David’s Daily Digital Dollop: Dollop 225 – The Young’uns In The Mix – Where Folk Music And Pop Music Collide

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At 11pm on Saturday 20th August, I shall be DJing at the Folk East festival in Suffolk. The night will be called The Young’uns In The Mix. As well as debuting this unique project at Folk East, we’ll be releasing it on The Young’uns Podcast at the end of August. Here’s a little bit of bumf about it, and I’ve also put together a teaser introduction to wet your appetite.

Prepare to enter a world where folk music and pop music collide. Where Michael Jackson flirts with British traditional folk music, Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar join forces with Daft Punk, The Watersons share the stage with Van-halen, the Prodigy embrace sea shanties, and the Unthanks go through a bit of a death metal faze.

David Eagle from The Young’uns takes to the decks to DJ, exclusively for Folk East, as the two disparate worlds of folk and pop join together in unholy musical matrimony. Come and hear folk music like you’ve never heard it before. Come and dance the night away in the company of The Young’uns, armed with disco lights, samplers and DJ decks, and joined by the amazing MC Squared. All shall be revealed!

Download the Young’uns In The Mix promo here.

Get tickets for Folk East here

David’s Daily Digital Dollop: Dollop 223 – Pardon My French

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I’m writing this on the way back from Broadstairs Folk Festival, and I am pleased to report that I did not sleep with a morris dancer. This is a reference to yesterday’s Dollop incidentally, just in case you didn’t read yesterday’s blog and so thought that I was admitting to a weird compulsion to have sex with morris men.

Broadstairs festival was fun. We had some deaf children in our gig who had someone signing for them. Goodness knows how the signer coped during our French shanty, which is sung very fast and in very badly pronounced French. I also did a yodeling solo just to confuse the signer and the children even more. Personally I believe that one of the few privileges of being blind is being able to take the piss out of the deaf. It’s a form of therapy, a cathartic release, and come on, it’s not like they can hear me.

Tomorrow, Ben’s French girlfriend’s mother is coming to stay for a few days. When I say “Ben’s French girlfriend,” I mean Ben’s only girlfriend, who is French. I thought I better clarify this, just in case Elsa is reading. She’s probably already annoyed at Ben after yesterday’s scaffolding/ladder revelations, without adding insult to injury by making her think that Ben has a number of girlfriends of different nationalities, and that Elsa is only the French one.

The reason I bring up the fact that Elsa is French is because it is relevant to what I’m about to write about. Elsa’s mother is also French, which is only to be expected really, given that she’s Elsa’s mother.

The original plan was for Elsa to take the two days off work to spend some time with her mum, but she was unable to get the time off, and so during the day it’s going to be Me, Ben and Elsa’s mother in the house. Elsa’s mother doesn’t speak much English apparently, so it’s going to be an interesting couple of days, given that Ben’s French is terrible, and my French is simply limited to what I learnt at school. I’m not sure how interested Elsa’s mother is going to be to learn about how I have two brothers, or that I have a bed, a wardrobe and a desk in my bedroom. I’m not sure how long I can eke out a conversation about whether she has any animals or what food she likes eating, especially given that if she goes into any detail then I will be hopelessly lost. I might have to just lie to her in order to keep a conversation going. I can pretend that I have lots of animals which I can then list in order to kill some time: cat, dog, goldfish, fish, cow, horse, sheep, pig …

Other conversational gambits. I can tell her that I like to play football, and that I am a frequent swimmer. This isn’t true, but at least it’ll give me something to say to her. They say you should never ask a lady her age, but then these people weren’t trying to desperately eke out a conversation with their housemate’s girlfriend’s French mother, with nothing but their secondary school French to help them. I can ask her how old she is, when her birthday is, and whether she’d like to go with me to la discothèque. I hope she answers “non” to this question, but knowing my luck I’ll end up going on a date with a woman in her sixties to a disco, while Ben stays at home, laughing at my stupidity.

You might think that, since Ben has a French girlfriend, surely his French will be a lot better than mine. But no, it’s even worse. The only time Elsa seems to speak French to Ben is when they’re having an argument. Then, as her irritation with him escalates, her voice will grow louder and she’ll start speaking more and more French. Sadly, I have no idea what she’s saying to him, because it has nothing to do with wardrobes or disco techs, and I don’t know the French for ladder or scaffolding.

