efnMagazine - Webmaster's Blog

So long and thanks for all the fish!

2009-05-19T03:46:00.001-07:00

After a frighteningly long time as advertising manager and almost as long as webmaster I have been contemplating a change for a while. As I find myself in strong disagreement with the EFA committee on certain policy decisions I think that it is time to move on.

This web site will stay in place but without updates until either a new webmaster is found or until the hosting contract expires in 2010, whichever is sooner. Email addresses for the editor are unchanged.

All advertising must now be sent to Andy of course. I am afraid that the facility to accept credit card payments has had to be withdrawn as that was processed through my personal bank account.

I'll still be around the clubs and sessions in London and South West Essex.

Peter

Film Clip

2009-04-01T12:07:00.000-07:00

Will Duke sent me this film clip taken at Resonance Radio. It features local musicians Ken Lees and Simon Ritchie together with Will, Reg Hall and Ian Salter. It was taken with a mobile so the quality isn't all it could be.

Last Sunday was Boat Race Day which means turning out to see the Smiths dance. We even saw the boats go past which doesn't always happen.

Just a reminder that it costs us money to keep this site running so we do appreciate a little help from time to time. You don't need to give us money (although we won't say no) but if you are going to buy something from Amazon then using the links on our site will earn us a small commission and every little helps.

Kit and Cutter

2009-03-22T09:20:00.000-07:00

After digging out my passport I headed south of The River last night to see the Boat Band at the new Kit and Cutter folk club in Deptford. This club is unusual in being run by two young women who appear to be in their early twenties and has a strong attendance by people in that age group.

Their inexperience showed in some of the stage management, but then they don't have the benefit of several decades experience that most organisers have these days. In any event it was more than made up by their enthusiasm and that of their audience. The floor singers were as mixed a bunch as you would get in any club including some lovely traditional song both from the organisers and from another pair of young women whose names I didn't catch.

The map suggested that access from Essex should be easy enough but that reckoned without the Saturday evening traffic through the Blackwall Tunnel. By rail it should be easy enough as Deptford Bridge station on the DLR is very close.

Dave Swarbrick

2009-03-21T08:53:00.000-07:00

I saw Swarb play at Sharps on Tuesday. It was the first time that I had seen him in a folk club environment since he came to the old Brentwood Folk Club with Martin Carthy. It was absolutely magic, superb playing and shaggy dog stories between the numbers laced with enough truth to keep you wondering.

On a different topic the editorial team have now started their count down to the next issue. Recent advertisers will be receiving reminders in the post in the next few days and emails will go out to club organisers in about a fortnight.

Busy Weekend

2009-03-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

Well I seem to have fitted most of March's folk activities into one manic weekend.

Thursday: Matt Green and Andy Turner were playing at Islington. As usual they were excellent although Matt is starting to claim to be getting too old for the musician's jig. He still looks pretty impressive dancing Princess Royal while playing. The Horseshoe is a nice venue with an eclectic mix of seating and very nice bitter from Sharps of Cornwall which I haven't found anywhere else in London. There are photos from previous events at the club in our photo gallery.

Due to EFDSS giving new hirers preference over regular bookings Knees Up Cecil Sharp had to run on the same night as File Gumbo. With a choice of Peeping Tom and Bon Temps Playboys I had to chop and change between the two. Check the next issue for details of some exciting overseas bands coming to File.

Saturday was The Watch at Haddenham. As expected from a line up of Dan Quinn, Gareth Kiddier and Rob Murch the music was excellent and with Hugh Rippon calling the night couldn't be faulted.

Sunday meant driving back to Essex for Mary Humpreys and Anahata at Walthamstow. Again performers who can't be faulted. Its a nice friendly club and the landlord provides sandwiches during the interval. George, the resident cat, was in evidence as usual. mostly asleep on top of a radiator.

Morris - Funny and Sad

2009-03-02T14:13:00.000-08:00

I had the following message from Andy Stevens today:

Early February, John New requested that EFA tried to support the screening of ‘Morris: A Life with Bells On’ the film which has had a great deal of press exposure. I had previously contacted the author, and had series of email correspondence with people at Twist Films who own the film. The EFA committee had offered to sponsor a screening of the film in Essex (it having been screened at villages in Dorset near where it was filmed), but on being told this Anna McNaughton of Twist records replied on 25th Feb. :

‘Unfortunately due to the legal nature of trying to secure a UK distributor, we are unable to license it for the type of use you require. Otherwise the sponsorship would have been great for us. If the situation changes, the updates will appear on our website’.
So those who wish for further information should read the press review in the next efn or await the judgement of film distributors.

A pity but nobody can say that EFA didn't make an efford.

