Royce and Beauford Fans Only UP Only

[peteinmn]

So....

HOW 'BOUT THOSE PACKERS!!!???!

GO PACK!!

[The Weekenders]

Taint even football season, fercrynoutloud.

[Joseph E. Smith]

For the record, I am not now, and have never been, a memer of SCA. But I did play the pipes for Clann Tartan (or as I call them... the Society for Ceative Cross-dressing {SCC}) for a couple of summers.

[Cynth]

Oh! They play football. Okay. Yep---my husband just said The Green Bay Packers but he said it is not football season now.

[peteinmn]

Taint even football season, fercrynoutloud.

Ok, how about

Or,

[IRTradRU?]

Taint even football season, fercrynoutloud.

True, but at this time of year I'd normally be watching the Stanley Cup Finals...

Gosh I miss hockey.

[jGilder]

And I shudder to think that with the availability of uilleann pipes now, and the years of probable gainful employment in this stage of their lives among these former Ren-Fest rowdies, that the potential for dozens of these "Celtic Uilleann Pipers" like the local Highland-piping Renaissance favorite to this day, whom we refer to only as, "Scary Larry," did in past decades.

I saw an uilleann piper named "Larry" playing at Whitman's Renaissance Faire last year. He usually wears a cowboy hat, so he looks kind of scary here I guess.

Did they really have uillean pipes and sunglasses during the Renaissance?

[Cynth]

Well, they did have eyeglasses so someone might conceivably have held a pair over some smoke to darken them.

[jGilder]

Well, they did have eyeglasses so someone might conceivably have held a pair over some smoke to darken them.

Actually, looking closer I see he's also wearing a black beret. This could really upset the theories about the origins of the beatnik.

[peteinmn]

And I shudder to think that with the availability of uilleann pipes now, and the years of probable gainful employment in this stage of their lives among these former Ren-Fest rowdies, that the potential for dozens of these "Celtic Uilleann Pipers" like the local Highland-piping Renaissance favorite to this day, whom we refer to only as, "Scary Larry," did in past decades.

I saw an uilleann piper named "Larry" playing at Whitman's Renaissance Faire last year. He usually wears a cowboy hat, so he looks kind of scary here I guess.

Did they really have uillean pipes and sunglasses during the Renaissance?

Well we certainly know that the Vikings had sunglasses!!

[Flyingcursor]

Hmmm. Someone a bit self obsessed?

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

Beauford did not in fact ever tell anyone they suck. The original post was of course obliterated and so this only makes it easier to assert that blatant falshood.

Be that as it may, I know full well now from personal email and PM's emanating from those close to our friend who so innocently pondered the reason for his expulsion from the local session, that our Beauford had him pegged to the wall pretty well by all local accounts. He was in fact the source of pain and annoyance for some time. He was the subject of many an irritated behind-the-back discussion, until the point of intolerability was finally reached, until all subtle attempts to clue him in had failed, and somebody had to be elected to simply call him and ask him not to come if he brought the pipes. They felt they could then at least play over him or around him and he couldn't dominate the session by sheer force of volume and noise. Beauford did not tell him he sucked, he posed the question to the general forum that this might be an obvious possibility in such cases. In this particular case, far stronger words were used locally to motivate the call.

Note even in his own thread, after repeated suggestions as well-phrased as others have claimed Beauford's should have been, he simply didn't get the hint, and pretended to remain in a quandry concerning his expulsion. If nothing else he should not ask the question if he's not prepared for somebody to guess the answer he already knows in spite of his attempts to obfuscate the matter.

Contrary to all assertions otherwise, it is a public service and a service to this and all such individuals to point out the obvious in the most obvious way until they get the point.

I will note however that one man's "you suck" might be another man's "gee, you play pretty well." For instance if this current combatant with Beauford's wit and insight were to relocate to say, Eastern Washington, or Southern Florida, relative to the level of local play, he might well "not play too bad." It's all relative, and it's up to you, or we, as pipers and musicians to go out of our way to make that judgment before others are forced to make it for us. The entire rest of the community judges us all by these individual "thickie" situations where one local piper just doesn't clue in.

