should you give a rat's ass about skiffle?

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no skiffle -> no beatles -> no nothing

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:45 (twenty-two years ago)

i'm not talking abt "like" necessarily: just that some of the important lynchpins may be quite wee

i bet there are other excellen examples you can think of also

the last term in my three-part series is blatant provocation: if you get hung up on it you are too easily provoked

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:47 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought you said influence didn't exist. You lied to us! Boo hoo hoo!

― kate (kate), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Skiffle invents everything therefore skiffle invents punk but caring about who invented punk = you don't understand it i.e. you can keep the rat's ass.

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:52 (twenty-two years ago)

influence != causality

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:53 (twenty-two years ago)

haha Tico Tico wins

*eats rat's ass, trying to look as if he would ever have shared it anyway*

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Had The Beatles not existed, we would have needed to invent them.

Skiffle loses.

― kate (kate), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:56 (twenty-two years ago)

that's true kate but cf also eg world peace (ie needing to invent something != it will have got invented yet)

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:59 (twenty-two years ago)

can someone here give us yanks a little history on skiffle? my impression is that it is to the british what stuff like elvis, jerry lee lewis, and rockability are to us. i mean, i think that i know the basic outline -- guys playing washboards and guitars to a folky beat -- but not the history/sociology.

maybe i do give a rat's ass about this after all, then!

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 20 June 2003 09:00 (twenty-two years ago)

no skiffle -> no "faith" -> no first big radio inroad for limp bizkit -> no everything

― James Blount (James Blount), Friday, 20 June 2003 09:00 (twenty-two years ago)

"rockability" should obv. be "rockabilly." it's late and all that.

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 20 June 2003 09:02 (twenty-two years ago)

You've got rockability! Long lost Kim Gordon song!

― kate (kate), Friday, 20 June 2003 09:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Thank you, Tad, you've just named an EBA track! Now I need to write the song... maybe we will sample some Skiffle. Hmmmmmmm...

― kate (kate), Friday, 20 June 2003 09:03 (twenty-two years ago)

everytime I hear/read a description of skiffle I always think of Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas. is this a correct association?

― James Blount (James Blount), Friday, 20 June 2003 09:04 (twenty-two years ago)

i'm blushing now :-)

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 20 June 2003 09:04 (twenty-two years ago)

the enabling fact always fixed on = skifflers used instruments accessible to all in 50s austerity britain = everyone could join

the "type" of the music is only really folk in the loosest sense (ie a lot of it was kind of made, "like" american pop except you could actually hear very little american pop in the uk at this time, radio = BBC only, and there was massive cultural quarantine) (the biggest UK star, lonnie donegan, named himself for lonnie johnson, who was really more jazz/r&B/country than folk)

anyway the music was VERY easy to make — because it didn't really have to sound like anything except itself, while strongly beaming out the idea that it was super-cool americana, and because it wz played on washboards and broomhandle string basses etc

when cliff richard says "let's put the show on here!", that's the key sensibility (albeit from a quasi-"manufactured" mouth: UK youth gave itself permission to pretend it was just like america, while actually mainly accessing its own rough invention

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 20 June 2003 09:11 (twenty-two years ago)

tad have you been up all night?

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 20 June 2003 09:11 (twenty-two years ago)

it actually sounds like a cross between "the little rascals" than "emmet otter's jugband," with a sorta proto-punk attitude.

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 20 June 2003 09:12 (twenty-two years ago)

yah. i took a sick day.

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 20 June 2003 09:13 (twenty-two years ago)

fwiw, mungo jerry's "in the summertime" was a hit over here and still gets played on radio stations. it gets classified as "skiffle." is "in the summertime" kinda like what a typical skiffle song does sound like?

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 20 June 2003 09:24 (twenty-two years ago)

not really

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 20 June 2003 09:27 (twenty-two years ago)

I think when joey ramone dies i read bobby gillespie say something like:

''no ramones no nothing''

A peter brotzmann solo record is also called 'no nothing'.

mark s => the secret love child of bobby gillespie and peter brotzmann shockah!

