Folk
By Terrence Oblong
Wed, 03 Aug 2016
- 1139 reads
4 comments
“We’re eating at the Fleece tonight,” mum said when I got home. “A nice treat for everyone.”
“How lovely,” I said.
‘Shit!’ I thought.
The bribe of a meal out didn’t fool me. It was folk club night. These days, mum usually forgets to get ready in time and it’s always a rushed snack at the Fleece before joining the rest of the folk club upstairs.
I quickly checked the folk club website to see who was on. Oh god, it was worse than I feared, it was Dave Swarbrick.
Dave Swarbrick is everything that’s wrong with folk music. To be fair, he was probably good once, the fiddler for 60s band Fairport Convention, I’m sure that in their heyday the band were fine. But he’s no longer hiding behind a band, and, to be brutally honest, he’s not really a fiddler. He slowly scrapes his bow across the fiddle and the resultant noise is ... I’ve got 53 cats queuing up outside my door with defamation papers in case I use the obvious metaphor. He is, and I say this to all cats’ lawyers out there, far worse than any noise any cat makes.
In the glory days of a few years ago, I could stay at home, miss folk club, feed myself, chill out, be happy. But these days my presence is compulsory as attendance is down to the same old faces, and not many faces at that. By being there, however unwillingly, I am ‘the future of the folk club’.
I decided to gain a petty revenge by ordering a burger as my meal. Meat is officially allowed, though frowned on, my parents’ vegetarianism has never been imposed on me, except in the predominance of vegetarian food. Unfortunately, I paid the price of this particular act of revenge, as, after a life of mostly vegetarian diet, my body’s unable to cope with the sudden influx of red meat, and I found myself secretly throwing up in the gents toilets.
I say ‘secretly’ throwing up, because I had no intention of letting anyone know I’d been sick. I did momentarily think about using it as an excuse to go home, ‘unwell’, but it wouldn’t be worth the long term cost – mum would use this against me and my meat consumption for years to come, a nuclear weapon in her war against meat.
After my meal and vomit I could delay no longer. Wilma, the club secretary, greeted me at the door of the club room. Norman and Wilma ran everything at the club in very much the same way they’d been running everything at the club for the past thirty years. Indeed, most of the acts were the same as thirty years ago, their last real ‘discovery’ was some time at the end of the last century, all that had changed over the three decades was the gradual ageing of the audience, of the acts and the genre.
“It’s amazing we get a name this big at our little club,” Wilma would say every time Dave Swarbrick played, which was every year these days. ‘No it’s not, we’re the only club stupid enough to book him these days’, I’d fail to reply every time. Which was not quite true, he played the same circuit of has-been clubs every year, none of them noticing that any club with even the vaguest knowledge of folk music or of balancing the books came within a thousand miles of him.
xxx
Jasmine came to the club once, a couple of years ago, to see Robb Johnson, a left-winger of the ‘the revolution will happen more quickly if we all pick up acoustic guitars’ variety. Quite why Wilma and Norman put him on I don’t know. The idea that folk music should be ‘about’ anything was completely contrary to the attitude of our club. I guess he was simply from the right era, he’s been playing the requisite thirty years and his songs have been covered by people as old as Roy Bailey (who must be pushing eighty).
He was not well received. He started off with a tirade against Michael Gove, followed by a blast against Maggie Thatcher. The tolerance of the folk club audience was not helped by one vocal leftie in the audience, the only black man I remember seeing at the club, with an enormous afro, who kept shouting ‘you tell ‘em comrade’ after every sentence of Robb’s intros.
This, it may interest you to know, was Jasmine’s dad. I was pleased to see that Jasmine cringed every time he spoke. Robb eventually stopped doing intros to his songs, which silenced Jasmine’s dad, but this didn’t stop half the audience leaving at the interval, leaving an awkward mix of the club organisers, myself, Jasmine and her family and three or four other regulars who stayed either to ‘show their support’, or maybe they actually liked Robb Johnson. Stranger things have happened.