Anyway, wish me bon chance – That means good luck by the way. You see, I know a thing or too. It’s not like my French is terrible – That’s French for terrible, by the way. Maybe I’ll be fine after all. Au revoir. That means goodbye. Oh, I’ll be absolutely fine. This French lark is a promenade dans le parc.

David’s Daily Digital Dollop: Dollop 222 – Narrow Ladders and Broad Stairs

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Today I have mostly been experimenting with Death Metal reworkings of Unthanks songs, and holding a ladder. What’s that you’re saying? You’ve spent your day doing that too? Really? Or are you just trying to be funny? OK, you’re just trying to be funny. Hmm, no disrespect but how about leaving the jokes to me? You’re only embarrassing yourself, or at least you would be if anyone else could read your thoughts. Fortunately for you it is unlikely that they can. It’s just a weird gift that I seem to have which manifests itself from time-to-time when I’m writing these blogs. Suddenly a funny feeling comes over me – I won’t go into detail about that, in case there are children present – and then I gain an insight into the thought process of one or a few of my blog readers. Yes, I know it’s a bit weird, you’re right, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Oh, and yes, your bum does look big in that, by the way.

The reason I was doing death metal re-workings of Unthanks songs was for The Young’uns In the Mix, a musical experiment combining folk with pop, taking place on Saturday 20th August at the Folk East Festival in Suffolk. It shall also be available as a podcast in August.

The reason I was holding a ladder was for my housemate Ben. Now, given that I know what some of you are thinking, I want to point out that the ladder holding was purely utilitarian; it wasn’t some kind of kinky pastime. Ben doesn’t get turned on by seeing me hold a ladder, OK? I just wanted to quash that idea right there. Now if it had been me supervising some scaffolding, then granted, that might be different. But scaffolding ain’t cheep, plus if Ben’s girlfriend Elsa found out then we’d be for it again. Fortunately, Ben is ambivalent when it comes to me holding ladders, so he was able to concentrate on the task at hand, which was painting the upstairs window sills. The ladder is rather tall but very narrow with not much room for manoeuvre, and a bit unstable, so I was making sure that he didn’t fall.

After half an hour, I heard Ben shout to me from the roof, “David, I’m ready to go down, pull it out and get ready to take me.”

Oh dear, maybe I was wrong about Ben and ladders after all. He clearly had been aroused by seeing me with a ladder, and now he was asking me to pull it out while he went down. I felt guilty for leading him on. I hadn’t meant to, but I clearly had given him ideas. I began to think about how I could break his heart gently. I’d have to be careful about rejecting him too abruptly. After all, he was standing on the roof; he might jump. I carefully considered my words, but my cogitations were interrupted by Ben shouting at me once again. My god, he is insatiable.

“David, did you hear me? Can you pull the ladder out, I want to climb down. Get ready to take my weight”

Ah, I see, he wasn’t making a sexual declaration after all. I got the ladder and positioned it ready for Ben to clamber down, while I let out a big sigh of relief.

“Stop the heavy breathing David,” said Ben, as he touched the ground, “I’m not turned on.” What an absolute cheek, imagining that I’d be interested; sometimes Ben’s arrogance astounds me.

Just then, we realised the time. Elsa would be back from work soon. We better put the ladder away quickly before she came back. I know that what happened between us before was scaffolding based, but it’s not worth risking Elsa’s suspicions; I’m not sure she’d really appreciate the distinction.

I am now in The Young’uns van, heading to Broadstairs in Kent, where we are performing tomorrow. The distinctive thing about Broadstairs Folk festival, in contrast with many other folk festivals, is that everything takes place in locations within the town, rather than on a separate site. This means that on the Friday and Saturday nights, the streets are alive with an unlikely combination of drunken teenagers and twenty-somethings out clubbing, and old morris dancers, jingling their way to one of the pubs. I imagine as the night goes on and alcohol consumption increases, the night will take a very peculiar turn for some of these revellers, leading to some rather interesting morning after conversations.

“Oh my god, I pulled a geriatric morris dancer. This better not get out. I’ll be the laughing stock of the college.”

I have a friend who got really drunk and slept with a morris dancer. She doesn’t remember much about it, but reckons that if she saw him again then bells would start ringing. Can you believe I’m giving all this away completely for free?