For further reference, the last combatant with our Mr. Lerwick's unique perception was likewise certified by numerous local emails and PM's to myself, to be every bit as inadequate a player and in possession of as untuned and unbalanced a set of pipes as was pointed out in the forum by Royce. Likewise, the complainant had spent years in the forum maintaining that he was an accomplished player, featured with orchestras and on professional CD's and the envy of Highland pipers and heads of music departments in major academic centers of learning. The sound file posted in support of his "professional" evaluation of his own pipes (and attendant playing of same) was so patently, even comically in opposition to any and all of these claims that it was immediately excised and hidden, leaving poor Mr. Lerwick standing by his guns in the open, while his challengers hid like cowards behinds the skirts of the moderators.

In both these cases it was the best service to literally slap some sense into them until they were forced by sheer evidence and logic to accept reality as it is. Instead, it became the instant duty of this forum and its moderators to prop up these acolyte fantasies of mastery, rather than correct bad tuning, bad playing, and bad attitudes while they are still salvageable. I simply don't understand how this helps anyone. They will either shape up and pull their heads out and amount to something under this sort of scrutiny, or they will run off crying and get out of it to everyone's relief, even their own in the final analysis.

And lastly, as something of a farewell, in the current case of one of our number being asked to leave his pipes home, only the original poster, who knew full well why he'd been banned from his local session, and had raised an entirely disingenuous question in the first place, took Beauford's response as a specific and personal attack directed primarily at him. And only the moderator leaped eagerly to delete the entire post even though it contained valid and reasoned points with the exception of one colloquial word choice. There's a reason for this:

The irony of our specially appointed moderator is that, while many a legitimate Irish Traditional or Scottish musician has found him or herself throwing on the "village idiot" costume and making a few bucks on a weekend at the Renaissance Festival, our moderator's "Celtic Music" tradition spawns first and foremost from donning the village idiot wardrobe quite enthusiastically, and dragging arse through the mud and straw shouting "Huzzah" and weilding stamped-out sword and home-made pike, swaddled in a great kilt made from mum's old wool blanket, looking like he survived the battle of Cullodden only because he was too drunk from the night before to make it to the field. He originates in fact from an entire community of "Celtic Re-enactors" who feel, if anyone can put on the village idiot outfit, they can also put on a set of pipes and do just as well as "real" musicians with a little practice. I haven't in a single case found anyone to come from this reverse direction (usually on Highland pipes for their first try) to ever amount to anything. This is simply because they don't have a clue about any of it. Not only is our moderator central to a local crew of "Celtic musicians" to have been (as he alludes to himself) encouraged to leave the local sessions, in fact all of them, but in his sojourn here he was never deemed to be at a level where he should ever have even known where the sessions were, any of them. (Well, with the possible exception of what we call the "Slow Session," the requirement for which is to be able to make the chosen instrument sound two or three recognizeable notes in a row.)

The blunt summation of it all is that our moderator, in all his time in my area, and relative to his entire social throng, were the cause of much cringing and weeping and rapid packing up any time they were spotted entering the pub on session night. And I shudder to think that with the availability of uilleann pipes now, and the years of probable gainful employment in this stage of their lives among these former Ren-Fest rowdies, that the potential for dozens of these "Celtic Uilleann Pipers" like the local Highland-piping Renaissance favorite to this day, whom we refer to only as, "Scary Larry," did in past decades.

So really, fun is fun, and dress up is dress up, but how can any of us here continue to be regulated in a forum controlled by the very epitome of all that is evil and embarassing in the uilleann pipe world? 90% of his own contributions have been prattle and most of that centered around his adventures in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms) and Clan Tartan (the local chapter of Klan McAsshole, the Cullodonites from hell.) I had my fun in those circles too, but it's certainly no qualification for any sort of musicianship. From current evidence, he's a bit better these days but the ambiance, the gestalte, the stink of the Ren Fest never leaves the True Believer thereof.

