The Singing City

Today, as following the themes of recent posts i'm going to look at music in the context of urban regeneration.

In 1965, during the midst of the great urban renewal where the Victorian slums of northern Liverpool were bulldozed wholesale the BBC sent a documentary crew to Liverpool.

The premise of this documentary was:

"How urban regeneration tore the heart out of the Singing City."

The documentary hosts interviews with dockers, priests, seamen and even the famous police constable 'Herbert Balmer'.   The highlight for me are the rare interviews with the women who kept the communities together when the men were away at sea. 

 For anyone who pines for the 'good old days' before they knocked the slum terraces down these interviews are a stark reminder of the utter deprivation, poverty and danger that haunted those terraces and tenements.

Listening to the stories of these people, it if difficult to believe that such poverty was still prevalent into the second half of the 20th Century.

This bleak image is constantly undercut by the use of music which is central to the film. Typical folksongs of the era are present in abundance (inclduing live recordings of Pete McGovern in local pubs) and even more remarkable is the recording of the childrens songs, sung on countless playgrounds.

These childrens playground songs and rhymes seem to echo through the ages but are held up to contrast with images of children in the same streets singing American blues music 'The Wood-chopping Blues'.  

This documentary really shows the birth of the modern world where children still have to sleep in houses infested by damp and rats yet the police were deploying CCTV in the city centre (30:00 mins).

Britains first CCTV cameras?  Liverpool 1965, showing the Metropolitan Cathedral half-built.

Was this the first use of CCTV in the UK?

You can watch the documentary here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/mersey/5183.shtml

'There are no folk in the whole world so helpless and so wise, their is hunger in their bellies, and laughter in their eyes'.

Liverpool - An Altered Town

 One familiar with the city cannot help but look around Liverpool today and be astounded by the changes of the past decade.  The transformation of the city centre from the damp, drab and disintegrated (or perhaps disintegrating) concrete wasteland to the vibrant flowing modern city is a lesson in how to do town planning right!

However, you will always get people who yearn for yesterday.  People who think that the grass was always greener before (even if that grass was was the 1970s Pier Head *shudder*).

Regardless of whether these decisions have been seen out to be right or wrong, they have always acted as a catalyst for commemoration - often through the medium of folksong.

Liverpools latest transformation is just one of a series of massive changes that have altered the city - the first major change was the building of the Old Dock in the 1710s, without that we would not have Bold Street and the ropewalks area for they were built on the old wasteland heath over 'the pool' (below).

Map of location of the Old Pool on a mid-victorian town plan.

The Old Dock itself succumbed to the progress of commerce and civility and was filled in and by 1828 was the site of John Foster's magnificent Customs House (below).

This magnificent building stood until the actions of the Luftwaffe left it a burnt-out ruin, it was pulled down shortly after the war.

We look at it as a beautiful symbol of neoclassical grandeur at the hight of the Georgian period.
The people of Liverpool in the 1830s didn't necessarily see it that way.

This song; 'Liverpool's an Altered Town' seems astounding to us today but it really shows how the town changed between the 1700s and the 1800s.  It lists a number of churches that have been erected, how the old dock was filled in, how St Thomas's church spire was pulled down (neglecting to mention it was so high and jerry-built that it used to visibly sway in high winds!).

St Thomas's Church, before and after it's spire

What is even more fascinating is that this same tune was adapted to form a song that had the exact opposite sentiments, compare these two stanzas.

Liverpool is an Altered Town - 1830

"The spire of famed St Thomas's"      

"That long had stood the weather"

"Although it was so very high, they've downed it all together"

"And the Old Dock the poor Old Dock"

"The Theme of many a sonnet"

"They've pulled it up and now have built a customs house upon it"

Liverpool is Improving Daily - 1828

"Once Old Dock was so strangely fixt"

"The streets seemed not connecte'd"

"There ships and houses oddly mix'd, now a grand Customs House erected"

"What glorious sights on Kings Birthday"

"The ladies gay and music play"

"With all the Clubs so fine array'd, and Mr Mayor the first stone laid."

One song seems mired in misplaced nostalgia (the old dock the theme of sonnets?) and the other mired by jingoism and blatant civic boasting.

These songs, although in the folk tradition are not really folk songs.  The first one 'Liverpool is Improving Daily' was written in 1828 specifically for the grand procession to lay the foundation of the Customs House. It is basically a piece of spin, PR and propaganda.

The second song 'Liverpool is an Altered Town' was printed by John Harkness of Preston as a 'Broadside Ballad'.  These were printed in their hundreds, they were very popular and were often sold by pedlars and street-hawkers throughout the country.  There were not about collecting and preserving folk songs, but rather selling cheap-diversionary ephemera. 

 It is telling of where Mr Harkness's priorities lie that in his catalogue he also had ballad such as: "Preston is an Altered Town" and "Manchester is an Altered Town".