folk versus glam (1 of ??)

Hubert Parry: "in true folk-songs there is no sham, no got-up glitter, and no vulgarity"

Folk is associated with naturalism - the idea that there is no artifice involved, no element of show. 

Performance, stripped of performativity or exhibitionism. The singer as the ego-less vessel or conduit for the people's consciousness. 

Green Gartside on Anne Briggs: "The beautiful melodies Anne sang unaccompanied were profoundly affecting, her unornamented voice a precursor to the anti-professionalism of DIY."

Folk would be the Quaker option, the nonconformist option (in the religious and Puritan-ical sense).

Everybody equal in this society of friends; the liturgy, barebones, stripped of ceremonial flatus. 

(Whereas opera, or heavy metal - at least in the 70s - is obviously Catholic. Pomp rock).

The Puritans despised and feared the theatre. 

The diagram below relates to anti-theatricality  - and the idea that some sorts of performance (the folk mode and the art approach) can actually be "real". That reality can be brought on to the stage, either through the performer as representative of a community, or the artist expressive of their inner self, their emotional reality.  

(More on the Diagram below)

Peter Sellers’s  spoof on Lonnie Donegan: Benny Goonagain: 

Goonagain: 

Rock'n'roll? -  No! I'm a folk singer, man -  I sing blues, work songs - songs of the people and the peasant, you understand, cos they're ah workin on a railroad...

Reminded that Guthrie-remodel minstrel Billy Bragg went on to write a whole book about skiffle. 

"Roots, Radicals and Rockers" - you couldn't get a better articulation of the Folk axis of my triangle!

It's notable, though, that Donegan and his band wore suits and bow ties when they played live (at least on TV shows). Donegan sang Leadbelly songs but he didn't wear denim dungarees like Leadbelly (which was, if I recall right, an idea of his handlers, to pitch him at the folk revival scene - working men's clothes. 

Barefoot too! The full story behind this image is shocking.

When left to his own druthers, Leadbelly - like most blues performers - preferred to wear a sharp suit. and a bow tie. Singing - even about gritty subjects - was still showtime. (So in that sense, Donegan's fancy get-up was actually - inadvertently? - authentic).

White gloves!

Even jamming, he's done up to the nines

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I created this diagram as a teaching aid. It depicts the discursive space of pop music - it's about talk and rhetoric, rather than praxis and genre per se.

- how fans and critics imagine and understand the music…

- how artists explain what they do, to others and to themselves. 

(But could there be a fourth side, making it a square? See if you are as clever as some of my students)

Some artists are firmly established on one side or other of this triangle, and stay there.

But the most interesting careers either involve an artist located somewhere between one axis and another (Roxy Music exist between Art and Showbiz but are nowhere near Folk).

Either that or they are equidistant between all three sides (can't think of a good example here).

Or even more interesting, when the artist goes on a trajectory within this triangular space, starting in one place and moving to another (Dylan is archetypal, moving from Folk to Art, and then creeping back a bit, at times). Some veer all over the place, doubling back, and contradicting / erasing the previous location: consider the literally careering careers of John Lennon and David Bowie.

In The R.Elms of the Senseless (slight return)

Interesting reflections on the Robert Elms book Blitz: The Club That Created the 80s over at Michaelangelo Matos's substack Beat Connection

 

Although he takes a poke or several at the Elmscentricity of the Bob universe ("has no problem tooting his horn") and he firmly sides with the ravers against the nightclubbers ("I....  have no patience for anybody’s door policy"), Matos is more generous to this kind of "I'm-in-with-the-In-crowd-ism" than I am. 

Perhaps geographical distance, and not having to live through it in real-time, accounts for it! 

He satisfyingly skewers the Elms assertion that Rusty Egan invented modern deejaying (drily pointing out that Egan used just one turntable). 

Also satisfyingly skewered is the strained Elms argument that New Romanticism was not in ideological lockstep with Thatcherism. Regardless of who they actually individually voted for in 1979 or 1983, the whole slant was escapism combined with make-it-at-all-costs (with a strong vein of fake-it-till-you-make-it in there too). 

Matos mentions and highly recommends a doc I have never heard of: Soul Boys of the Western World:

"It it goes over the sun with the Blitz footage. This club took place in a Soho dive bar, and when the camera sails through it in this film, the walls pulse. It’s the most alluring thing I’ve ever seen in above-board filmmaking. I wanted to enter it and not leave. Within seconds, everything I’d ever read, or written, about the place came suddenly to life." 

While I shudder at the idea that this is an entire documentary devoted to Spandau Ballet, I might have to steel myself and watch it. 

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Earlier bloggige o' mine about Blitz and about Bob. 

Glam bandwagon jumpers (1 of ??)

Is this undignified, or just Donovan reclaiming the small debt that Bolan owed him?

Visconti-ish strings.

Here he performs "Cosmic Wheel" sitting down a la Tyrannosaurus Rex, stripped of the record's adornments.

Mickie Most produced the Cosmic Wheels album (Most of course wsa Donovan's original producer in the Sixties but by 1973 one of the kings of glamglitter production)

Suzi Quatro supposedly sings back-up on "The Music Maker", although she doesn't sound characteristic - I wouldn't have recognised her. 

The album was recorded in the next door studio to the one Alice Cooper did Billion Dollar Babies, and they got Donovan to sing on the title track. 

"Maria Magenta" - here Donovan seems to be aping Bryan Ferry a bit. 

But then again, he was doing this kind of prissy vocal in 1966....

"Wild Witch Lady" is T. Rex meets Dr John. Bolan-esque vibrato and whoops. 

Also seems like a Marc / Electric Warrior style tribute to a "dirty and sweet" young lady. 

Now, the genuinely undignified thing Donovan does on this album is "The Intergalactic Laxative"

Personnel

Donovan – guitar, harmonica, design, vocals

Chris Spedding – guitar, strings, bouzouki

Dennis Ball – bass[3]

Clive Chaman – bass

Phil Chen – bass

Cozy Powell – drums

Alan White – drums

John "Rabbit" Bundrick – piano, Moog synthesizer, mellotron

John Cameron - electric piano on "Appearances"

Tony Carr – percussion

Jim Horn – alto saxophone

Bobby Keys – tenor saxophone

Patrick Halling – violin

Jack Emblow – accordion

Leslye Ash – vocals

Valerie Charrington – soprano vocals

Nick Curtis – vocals

Lesley Duncan – vocals on "The Music Makers"

Julie Forsythe – vocals

Leslie Fyson – vocals

John McCarthy – vocals

Suzi Quatro – vocals on "The Music Makers"

Gaynor Stewart – vocals

Jill Utting – soprano vocals

Cary Wilson – vocals