I'll be gone now, and if this post remains intact for three days I won't be back. (A smattering of applause) I really don't care to be where I'm not appreciated believe it or not and I really don't want to make trouble, I just can't dumb-down my wit enough to satisfy some of the Holy Joes I guess. Those who know me, even hate me, from other forums know I'll honor my word.

(Let's not make it a contest. 699 more ways to get in here to go if it comes to it...)

Interesting. Our "moderator" deletes a perfectly civil and valid bit of advice to all pipers and I didn't in fact mention allude to or respond to the original post at all. I in fact replied as a separate comment very very late into the thread. And isn't it interesting that our "moderator" who personally attacked the notion of "polite" sessions based on his own experience--didn't even stop to consider my point. I suggest this might be due to my observations hitting too close to the root of the tree.

1 Pipes are often very loud, often the loudest instrument, and often by specific design.

2 Pipers are often not that good, certainly not often as good as they think they are, and often should not be taking over sessions simply because they have the enthusiasm to do so or have the loudest instrument in the session. Even "tuned" pipes present "tuning" problems for other instruments.

3 Pipers do not in fact need to be running drones, drones which everyone in the thread has admitted will not be very well in tune with the session anyway, and possibly not even in tune the the piper him/herself. A set of wowing drones can only ad noise and unclarity to anyone attempting to hear the rest of the assembly, especially those unfortunate enough to be right next to the drones/regulators. This can in fact make it simply impossible to hear and play along with the session and create a dead zone well around the piper or perhaps across most of the room.

4 I am in fact the only concise post so far to offer specific and neutral comentary on the subject, and to offer a plausible and objective explanation for the comment received by the original poster. If said party asks for explanation of this comment, a comment somebody went well out of the way to phone in to him before the session, and seems so befuddled as to any possible reason for it, one would have to question a moderator or the poster himself regarding his real motivation for opening it up to the community for analysis when the moderator and poster alike have such a hostile reaction to the only specific, neutral, and pertinent, not to mention logical, train of thought on the matter. The entire rest of the thread consists almost soley of back-slapping fellow pipers encouraging the party in question to tell the session to fook off and continue to ignore someone or some group of people in the session who felt strongly enough to bring up what they (not I) consider to be a serious problem with the poster himself in his own session. I would suggest that it is the original poster, and most of the rest of the thread who have been playing by a strictly anti-social set of rules of behavior and discourse. It has been our "moderator" who in fact has shown a complete distain and contempt for the entire rest of the Irish Traditional community, and who has only encouraged this original poster to heap more and stronger distain and contempt upon this person's local session in the name of, and on behalf of the Chiff and Fipple Forums.

5 Even if the piper is indeed the "host" of this session, and he's been asked to leave the pipes at home, ostensibly his primary means of insuring he has the power to "lead" the session, one might suppose he's really being asked to back off the entire notion of "hosting" "leading" or "running" the session at all.

6 At the risk of having to move onto one of the remaining six or seven hundred available identities available to access this forum, I'd like to propose that pipers can and often are just as annoying and unaccomplished and intolerable in session or otherwise as sometimes alluded to. Sometimes, when a well-meaning subject of your own session calls you at home and asks you to leave the pipes behind next time, it really is your fault and they're trying to be polite about it, rather than tell you to piss off the session entirely. They're trying to tone down your presence enough so they can at least get their own music in. It's not my concern whether or not this applies personally to this or that piper. It is however entirely valid advice and I see no reason why this "moderator" or the original poster should be exempt from statements of universal truth. No one here would of course question my assessment or postulating were the "leader" of this session a box or banjo player. What I put to this forum now, is the claim that my response is indeed being censored for purely editorial or political reasons, because of an assumed universal brotherhood and goodness of "piping" that has made our wise and neutral "moderator" and the so-called "brother" he feins to defend, unable, unwilling, or just too arrogant to submit themselves and ourselves to the same sort of community-wide social and personal criticism to which we would subject any other Irish Traditional musician.

