch and develop his own post-Arctic Monkeys model.

Meanwhile – and just like the students – I was finding Mark’s own observations a treasure-trove of insights, not readily available from standard textbooks. We were able to gain a valuable ‘here-and-now’ insight into the structure of the music industry, its reliance on networks of contacts, its professional values and its perspectives of artists and audiences alike.

Also, his comments on how to talk to music journalists, follow up press releases, encourage positive gig reviews, win audience support at live gigs (the PR value in the simple act of talking with paying punters after the show) and maximise one’s online impact had me reaching for my own notebook, determined not to miss any of the advice that would benefit my own band.

As for the students, it’s encouraging to see evidence of a more analytical and strategic approach to music promotion and a keener awareness of how to relate to media practices and expectations. They’re working on their final assignments as I write this – a comprehensive press pack plus recommendations on visual identity, online presence and brand identity. I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Meanwhile, I have found myself reflecting on the PR implications of a module on music promotion within a Media Studies degree course. It is difficult enough to find mainstream press reference to Media Studies without the phrase ‘Mickey Mouse course’ somewhere in the same paragraph. The idea of students analysing bands’ MySpace pages and discussing the PR benefits of adopting babies in Malawi could prove too tempting to resist for tabloid editors who treat media degrees and the ‘glitzy’ side of PR with equal degrees of scepticism.

Nevertheless, the music industry accounts for acres of newsprint and eons of air time. Life without music is no life at all and from chart shows to movie soundtracks, music is the lifeblood of popular culture. According to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the music industry contributes nearly £5 billion per year to the national economy, £1.3 billion of which is from export earnings.

The contribution to this from my own efforts as a musician may be negligible, but it seems to me that the development of skills in music promotion and PR are a very worthwhile occupation.

And who knows? One day in the not-too-distant future, one of my own graduates might consider folk music to be the new chic with The Oddsods at the cutting edge.
Filed under:

music PR    music journalism    marketing    PR education    UCE    folk image  
Iron Man Records    Oddsods

If you're reading this, Mr Blair...

This from Dominic Cronin on the UK.music.folk newsgroup

Dear all,

I mentioned a couple of days ago down in the bowels of some licensing thread or other that I had taken advantage of the new e-petition feature on the Prime Minister's web site, and created a petition with the following wording:

Main text: We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to recognise that music and dance should not be restricted by burdensome licensing regulations.

Details: The recently introduced changes in licensing law have produced an environment where music and dance, activities which should be valued and promoted in a civilised society, are instead damaged by inappropriate regulation. We call on the Prime Minister to recognise this situation and take steps to correct it.

I would like to invite you all to join me in this petition. The cynic in me says it won't do any good, but there's still a part of me that says, what the heck, give it a go anyway. It can't hurt.

Obviously, the more support this gets the better, so please publicise it anywhere where that might do some good.

The petition is to be found at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/licensing/

Thank you.

Dominic Cronin

Filed under:
licensing law    petition    uk.music.folk

Tensions at the Rockingham

This email is being circulated by John Sparrow of the Stoneyport Agency in Edinburgh and illustrates precisely one of the areas of tension that I am investigating. The commercial interests of the company that manages a chain of pubs (or indeed of a manager of one venue in that chain) does not fit with the idea of unpaif volunteers running a successful folk club. The club itself has to justify its exisitence in terms of drinks sales.

Here's the email and correspondence:

Hi

If it's not folk dying it's something else ...
:(

references:
Spirit Group run The Rockingham Arms, Wentworth, Yorkshire. Spirit group is the managed division of Punch Taverns, the UK's leading pub company with over 9,200 pubs nationwide.

The burden of the mesage is that The Rockingham Arms FC is to close - very soon indeed. "The Rock" has hosted a very succesful folk club for 33 years which has been run by the same guy all those years - Rob Shaw..

This message - below - arrived today from John Willis aka Jonti down in Doncaster Yorkshire and makes very sad reading indeed.