On a sadder note I am sure that many of you will already be aware of the death of Rosie Turner-Bisset earlier this year. It was nice to see her recognised by the Guardian today with a short obituary. For some reason I never got to know her although she was one of those people who you run into at folk events all over the country. The photo is a close up from one I took of Rockhopper Morris at Whitby in 2007.

Out Now

2009-02-19T12:32:00.000-08:00

Our March edition has been distributed and should now be on sale at your local club. If you are an EFA member or if you club sells the magazines and your copies haven't arrived please contact Keith as soon as possible.

I am afraid that we have had the inevitable teething problems with the changes to the editorial team. The change to the location of the Fifth Friday Session slipped through the net as did the listings for Toosey Dances. Appoligies to Fred and Julie for those.

I have also had an email from Sue Tuckey telling me that Liz Ryder has cancelled her UK tour. More details on our Stop Press page.

Links

2009-02-08T07:38:00.000-08:00

We have recently run link checking software against our Resources pages and have deleted a number of links and corrected others where the address has changed.

The process only confirms that the links exist, we cannot guarantee that the linked sites are up to date or that the clubs or businesses linked even exist any more.

Any errors or omissions should be advised to our webmaster.

Bellowhead

2009-02-02T06:49:00.000-08:00

A new DVD "Live at Shepherds Bush Empire" will be released on 9 February. You can order it now from our on-line shop.

We have made a few more updates including MP3 downloads for four Eliza Carthy CDs and we have added Kerfuffle to the artists whose work is available.

Advertising

2009-02-01T11:57:00.001-08:00

Our advertising pages have been totally revamped and incorporated into our main web site. The biggest change is not obvious but all uploading and emailing is now handled by scripts on our own web server which means that we are no longer paying a fee to a third party processor. We have also got rid of the annoying banner and pop-up ads.

You can now use these pages to submit ads for invoicing as well as when paying at the time. Most invoices will be payable on-line as well although it may be a couple of days before the details are uploaded.

All advertisements submitted through the web site are automatically seen by both Peter and Andy so you need never worry about getting copy to the right person.

We have now solved the problems around spam filtering with the new editorial teams' email addresses so there should be no more confusing bounce messages. Please remember that anything emailed to "editor" will be copied automatically to Peter, Andy and Keith. One address, three recipients.

Shop Update

2009-01-22T14:23:00.000-08:00

We have updated our online shop with additional CDs and downloads from Cara Dillon, Boo Hewerdine and Jim Morray plus a chance to pre-order forthcoming releases from Cara and Le Vent Du Nord. Our reviews page has been updated with reviews from the forthcoming issue which are available both for purchase and download.

Group Dynamics

2008-12-29T12:02:00.000-08:00

Looking at the people around me at a recent Cajun Barn and thinking about other events that I go to I was struck by the way people attend events in groups.

It is well known that if people like a gig then they may bring friends along next time and of course if they don't like it they will bad mouth you to others. The third scenario that I was thinking of was the natural attrition that you get with any audience.

When people come in groups then there seems to be, not only a critical mass for each group, but also one or two key individuals whose presence is a driver to maintain the group. As an example during 2007 and 2008 there has been a particular group, typically of five or six individuals, attending File Gumbo. I happened to find out that one member of that group would be out of the country for the autumn and winter. The result was not the loss of a single audience member but also of the four or five others who also came in that group.

Meaning? To protect your audience levels it is not simply sufficient to bring in the numbers but when people do come each individual must be able to feel comfortable at your event without the protection of a closed circle. That's a difficult trick to pull off, it is far too easy to appear intrusive or patronising.

How you handle it depends on the type of event. For dances the organisers must be prepared to dance with newcomers themselves or ensure that regulars do not stay in their own little groups. The custom of changing partners in contra and to a lesser extent in Cajun probably makes it easier in those genres.

In a song club it is a matter of finding natural ways to talk to your customers. The person on the front desk is a key member of the team in this respect. Also the club raffle gives you a good excuse to approach strangers without it seeming forced. As a club organiser in the 1970s I used to make a point of taking round copies of Essex Folk News (as it was then) or Folk London to sell rather than just leaving them on the desk.

Yet More Dances

2008-12-16T14:02:00.000-08:00

For a variety of reasons I haven't managed to get along to a music or song event since the Bert Lloyd day. I have managed a couple of dances, one, on a recent trip to Scotland, was a formal Scottish country dance ball. With zero experience of this dance style it was interesting, and rather frightening, to suddenly be a beginner again.

With the emphasis on complex geometry and little contact with my partner combined with rapid moves the overall effect was rather like the Pat Shaw dances on steroids. As an inexperienced dancer in this style I quickly identified some annoying "types" among the "experts".