In fact, the original poster only flatters himself if he thinks my observations were somehow narrowed and specific to him and his personal abilities because it only further diminishes his own mindset, the mindset of the moderator, or perhaps most of the forum, to pretend that the pipes and most pipers are so commonly respected and accomplished as great musicians, that a "personal attack" could be the only reason I'd be making the suggestion that a piper in a session has to be considerate of those quieter, lesser beings around him.

It's the sheerest of hypocrisy, as betrayed by our "moderator's" own response, to lecture *me* about objectivity, when it seems his entire point in my censure was to punish me for suggesting that other Irish Traditional musicians and the session community in general, deserved any degree of respect or consideration from we, God's Own piping community.
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Beauford T Rosemondt III



Joined: 07 Mar 2005
Posts: 33


PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 8:25 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Bill Reeder wrote:
"5 We have since learned if I've followed it correctly, that the piper in question is ganging up with his box playing wife, doubling any effect of session-hijacking or session-hogging."

The original piper received a phone call from an accordion player requesting him to cease and desist playing the pipes. I offered information to the effect that my wife and I play pipes/accordion only to suggest that the two instruments were not mutually exclusive. My remarks really had nothing to do with the original post. Point 5 should not be a charge laid at the original poster's doorstep.


Yes, I'm not even sure how you got that quote. I posted it in the wee hours of the morning and believe I edited that long before it would have been possible to have been read. There were some four pages or maybe more as I recall of anecdotes to try to keep separate.
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Beauford T Rosemondt III



Joined: 07 Mar 2005
Posts: 33


PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 8:42 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Jim McGuire wrote:
I don't think the original guy ever figured out why he was un-invited (only if he had his pipes with him) to the 'open' session. He might just ask the person on the phone next time.

It seems like there is no shortage of possibilties.


Without asking you or anyone else to take sides or make a definite determination on this reason, I must say that this is the second time here I've been seriously criticised for merely answering, directly, the open question of a poster with the most obvious, and to me, blatantly invited reasoning.

If, without using any one person in specific example, somebody from a session, anyone, calls you up and asks you to leave your pipes at home, what would the most obvious answer be?

Before we are permitted to spell out here what each and every one of you is actually thinking at the moment, let's look a little closer:

Who was this caller? It need not matter, because we can assume that anyone so motivated to call and ask one not to bring the pipes would certainly not have just spontaneously come up with the idea. One would have to assume that outside the session, in corners of the session, while the piper is in the head, after the piper has gone home for the night, this "problem" with the piper and his pipes has been the center of heated, open, and unanimous complaint for a long period of time, or at least for a long enough time at a long enough session that it has been deemed intolerable. But can we assume this call came from the leader of, a leader of, a strong player in, a respected personal center of said session? We must.

And so, the question arises, why didn't this contributor here, this originator of this thread, have the basic human instinct, the basic curiosity, the normal belligerent refusal to be openly insulted in such fashion without demanding satisfaction or at least justification? Why did it never somehow occur to this contributor to simply ask, "Uh, hey...what's that all about then?"

I propose that the question was asked and the answer is known and not to the liking of the person who presented it here. It's entirely reasonable to assume that this whole thread is an attempt at personal validation and all the facts have been deliberately obfuscated because the whole point was to rally this I-Trad-wide slagging of sessions and sessioneers and other instruments in general, rather than a serious attempt to understand this or any other incident or co-mingling with pipers and the general Irish Traditional music community.

So I have to insist, in general, and not making specific assertions against any allegedly tender individuals in this forum, that when your peers in a session designate someone to call you and ask you not to bring your pipes next time, it is not out of jealousy for your magnificent instrument and your talent in playing it. I can almost assure you of that.
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Beauford T Rosemondt III



Joined: 07 Mar 2005
Posts: 33


PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 8:50 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Jim McGuire wrote:
Another impression - and a point made in the movie BOYS AND GIRL FROM COUNTY CLARE - is that pipers spend as much time messing with reeds and tuning as they spend playing.