Says Jonti: "Just spoken to Matthew Crehan on the phone and there seems no way he will give Rob even a few weeks grace to move out with planned dignity. It's the unacceptable face of capitalism all over again."

Seems to me if you run a folk club in Spirit Group pub (and with 9200 of them there's a good chance there's at least one more club in a Spirit Group pub) you'd better be asking the manager what his/her plans are for what you do in their premises. I'd have thought that owning 9200 pubs was pressing at being a monopoly in fact.

jb
:)


.... I have already written a letter to the MD of Spirit Group Mr Andrew Knight..........sadly it never got to his desk but I have had a reply from the Spirit Group Business Development Manager Mr Matthew Crehan (I've copied the email exchange below in bold blue italic to save confusion should this email get passed on).

I have also spoken to the Spirit Group customer relations department and with Matthew Crehan (Spirit Group Business Development Manager) directly today (Tuesday). He has promised to look into it further and call me back again tomorrow - Wednesday.

He made it clear that his main job & concern was to increase the profitability of the pub but would take into account other factors if it could be shown that music @ The Rock' on a Friday did have a significant (£) contribution to make to the Rockingham Arms pub at Wentworth.....which we all know it does. - How one quantifies the "cultural value" of the last 33 yrs is a formula I will leave to smarter buggers than me!

I should point out that Matthew Crehan has been completely professional and "concerned" in the conversations I've had with him so anyone fancying having a "shout" at him would possibly not help things. With a bit of gentle persuasion/lying/cheating and stealin etc I did manage to get his mobile number from Spirit Group head office which of course I can't possibly circulate .........07884 113522m oops ! How did that come up?

I reckon 30 or 40 persuasive discussions might have some impact if anyone cared to call him direct or put a call through to the Managing Director (Andrew Knight) on the number below.............. that I can freely circulate.

Spirit Group 107 Station Street Burton on Trent
Staffordshire DE14 1SZ

Tel: 01283 545320 Fax: 01283 502357 e-mail: hub@thespiritgroup.com

I hope that people reading this email feel as strongly as we and do 2 of 2 things .........firstly email or call the company about this and secondly forward this email to other like-minded folks who may also express their concern by phone or email.

cheers
Jonti


copy of my correspondence

In a message dated 10/12/2006 08:34:06 GMT
Standard Time, hub@thespiritgroup.com writes:
Ref: ACK2/01256951 10
December 2006

Mr John Willis

35 Harrowden Rd

Doncaster DN2 4EL

Dear Mr Willis

RE: Rockingham Arms

Thank you for contacting us regarding the above Public House and letting us know your issues. Our investigation may involve a number of people within our business and I will ensure that you receive a full response, either from myself or a colleague whom I have personally asked to deal with your issues, as soon as we have reached a satisfactory conclusion. Please ensure that the reference number at the top of this letter is quoted on all correspondence.

Thank you again for taking the time to bring this matter to our attention.

Yours sincerely

Matthew Crehan

Business Development Manager


Dear Mr Knight,

Regrettably I find myself writing to ask your guidance and intervention in what I believe to be an unjust and commercially naive decision by one of your general managers of The Rockingham Arms public house in Wentworth Village, Nr Rotherham South Yorkshire.

The barn/function room of the establishment has hosted the internationally renowned Rockingham Arms Live (folk) Music Club every Friday for a few months short of it's 33rd (continuous) year. Your manager has just given 1 weeks notice that the club must pay a room rental of £100 per night rising to £150 in June.........this of course is in reality "notice to quit" as such a rent would make it impossible for the club to operate at all and also impossible to honour the artists contracts that have been agreed often some 6 months in advance.

Two years ago The Rockingham Arms Folk Club won the highly coveted BBC Radio 2 Folk Music Club of the year award bringing not inconsiderable kudos and prestige to the village, the establishment and by association Spirit/Punch Taverns (of which I am a nominee account shareholder).

The music club has been run weekly and continuously for over 40 weeks of each year for the past 32+ years by main organiser and founder Mr Rob Shaw with a dedicated (and unrewarded) small team of volunteers. These people have formed and continued this non-profit making club for all that time purely to keep traditional and associated acoustic music live, all for the benefit of local and far afield music lovers, up and coming musicians and artists etc.