1. Pushers and Shovers
Being pushed around during a dance is actually rather disorienting and is often more of a hindrance than a help. When people start pushing you around in the walk through you simply loose track of the instructions entirely.

2. Know It Alls (1)
The ones who start talking over the caller to tell you what to do. PLEASE, there is only one caller, and he or she is the one with the microphone.

3. Know It Alls (2)
Despite beginners in the set these ones simply refuse to participate in the walk through. Once character actually stood there reading his own note book of dances, I never worked out if the one he was reading up was the one he failed to walk through!

However, with the benefit of one afternoon workshop I think I managed as well as a lot of the university first years with a whole terms experience. At least I knew what I was doing in the polka off!

Before anybody asks, I didn't wear a kilt but it was the first time that I have danced in a tux.

Coming back home the Christmas Knees Up Cecil Sharp was a week earlier than usual and, unsurprisingly, comparatively poorly attended. The usual slot had been booked for another event, apparently the EFDSS has gone back to the practice of not penciling in the regular events when starting a new bookings diary. The situation is worse next year with Knees Up running on random Friday nights with quite a few clashing with File Gumbo. That is particularly annoying as there is some overlap between the two.

Francis Shergold

2008-11-29T12:58:00.000-08:00

Francis, squire of Bampton Morris from 1950 to 1995, passed away on 27 November. An obitury may be found at Musical Traditions.

Spam and Bert Lloyd

2008-11-29T07:35:00.000-08:00

Not all in one go. First I picked up a bounce message today showing that spammers are not only spoofing our domain name again but actually spoofing the addresses that we use. I am rather disturbed by this, previous spam has used random names with only the domain name correct.

From our recent Stop Press mail out I had noticed a few bounces where people had blocked us as a spammer rather than asking to opt out. As that could have lead to our being blacklisted by the major filtering services I have decided to cut out routine Stop Press mail outs. The same information is available as a news feed so the emails should be redundant anyway. I will still be sending emails to clubs, dance sides and advertisers each quarter as a reminder of our copy date.

And so to Bert Lloyd. The celebration of the centenary of his birth at Cecil Sharp House earlier this month was excellent and thanks must go to Malcolm Taylor for his organisation. A oonversation with Dave Swarbrick (who uses a hearing aid) about the lack of an acoustic loop in the Kennedy Hall lead me to start reading up on the topic. Like most legislation it looks simple enough on the surface but as you start to read you realise that the whole thing is predicated on a venue having a built in sound system and events being run by the venue operator. I think there is scope here for an article in a future edition of the magazine. Anybody with a background in disability discrimination law or sound engineering who would like to contribute should contact the editorial team.

I was on the front of house team for the event and after a 14 hour shift it was nice when customers actually bothered to say "thank you".

Despite the off-on nature of the event Cajun Barn had an excellent night with Petit et la Grosse on the 22nd. Steve and Lynne do a good job at pulling in newcomers for their events. They don't have any special secret just a lot of hard legwork publicising each gig and then giving the customers a first rate night out when they do arrive. The future of the venue is still unclear, hopefully we will still see some dances there next year.

New Issue

2008-11-09T09:25:00.000-08:00

Just a reminder that with effect from the publication of the December edition John is no longer editor. The only reason for contacting him now is if your copy hasn't arrived. Anything else will be handled by the new team. Remember that there are three people in the new team, the best way to communicate is via the team email address editor@efnmagazine.co.uk or to use our contact page. Please DO NOT use the personal addresses of individual team members, our experience is that when you do this you end up sending everything to the same person which simply results in delay.

On Friday the Magpies Nest folk club ran a ceilidh at Cecil Sharp House. The numbers and the demographic would make any other organiser thing that he had died and gone to heaven. 250 tickets sold and over half the audience under 30. The young audience is there for folk music and dance, they just don't go to old style song or dance clubs.

Uncancelled

2008-10-14T11:55:00.001-07:00

The Cajun Barn gig on 22 November hsa been reinstated. Details are available on our Stop Press page.

Dances and More Dances

2008-10-12T13:12:00.000-07:00

The autumn dance season started with a vengence last weekend with Ray Abshire at Cajun Barn back to back with Petit et la Gross at Filé Gumbo. Both excellent gigs although sadly the organisers of the Barn have told me that because of the much higher hall rental they cannot take the personal financial risk of the gig listed for November. The Christmas / New Year party in December will run as planned. The future of the venue is still uncertain but should it continue to be available they will not be running regular events but may put on a few specials during the year depending on what bands are touring. They are lucky in that several performers from Louisiana like to drop in and play for enthusiastic dancers on their way to or from lucrative concert style events in mainland Europe.

