Keep Streets Live - Mass Busk in Liverpool

As I posted a few months ago, Liverpool City Council are proposing a license in order for people to busk.  (See here: http://beneaththebeat.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/beat-of-street.html)

These new rules are deemed by most buskers to be overtly restrictive and a threat against the spontaneity and vitality of street performance.

To that end the  KEEP STREETS LIVE campaign has been petitioning the council to re-think their decision.

Sign the petiton HERE.

Furthermore they will be promoting a MASS BUSK in an unofficial launch party for this new legislation.  The Busk will be in Liverpool City Centre today at 12pm.

See you there.

Jacqui and Bridie

Apologies for the brief hiatus, I was up a mountain in Morocco and blogging at 13,000 feet is no mean task.

I remember as a child being fascinated by the turntable on my parent hi-fi system.  We didn't actually have many LP discs (my dad being an ultra cool trendy 1980s guy had ditched them all in favour of tapes) but my mum had a small collection of folk music.

One disc in particular was a favourite of mine, had a cover of two ladies standing by the famous Peter Pan statue in Sefton Park, Liverpool (a copy of the one in London).  Their names were Jacqui and Bridie and they were Britains first female folk duo.


They ran a Folk Club in Liverpool in the 1960s, no mean feat considering the male dominated folk and pub scene at the time.

Sadly, Bridie passed away a few years ago and last year after 50 years Jacquie held the final Folk Club.

Whatever you think of their style and music they were a formidable presence in the Liverpool folk revival.  A two part documentary 'Pink and Pleasant Land' was filmed as part of the final Folk Club and I think it paints a fitting tribute to two figures that broke the mould.

The album is now quite rare, it was called 'Hello Friend' and if anyone has it i'd love to get a copy.

Skipping a Beat 1 - Mysterious Ladies and Curly Haired Sailors

Whilst viewing many old black and white documentaries about Liverpool it struck me how often the images were of children playing in the streets, accompanied by songs.

 Skipping games seem to have their own traditional music and tunes.

From one generation to the next, skipping and playground songs seem to sustain themselves.    I imagine if photographers and film-makers were allowed they would find that similar songs are being sung at skipping games nowadays as were being sung 100 years ago.


As a type of tradition music it's overlooked but when analysed gives us a window into class, religion and the concerns and worries of peoples every day lives.


It's widely believed that 'Ring o'Roses' is a song about plague and disease, whilst 'I like an apple and I like a pear' is really a song about the hardships of marriage to a unsuitable husband.

O I like an apple and I like a pear

And I like a sailor with nice curly hair

O gee I love 'im, I can't deny it

I'll be with him wherever he goes

He stands on the corner and whistles me out

He shouts Oo-ey, oo-ey, are you coming out? 

O gee I love 'im, I can't deny it

I'll be with him wherever he goes

He bought me a shawl of red, white and blue 

And when we got married he tore it in two 

O gee I love 'im, I can't deny it

I'll be with him wherever he goes

Many women dreamed of a marriage to a nice sailor!

There are more sinister versions of this song, probably not sung by children but no doubt well known:

Before I got married I wore a black shawl
But now that I'm married I wear bugger-all
Still, I love him, can't deny him
I will be with him where ever he goes

Before I got married I'd sport and I'd play
But now, how the cradle stands in my way
Still, I love him, can't deny him
I will be with him where ever he goes

Another one has a casual mixture of contemporary references and ethnic identity.

Micky mouse is dead

He died last night in bed

He cut his throat

With a ten pound note

And this is what he said

Red white and blue

Me mother was a jew

Me father was an Irishman

And out goe's you

There are a certain number of set tunes or variations of tunes that seem well known right across the world.  It would be impossible for us to tell where songs originally came from but we can assume that the hundreds of children that passed through the 'Gateway of Empire' that was Liverpool brought their own traditions and songs with them.


These songs are not specific to Liverpool, but they were very common here especially songs involving handsome sailors and beautiful maidens. 

Sometimes life was better in the old songs...

 It is telling that in a port city where men would often be absent for weeks on end and women were left to fend for themselves and their families the romantic ideal of a nice sailor coming home with the bounty of the world for his girl would have a strong resonance.


It's no surprise that the innocent girls who sang these songs would later become the tough and hardy matriarchs that seemed to rule Liverpools streets and alleys with iron fists.


Do you have any songs that you remember from childhood? 

       

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'.

Hello -

Hello and welcome to my new blog where I hope to be exploring the rich musical heritage of the City of Liverpool, England.




Now, you probably know about The Beatles - and you can't really talk about Liverpool music without mentioning them - but I want the scope of this blog to go beyond Merseybeat.

The name of the blog, 'Beneath the Beat' isn't just a nod to the fab four. It's a statement saying that beneath all music are the people who make it and listen to it.  I want to focus on the music that came from everyday people - from the basements of pubs right up to the terraces of Anfield and Goodison Park.

 It's an acknowledgement that for every Merseybeat there were other musical threads continuing through Liverpools history, not as popular but every bit as important.  From the sea-shanties and folk tunes of the quaysides to the DIY punk of Eric's and the current resurgence in live jazz music in pubs and bars across the city.

I hope that over the coming months, you will find something here to interest you.

If you have any ideas or comments about what you'd like to see on here, please get in touch. It'd be great to hear from you.