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 20 June 2003 11:07 (twenty-two years ago)

because without skiffle we would not have deeply unappealing documentaries which are somewhat funny of british people finding new ways of ' rocking out '

― doom-e, Friday, 20 June 2003 11:09 (twenty-two years ago)

UK youth gave itself permission to pretend it was just like america, while actually mainly accessing its own rough invention

isn't there a certain element of that in a HUGE amount of UK youth culture - taking a blueprint drawn up in the US and adaping/subverting/screwing w/ it till it becomes something in and of itself?
cf: acid house-> hardcore -> jungle/d&b -> uk garage -> "da next shit"...
even UK punk rock took its initial inspiration from US rock bands and the US accent prevails in the vast majority of UK-based rock to this day. However, it's kinda interesting that when British music speaks in its own voice (just as hip hop has really got to grips with over the last few years) that the most interesting/striking developments are made and the music can the be sold back to the states...

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Friday, 20 June 2003 11:20 (twenty-two years ago)

er yes dave i think that was my secret total point

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 20 June 2003 11:26 (twenty-two years ago)

hahaha! i move to clapton next saturday - you can slap me upside the head then!

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Friday, 20 June 2003 11:28 (twenty-two years ago)

cool! *practices slapping motion*

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 20 June 2003 11:29 (twenty-two years ago)

slap me i'm cooler than dave stelfox!

― doom-e, Friday, 20 June 2003 11:30 (twenty-two years ago)

doom-e do you still work in dalston?

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 20 June 2003 11:31 (twenty-two years ago)

slap me i'm cooler than dave stelfox!

and precisely what is this statement based upon?

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Friday, 20 June 2003 11:34 (twenty-two years ago)

nah. i found out my sister ripped me off for my father's estate, hadnt talked to her in three months, my long-lost brother whom i had not seen since i was three, apparently, shows up dead in nyc in a drug czar deal gone bad and i quit my dalston job and promptly have a recoupe/rethink about life by doing absolutely nothing.

― captain doom-e, Friday, 20 June 2003 11:34 (twenty-two years ago)

i'm cooler than you - my life is much more simple!

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Friday, 20 June 2003 11:36 (twenty-two years ago)

damn. DAMN YOU DAVE SKIFFLEFOX!

― captain doom-e, Friday, 20 June 2003 11:37 (twenty-two years ago)

less complicated? simpler? oh forget it...

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Friday, 20 June 2003 11:45 (twenty-two years ago)

less complicate? simpler? oh forget it...

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Friday, 20 June 2003 11:45 (twenty-two years ago)

oh no

― doom-e, Friday, 20 June 2003 11:50 (twenty-two years ago)

oh no. OH NOT GLITCH IN THE ILX MATRIX. keep calm.

― doom-e, Friday, 20 June 2003 11:51 (twenty-two years ago)

early '90s (or was it late '80s?) brit band the gutter brothers = great skiffle revival band.

unfortunately, skiffle revival never quite happened, at least not here in the states.

― fact checking cuz, Friday, 20 June 2003 13:18 (twenty-two years ago)

No one should give a rat's ass about skiffle. No one American, anyways.

― hstencil, Friday, 20 June 2003 13:38 (twenty-two years ago)

no one answered the urgent and key emmet otter question

― jess (dubplatestyle), Friday, 20 June 2003 14:31 (twenty-two years ago)

"how much alike we are, perhaps we're long lost brothers..."

― jess (dubplatestyle), Friday, 20 June 2003 14:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Jess OTM. "And a messa momma' barbeque," dammit.

http://home.planetinternet.be/~bliek/drew-page/mupemmotr.jpg

vs. the Riverbottom Nightmare Band. I can't find an image of the real thing but I did find this -- damn assholes, I can't begin to imagine how horrible they must be:

http://www.unc.edu/~greysax1/pictures/jump.jpg

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 20 June 2003 15:35 (twenty-two years ago)

um, I get the idea that you guys are conflating jug bands with skiffle bands, in which case I'd get super-angry because jug bands are like 10 bazillion times better than that limey crap.

― hstencil, Friday, 20 June 2003 15:49 (twenty-two years ago)

All ye haterz of skiffle, I recommend you hurry along to your nearest Soulseek client and download a Lonnie Donegan best of. If Cumberland Gap is not enough to convince even the skeptic of the quality of the best skiffle, then there will no longer be hope for ILM.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Saturday, 21 June 2003 15:21 (twenty-two years ago)

seven years pass...

it actually sounds like a cross between "the little rascals" than "emmet otter's jugband," with a sorta proto-punk attitude

yeah, i'm struck by the "anyone can do this" crossover between fans and musicians in the mid-late 50s skiffle scene, the outrageous outfits and hairstyles, the characters, people named "awful brenda" - it was punk

― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Monday, 6 September 2010 15:04 (fifteen years ago)

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