On the English ceilidh front Haddenham kicked off a superb programme with Bursledon Village Band and Oxfolk moved to their new venue in Kennington (NOT the one on the Norther Line!). It was claimed that the venue had a sprung floor. If it was it was stiffer than any other sprung floor that I have danced on although I have probably been spoiled by the Kennedy Hall. In any event it was a great improvement on the Exeter Hall and my feet did not hurt at the end of the evening which was a lovely change.

There was too much to fit in this month, I have heard good things about the Vaughan Williams Day at CSH, I hope somebody sends in a review for the magazine. The Bert Lloyd Day is coming up soon with an equally impressive line up.

Shop Update

2008-09-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

We have just updated our online shop to include downloads from Nancy Kerr and James Fagan, Megson and Rainbow Chasers and added Megson and Rainbow Chasers to the available CDs. You can also order Megson's new CD which is due to be released on Monday.

Cajun and Copy Date

2008-09-25T13:54:00.001-07:00

The Thames Festival the weekend before last had an excellent set of Cajun and Zydeco bands although the rather cracked flagstones were hard on the feet when it came to dancing. It is a bit of a culture shock dancing in that sort of environment when you are accustomed to a room full of people who expect to dance. Not only are the non-dancers not making eye contact, which is to be expected, but the experienced dancers are not looking around for partners in the usual way. A good day though, and I suppose I should thank Boris for spending his constituents' money on my free day out.

There are a couple of good Cajun gigs coming up next week with Ray Abshire from Louisiana at Cajun Barn on the 2nd and Petit et la Gross at Cecil Sharp House on the 3rd.

The copy date for our winter edition will be October 21, so we not only want your listings but also positive statements of when clubs will be closed over the holiday period and of course any extra sessions or morris tours taking place.

Some people still aren't grasping the fact that the magazine is edited by a team and send copy and listings to the wrong people. With John leaving us at the end of the year all our email contact forms have been brought together on a single page. No excuses now as there are explicitly labelled links for advertising, editorial copy, stop press and subscriptions.

Cecil Sharp House

2008-09-07T15:35:00.000-07:00

There has been quite an impressive effort made to repaint The House over the Summer break together with new plumbing. Somebody seems to have taken the fact that the building is grade 2 listed to heart however and the leak under the gents urinals appears to have been carefully restored.

With two events running last Friday it was surprising to see how popular the Scottish ceilidhs had become with a massive audience which seemed to be largely under 30. Judging by the numbers who spent as much time in the bar as they did in the hall I get the impression that a good proportion of people were there because it was "the place to go" rather than any special interest. As the ceilidh club now seems to be running weekly it will be interesting to see how many people turn up for it on the third Friday when Knees Up Cecil Sharp displaces it to the Thursday night. Even more interesting will be to see how many can tell the difference!

On Line Bookshop

2008-09-03T10:19:00.000-07:00

We have added some new items to our on-line bookshop with some new tune books and a new section on Klezmer. There is a big selection there now ranging from biographies of the great collectors to songs, tunes and folklore.

Local Boys Make Good

2008-08-01T10:55:00.000-07:00

The new CD featuring the combination of local band Mawkin and Devon based singer Jim Causley is about to be released. You can order your copy through our on-line shop.

We have also updated our shop for the latest releases from Nancy Kerr and James Fagan, Tony Hall and Jim Moray.

Don't forget that our Amazon commissions are what pays for this web site so you can help us by making all your Amazon purchases through our links.

Folk Prom

2008-07-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday saw the Proms' folk day with a mixed concert of folk performers and orchestral arrangements and the evening a straight folk concert. I wasn't overly impressed when I listened live on Radio 3 but when I watched the TV recording on iplayer it was striking how visual it all was. Its a pity that the cameramen didn't seem to know what was going on and at times they made the whole thing appear very messy. I was surprised that there were separate announcers at the RAH for radio and TV but at least with the radio Verity Sharp knew her subject, but then I have seen her do a floor spot at a folk club.

The evening audience looked a bit sparse for a venue of the RAH's size, I think maybe the Cadogan Hall would have been a better location as they already use it for the Proms chamber concerts. I am not convinced about a special "folk day" which just seems to keep the music in its ghetto. I would much rather see the Vaughan Williams arrangements on the last night topped and tailed with more mainstream folk performances. Maybe even somebody from one of the Bampton sides dancing Princess Royal (dream on!)

Back to the magazine, the next edition has gone to the printers so it isn't physically possible to put anything else in. As usual email us with any late changes and additions and they will go on our web site.

Copy Date

2008-07-05T09:32:00.000-07:00

Don't forget, the copy date for our September issue is 21 July. Please use the link on the home page for submitting advertising copy.