In the movie, everyone is ready to go at the ceili band practice except the piper on account of his reed.


Yes, except the pathetic state most pipers allow their pipes to fall into was also noted as his inlet valve shot across the stage in competition. Apparently however, they were unaware that this would almost immediately silence the pipes so it could have only happened without total disaster within one full bag of being done with the set.
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Beauford T Rosemondt III



Joined: 07 Mar 2005
Posts: 33


PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 9:20 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
magroibin wrote:
Beauford T Rosemondt III wrote:
Interesting. Our "moderator" deletes a perfectly civil and valid bit of advice...


Royce, if you believe that starting off with "your playing sucks" is both civil and valid then I apologize to you and to the list for taking any offence.

Paul


Frankly, yes. I've played in rock bands and Highland Pipe Bands and now Irish Traditional bands and in sessions for a total of some 35 years and particularly among Scottish or Irish musicians I find your example to be tame and embarassingly impersonal. In Scottish circles a group of band or session mates might summarize even a fairly strong performance thus: "What a load o' sh*t." In Irish circles: "What a load o' fecking sh*t." But that sort of endearing politeness is usually reserved around the ears of the good Catholic Church Lady who plays the fiddle, or while Kirking O' the Tartan in the sanctuary or other formal occasions.

Honestly, I don't know what sessions or "traditional" musicians some of you people are hanging with but I suspect if you're unfamiliar with this sort of self and peer critical review I suggest you're not really in the heart of it and they're all just tolerating you as some sort of guest.

You really aren't one of the brotherhood until you've had yourself another arsehole ripped by a good friend, and you aren't even considered a possible future member unless you've had a new one ripped by a total stranger in public. If you go running away to cry to mommy you're not in the heart of the tradition and never will be.

It's part of the test, and rather a lot of you here just line up to fail it.

In any case, I responded to a thread, five or six pages into it and as many topics and variations into it. It's arrogant to assume, since I did not quote you or directly reference your posts, any of them, that you own the thread once started, and like any open conversation as in a pub, you can make the rules and demand everyone follows your lead and every bit of the conversation that ensues is personally owned and controlled by yourself. Had I wished to tell you specifically and personally that your playing sucks I would have. I don't however have any way of knowing that so it is incumbent upon you to establish this for me as well as the rest of the group if you seriously wish an answer to your question.

Personally, I think you know exactly why you were uninvited to pipe at this session, that the reasoning they gave you does not reflect positively on either your playing or your pipes or both, and the only reason you brought it here was because you thought you could control the response to your benefit and everyone would mindlessly rally to the plight of a fellow piper. I think however, it would be far more honest and useful to pipers in general if you actually came to this group with the specific reasoning--unadulterated by your editing or editorializing--given to you by the group that wishes to ban your piping. I really do care what other musicians think of pipers and every example such as yours really ought to demand a serious investigation, not a flippant revelry of justification and excuse making.

The people I play with would in fact simply tell me pretty much anything about me or my playing if I asked, and I would get a real answer. If the answer was that I sucked, then that's what I'd hear. In your case, as I've already noted, you may never know because as you have demonstrated here, you will cry and complain and protest and exert whatever authority you may to suppress even the consideration of the possibility that it's a problem with your pipes or your playing of them, and so you'd never know you're surrounded by people who can't stand your very presence, until in frustration they'll just mealy-mouth some lame excuse about balance or tuning or whatever, to get you off their backs and out of their faces.

It's a simple proposition: You asked me why you would be told not to come to your local session if you bring your pipes. You may not like the answer, but I've given you a straight, concise, and the most logical motivation for making this request to you or anyone else. However you phrase it, the guts of it are going to be that they can't stand to be around you playing your pipes.

If what you really meant to say was: Hey, I got kicked out of my local session and I feel bad, can you guys please just make me feel better? Then that's the way you should have phrased it, and I'd have stayed out of the discussion. I have what some of you would call a weakness, but it's really a strength: when somebody asks an obvious question and I have the obvious answer I tell them in an obvious way what they obviously need to know.

