Sunday 31 March 2013

Folk Club Etiquette

Cliques. The   bane of localised Folk Music. Ultimately they will be the death knell of it. Unless Organisers, Comperes and Hosts show a lot more integrity, and a lot more balls in arranging their running orders. 

  We ourselves have had past experience of running Folk Clubs. It's not easy, but generally, we did our very best to run them democratically,regardless of our opinions of material or performance. As we saw it, our club was a shop window: a vehicle. Not a personal medium for expanding our own egos and massaging those of a few others who frankly, did not need the kudos.   I think our attendance figures reflected that. We gave stage space to ALL those who turned up on time (or pre-booked) or who asked in advance for a spot to play. We had no time at all for those self-styled Prima Donnas who turned up late, unnannounced, and then swagggered in expecting to be feted and fawned over. We did not give them a  priority spot at short notice and at the expense of other good, solid, regular Club  performers. We felt that if we did  do this, we risked strangling the very source of organic,acoustic music.

  In some circles, this stupid and prehistoric  attitude still persists. If these same self-styled "Stars"  were actually any good-wouldn't they be living in Laurel Canyon by now?  Or re-issuing their back catalogue? Or recording their latest televised concert? Rather than just  grubbing around in rustic backwoods  venues late at night  like the rest of us?  Yeah, I think so.

         It wont be the stylised, ironically Pork Pie-wearing Mid Atlantic groups of Kiddie Folkers who finally kill off the genre forever. With their cynical and  nasally american interpretations of cynically-packaged machine-assembled PopFolk. Nor the gigantic manufactured ensembles of a dozen or so jobbing musicians  grinding out abominations of traditional tunes for Radio 1 and 2 consumption. No. It wil be the few M.C's who, with their prejudices and favouritism finally spell out the end. There's only about a million times of mumbling  the same tired old traditional dirge into oblivion,  before the lights come up one last time and the doors close forever.

Wednesday 20 March 2013

The Tides of March

Apologies to (both) our readers for a bit of a BPS vacuum (cleaner)  recently, during the first part of March.  This has been due to ill health/other commitments//Nuneaton Borough's relegation battles/domestic priorities/bad weather etc.

But have we been totally idle? Well, no. Since the last Blog entry we've rehearsed a couple of times. We've had a few tickles also from various Club promoters about potential gigs, which we have yet to firm up. Hopefully more opportunities to impose our whacky zany brand of Folk on more audiences?

    Fans who enjoy our visual comedy material will be pleased to hear that we've had to take the protective dust sheeting off a few older numbers just to live up to Malc Gurnham's promotion of our head to head with Bill Bates at Bedduff Folk Club's Fund Raiser which is coming soon. " A night of Comedy mayhem?" says young Malc. We shall see! We ran  through our own  " Cockney Power," " Septic Monkey" and "Wag of Shop 14 " earlier in March, and then yesterday we continued to tidy up Gus Elen's "Houses in Between." 

Now, we make no secret of our admiration for Cosmotheka, and we were privileged to play on the same bill as them a few times. I love all Al and Dave's material, indeed our own song "The Odeon" is an homage to their style. "Houses" was only one of dozens of super renditions they did representing this genre. But it's one we also feel our own vocal style suits rather well. Look out for its BPS debut soon.

We also wish to continue to develop the softer, fluffier Parrot side. We now have "Lakes of Ponchartrain " close to performance standard. "Peggy Gordon " is getting there, and along with "Courting is a Pleasure " and " Over The Hillls and Far Away," they will  all feature in future setlists and serve to break up the endless rib-aching waves of laughter. Of course, if we do them wrong-the waves of laughter may well continue.

Work on revising and relaunching a BPS website is ongoing. Hopefully up and running soon. Meanwhile, don't be a stranger. If you want us at your venue-you only have to ask.