Jasmine didn’t speak to me the entire evening, except to say “Poor turnout,” as she left.
xxx
Turnout tonight was slightly better than for Robb Johnson, but only slightly. The average age of the audience was high sixties, possibly mid-seventies, but few in the club were as old as Swarbrick himself.
The start was delayed to ‘allow time for late arrivals’, but there were no late arrivals. At least it meant Swarbrick wouldn’t be playing for as long, which is always a good thing.
Xxx
I’d forgotten exactly how bad Dave Swarbrick was. True, I’d remembered the terrible attempts at music, but his banter, I discovered, was just as bad, long rambling anecdotes that weren’t really anecdotes, just random recollections of gigs, people and events from thirty, forty years ago that bore no relation to the song he’s about to play. Each intro lasted about five minutes, at the end of which you were left wishing anything to take you from this pain, anything at all, even one of his tunes. Maybe that’s why he does it.
I was checking my phone during throughout concert, very subtly, I’m sure nobody would have noticed. There was nothing better to do.
“I saw this and thought of you.” Someone had facebooked me a picture of a spoon. No, it wasn’t someone, it was Jasmine! Jasmine had facebooked me.
I seized the moment and sent her a friend request. Nothing happened. I stared at the screen for ages. I liked her spoon photo to speed things along, but still no friend request accepted message.
On stage, Swarbrick was still trying to remember where he’d first come across the next tune. “I think we were touring Canada,” he said, “Or it might have been Swindon.”
I tried to imagine what damage a person’s memory must have suffered to be unable to distinguish a night at Swindon Folk Club from a tour of Canada, but the concept was too incomprehensible.
Still no response from Jasmine.
I took a picture of the near-empty room and the old man on the stage and sent the picture to Jasmine. “It’s all happening at the folk club,” I said. “Hope you’ll make it again some time.”
However, she didn’t respond.
Swarbrick finally started playing; a series of jigs and reels that had once been dance tunes, but he played them at less than half pace, the result being a slow, tuneless dirge.
Still no response from Jasmine.
Finally, it was the interval. I helped mum with the raffle, the only part of the club that makes money these days. “Swarbrick was good,” Roger said, the only positive comment I received. Roger is almost totally deaf now. At times like these I envy him.
Geoff bought me a pint of beer. Though I was only sixteen, special dispensation was made for the folk club, the sole perk. All too soon it was time for the second half.
However, I was late going in. Jasmine had responded to my message. “Grace Petrie,” she said. I was googling Grace Petrie when she accepted my friend request.
Grace Petrie, it transpired, was a young, lesbian protest singer in the Billy Bragg mould. In other words, completely unsuited to our club, but then, if Jasmine likes her …
xxx
Wilma and Norman kept us behind at the end of the gig for an emergency folk club meeting.
“Our April act’s dropped out,” Norman said, “She’s unwell, the whole tour’s off. I’ve tried all the usual people but nobody’s available. Any ideas?”
Mum and dad made a few suggestions, but Norman had already tried all of them.
“What about Grace Petrie?” I suggested. “She’s a bit of rising star I hear.”
- Log in to post comments
Comments
At 62 I felt this tale more
Permalink Submitted by hudsonmoon on
At 62 I felt this tale more than I care to admit. I've been to 'oldie' type folk gigs and have felt older than my years. I'd go home to my son and demand he turn me in to something youthful. Ha. Really enjoyed this, Terrence.
Rich
- Log in to post comments
I spent 26 years of my life
I spent 26 years of my life living with a folk fanatic. I'm sure the real reason he left me was because one night at our local club I, as a take-it-or-leave-it afficionado, got to have a nice chat with Martin Carthy about driving conditions on the North York Moors, and my ex didn't. Some things are just too much for a man's pride.
So enjoyed this.
- Log in to post comments