Significant benefit is also brought to The Rockingham Arms by the dedicated (and unpaid tenure) of the music club. The existence of the music club adds significant cultural value to the venue, the locality and also your company. In addition to the cultural value there is and always has been significant financial value added to the Spirit balance sheet by not only the drinks revenue but also the accommodation that is often booked for visiting artists, bands and visitors to the music club.

There has long been a difference of opinion about the financial value accrued to the establishment by the operation of the Folk Music Club on the site. It has been suggested by recent managers that very little in the way of financial turnover is produced in the barn/function room........there is a degree of truth in this though further & thorough investigation, were it to be impartially undertaken, would prove the opposite. The drinks / beer stock in the barn has always been (A) very limited & (B) of consistently poor quality for more than 20+ years due to the general lack of use of the barn/function room bar throughout the week which impacts significantly on the quality of the draught beer in particular. Consequently, all the folk club regulars (& there are lots) routinely walk around to the bar in the main building where we all know there is not only much greater choice but beer of consistently good quality. This serves to disguise greatly the actual (rather than perceived) financial income that the operation of the Rockingham Arms Music Club brings to the establishment. This could be properly investigated as it has not been.

The club has many members from as far away as Manchester & the North East who regularly attend. I've been going there for most of the dates for the past 33 years and would estimate that the audience averages between 60 and 70 customers weekly. That's a lot of turnover over the years. If the club is forced to close or move so unceremoniously after so many years of loyal tenure I am certain that all the many people that visit The Rockingham Arms each Friday night would never walk through the door again and the disappointment with the treatment meted out by such an obviously inexperienced manager would have far reaching consequences.

There is no doubt that when local, regional and national press, radio and tv gets wind of the ousting of the club, the consequences for the establishment could be severe. (I don't recall who said that there was no such thing as bad publicity but perhaps it remains to be seen.) The Rockingham Arms gets a virtually weekly mention on National Radio 2 (Mike Harding Folk Show) when major artists are (regularly) booked and also is weekly mentioned (not just) in "The Music Listings" of local and regional newspapers but also in the editorial section due to the close links with journalists that have been wrought over many years.

All this positive and free publicity is brought to your door by the efforts of the music club organisers rather than by any effort or investment by Spirit. As an investor in the Leisure/Pub/Retail sector I fully understand the commercial rationale in trying to maximise shareholder value and returns. It may well be that the macro plans of your company leaves no place for "anomalies" like a folk music club in the managed house sector of your business.

I would hope that this were not the case but if it were, firstly a comprehensive audit of value should be undertaken to accurately assess the added value of The Rockingham Arms Music club at Wentworth and secondly you could walk the walk by bringing some fresh thinking to the way that you deal with partners with a 33 year track record. If your intention is to move the music club out then that's ok but surely some "entitlement to reasonable notice" could be applied in this case and at least allow the club to move on with some dignity and a planned relocation.

I would reiterate that no-one makes any money or personal gain from the operation of the music club except your company. The only "payment" that the organiser(s) of this institution gain is the satisfaction of not only running the country's premiere small music venue for music of our national heritage but also the satisfaction of providing a high value service to all music lovers that attend.

Please look into this situation more carefully and try and support and reinforce the value of one of the best assets of your establishment in Wentworth. I do trust that this letter will actually get onto your desk and I am sure that with such a strong career record in the industry you will be able to investigate, advise and intervene for the long term benefit of all.

Attached to this communication is the letter issued by your manager Mr Morton to Mr Rob Shaw giving only the one week to find the funds to continue. Do please try to apply some fresh thinking to this as it appears that your local manager is merely "taking a guess". There is no way that the barn can be let more lucratively within the next 2/3 months without a great deal of investment....so do the right thing and give the club a couple of months under the current arrangement to assess it's options.

yours sincerely

John Willis

35 Harrowden Rd Doncaster DN2 4EL
Tel 07939 148603

Filed under:
Rockingham Arms   folk clubs    Punch Taverns

Refresher break

Stuck at home, feeling full of a flu-ey cold, coughing, croaking and in need of cheering up. This did the trick!