I suppose this goes to the question of whether this is a forum that can and would logically be populated with musicians or craftsmen, particularly in those rather coarse and frank and opinionated ethnic circles in which this music and this instrument is centered, or whether this is a forum in which mostly purebread American cyberloafers talk about their latest heritage-hobby in the shallowest of terms, mixed in with allusions to their Renaissance Festival Pike-Drill reenactment exploits and old photos of funny filibeag costumery. That's all fun of course, but the problem with social Darwinism is there are always more dabblers and dress-up dilettanti than actual players, and this level of conversation soon becomes the only acceptable level or depth of discussion or debate.
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Beauford T Rosemondt III



Joined: 07 Mar 2005
Posts: 33


PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 10:17 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
Beauford T Rosemondt III wrote:

Beauford T Rosemondt III wrote:
Has anyone just considered that perhaps you suck and that's why they go to the bother of making a special call to ask you to lay off the pipes?


... This is an unacceptable post. There's a big difference. One is carefully crafted and written in a manner that explains the poster's thoughts in a relatively REASONABLE way... the other is an obvious assualt.

My apologies for printing that again.


Hmm. Please disclose the obvious direction at a specific person or statement or quote. I submit that it's only obvious to you and the person who complained to you, identifying himself as the object of the "obvious" assault.

If we remove one word, we have, "Has anyone considered perhaps that one sucks and that's why one would go to the bother of making a special call to ask one to lay off one's pipes?" Now let's change two words, "Has anyone considered that one can't play the instrument...."

If you look in the Bible you'll find a reference which I'll paraphrase, "Making an offender for a word." Now, if you wanted to delete the line or the word you found offensive, you would have been a "moderator." Instead you struck the entire post and lectured me about playing well with others, a personal attack directed specifically to me. Which puts you in the role as a personal avenger, not a moderator. A moderator moderates the whiners as well as the controversial. You're whining about word choice, one word in one sentence and you're parsing it out with a hair trigger for whatever reason in my case.

What you're suggesting is that perfectly normal conversation in perfectly normal public discussions be altered in this forum to arcane, obsolete, academic forms because in this one person's case they decided to raise an objection to normal conversational, popular, colloquial American English. The question was, even in your selected quote: "Has *anyone*" clearly refering to the collective group and huge volume of posts and variants--not as you claim to this one individual. You clearly quote my use of "considered" and "possibility" two very tempered words both inviting (the group) to examine the following *possibility.* So really, what you're left with is "suck," one word in a perfectly tempered and considered sentence, in the middle of a much larger post--the rest of which is apparently not in debate. In reaction to this one word, a perfectly valid colloquial expression, not directed specifically at this complainer as you claim, you have quite openly censored and berated me for either personal or political reasons.

Now, you may be very happy with yourself at this opportunity and many others may be happy for you, but let's not play silly buggers with what's going on here, and what motivated your deletion. Don't pretend to raise deep moral issues over what is clearly limited to a stylistic preference and not an objection to actual content.
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[The Weekenders]

For the record, I am not now, and have never been, a memer of SCA. But I did play the pipes for Clann Tartan (or as I call them... the Society for Ceative Cross-dressing {SCC}) for a couple of summers.

Well, like I said, I just enjoy the florid writing, but haven't a clue about the veracity of the various accusations. That said, I can only imagine a RenFair by some gator swamp. Aint he talking about somewhere up in cheesehead country anyway? How does a Floridian raise the bile of one in the land-o-lakes anyway? Did ya just move down there or something?

True, I haven't been following the UP Forum..so I may be missing the larger picture.

RenFairs, ScotsFairs, there is so much malarkey associated with all of 'em that its fertile grounds for satire....

[Cynth]

So....

HOW 'BOUT THOSE PACKERS!!!???!

[peteinmn]

I'm starting to run out of sports here!