tBS: Jam Session and other things which go bump in the night

[Carl E. Anderson]

> >        Even the reknowned Richard Thompson isn't really "folk".  SOmetimes
> >I even have my doubts about recent Fairport ... but there's always Tempest,
> >Wolfstone, June Tabor, Steeleye Span, the John Kirkpatrick Band, the Oyster
> >Band (no relation ;) , Clarion, Io ...
>
> Uh... Bob Dylan ? Leonard Cohen ? Joan Baez ? Neil Young ? Sheesh, no. I
> guess those would also fall into the "false folk" category... though I'm not
> familiar enough with their music to be definitive. Kind of strange, though,
> since they were the ones (especially Dylan) who made the word "folk" famous!
> ...

        True, true.  Joan Baez _has_ done a fair bit of genuine traditional
material though.  I'm less qualified to speak about the others, though
His Bobness' songs have become so ubiquitous that I'm almost willing to
start classing them as a sort of "post-modern traditional".

        This is the sort of thing you worry about if you have a degree in
Folklore .... :)

> BTW, if we can't call "folk music" what all these artists do, then how
> should we call it ? Just wondering.

        Well, I tend to think of it as "(acoustic) singer-songwriters".
Mind you, I tend to like many of them better as solo acoustic live
performers than on albums where they get backing musicians and weird stuff
like that.  I heard some Suzanne Vega and Shawn Colvin material that was
great when it was "a girl and her guitar" but IMO blew chunks on the
over-produced album.
        On the other hand I though Edie and the New Bohemians were pretty
groovy.  Didn't like her solo record nearly as much.

        I always had a soft spot for blue-grass.  Banjos on speed :)

        I suppose all this makes Bob Mould (or Lemmy!) and "(electric)
singer-songwriter" :)

Cheers,
Carl