Folk Rock Don't Groove

When Keith Richards was asked back in 1988 what he thought of Acid House he replied every generation has it's own groove and it's not his job to stand in judgment and tut in disapproval when the beats change, which is a good way of avoiding the issue. The groove behind our version of Tam Lyn is called Dub Step, it pushes and pulls the half time dub feel whilst keeping the double time drum and bass pulse at the centre. It's all based around tension as the beat almost falls apart only to be pulled back. Andy G our drummer is a master at playing this kind of stuff live. At times you think he's losing the beat but this is deliberate; he always pulls it back on the downbeat. The big pay off is when you eventually hit the double time drum and bass grove and in the case of our live version of Tam Lyn this is when we eventually get to play "The Stains Morris" tune on the outro. Dub step was invented by the most recent generation of midi aware computer based composers in the council estates of Bow, East London and areas of West London and came as a reaction to what I consider the most soul less 'soul music' in the world 'house music', which is based around a boring 4 to the floor bass drum, **** high hat patterns and some repetitive sampled vocal hook. Andy G rates Dave Mattacks as one of the best drummers in the world but has only recently discovered him through the Imagined Village. I've just checked out Fairport’s Tam Lyn and interestingly it also has a bizarre time signature having alternating bar counts of 6 and 7 putting it in a 13/8 time signature. Dave M makes it all sound effortless and the grove is indeed extraordinary. Another revelations in my quest for a folk rock grove is Pentangles live album Basket of Light. 'Light Flight' the 1st track has an amazing grove set up by Danny Thompson and Drummer Terry Cox. It starts in 6/4 then you have alternating bars of 5 and 7 that makes 12, so the beat can always still slip back to 6/4 but basically you have alternating bars of 5/8 and 7/8. Totally mental. Sorry to sound like some crazed musicologist but it's interesting how both these bands were classified in their time as 'folk' but both were searching for new forms of re-presenting traditional music that avoided plodding 4/4 rock groves. There are some forms of music that are really NOT meant to grove. The best Punk Rock drummers sounded like they were building a garden shed or falling down the stairs until the Clash covered Junior Murvins "Police and Thieves" and you got this strange fusion of Punk/Dub and reggae (any one remembers the Ruts) that eventually produced the biggest selling UK Post Punk cross over band in the world The Police. But their drummer Stuart Copeland was notoriously bad at keeping time. When we started work remixing Tiger Moths track the Sloe Benga for the IV CD there really was no consistent grove or tempo in the original recording. When I mentioned this to band leader and fRoots editor Ian Anderson he said "why do you think we called it rouge folk, of course there's no groove, was there any groove in Punk Rock?” Good point. We eventually found a sweet spot on the multi track were the tempo settled and we used this to rebuild the track for the re-mix. When Rod Stradling came in to redo his melodium parts he swung like a demon and we based the whole new grove around his swing feel. Which is the English country-dance swing. You can hear the results on the IV CD. It was by far the most difficult track to do but also the most rewarding as we were spanning 20 years of music in remixing the original but at the end of it I got a feeling I really understood how and why English trad dance music swings.