Filed under:
Bob Dylan   Weird Al

Gimme that authentic backroom music

Was the late 1960s the peak period for folk clubs? They were, according to one account I read today, which described them as:

...run by private organizers and often located in back rooms of pubs... the clubs were of a strong amateurish nature, with a performance pattern consisting of an opening or warm-up performance by resident or visiting 'floor singers' followed by the featured guest performers...

Hey, wait a minute. Either the folk scene is in a time warp or this passage is describing what many folk clubs are still like in the early 21st century. OK - audience members and artists might be older and greyer but the patterns established by the earnest young followers of the likes of Ewan McColl and Ian Campbell have changed very little. Judging by one or two folk clubs I can think of, neither has the decor in the back room of the pub!

The passage I quoted is from Britta Sweers' book, Electric Folk: The Changing Face of English Traditional Music, published last year and one of the texts that I'm covering in my literature review. The book is actually an account and attempted explanation of the emergence of English folk-rock in the 1960s and 70s. It sets out a 'sociocultural' portrayal of electic folk but also discusses generic issues arising from the fusion of the traditional and the modern.

Going back to folk clubs, Sweers argues that there was a distinct change in the 60s folk club scene. Clubs started out (in the wake of skiffle clubs) as venues for traditional music, singer-songwriters, blues and American folk music. By the mid-60s, British and Irish music were more dominant with much more emphasis on 'authentic' performances of traditional songs.

While the overall trend that Sweers describes here is fairly accurate, I would argue from my own experience that different types of club have emerged to cater for different audience tastes. This may be a sweeping generalisation on my part, but looking at the guest lists of the larger, more 'professional' folk venues, they seem to concentrate on a hybrid of the 'authentic' traditional, presented in an accessible form for modern audiences, using improvisations, complex harmonies, blues-rock guitar riffs and so on. Not sure that Ewan McColl would have approved.

The smaller, back-room-of-pubs clubs and sessions are probably more 'authentic' if you define folk as literally 'music of the people' - even if some of the people sing and play 60s popsongs, Gershwin and Wild Rover.

Filed under:
Britta Sweers   folk rock   folk clubs   authenticity   literature review

Hanging out with Dylan

I haven't got round to starting my own MySpace site yet - I keep promising myself to do so, but with a major research project on the go, three blogs to maintain, a weekly newspaper column, a demanding day job, a band and a determination to hang onto some quality time with my wife (plus a dog and two cats), there haven't been enough hours left in the day.

My wife, Chele has only recently set up her own MySpace site but she has wasted no time in 'social networking' with some pretty cool 'friends'. I'm not quite sure how this works but her 'My Friends' list to date includes Seth Lakeman, Randy Stonehill, The Paperboys, Sean Lennon, Los Lonely Boys, Nickel Creek, Dixie Chicks, James Taylor, Neil Young - oh yes and Bob Dylan.

Now neither of us really believes that Mr Zimmerman sat at his computer and personally pressed the key that linked his site to Chele's - although he might have! Social networking does at least give the impression that the internet knows no barriers between celeb musicians and us humble mortals. And for Chele, setting up MySpace friendships with music heroes is proving a fascinating exercise in putting their PR strategies to the test. What started out as a bit of fun ('let's see if we can link up with 'so-and-so') has become something of a revelation. Dylan's MySpace page offers some interesting personal trivia that only 'friends' would share. Did you know, for example, that he prefers Pepsi to Coke and Burger King to MacDonalds?

I'm wondering how big a part MySpace will play in my research into amateur music networks by the time I complete the dissertation. One of my themes is the tension between 'amateur' and 'professional' practices in folk music. Will social networking websites break down the barriers - or is it creating an illusion of egalitatianism in this here global village between the folk mega-star and the humble floor singer?

Filed under:
MySpace    Bob Dylan   music PR    amateur music