I was going to slap a big picture of the American flag up here, maybe a bald eagle or two, but then I said, “Moe, everybody’s going to be slapping up American flags and bald eagles. Give your readers something different.”
So, here goes: the Mudcat Cafe, hosters of the Digital Tradition Folksong Database. Looking for an old song; punch it in. They probably have it, complete with variants… and, best of all, most entries come complete with a simple MIDI of the melody line, so you can actually learn to sing them. Pardon for going into bardgeek mode, but how cool is that?
Anyway, lots of good stuff there, including patriotic, Civil War and protest songs, so something for every taste or combination thereof. Enjoy, and everyone have a safe and happy Fourth of July.
Moe
PS: OK, just one eagle picture:
So, so, so much better than my post.
Happy 4th all!
Moe, you have really outdone yourself. There are about five songs I have been trying to find the lyrics to for decades, sometimes only on the basis of remembered bits of lyrics and melody, and suddenly, there they are! This is a wonderful, wonderful thing, especially for those of us who listen to completely obscure folk music. Plus, it looks (on first inspection) as though the forums will finally let me figure out the answer to one of my life’s burning questions, namely: where exactly do the guitar people in Baltimore hang out?
It took a while to figure out that the reason my original post kept getting ‘objectionable content’ messages was that it referred to ‘guitar junk ies’, without the space. Is that word really so bad? (‘Guitar people’ is, in my view, a rather pallid substitute.)
That’s a TypePad question, hilzoy: I didn’t set up the filters. 🙁
Moe
PS: Glad you liked the site. You can also download Mudcat’s entire database, btw.
I’ve been accused of ‘objectionable content’ too, without a clue what for 😉
Happy 4th to all Americans.
If I can go fifteen minutes without power failures, I’ll see about the filters. Maybe I can do something about them..
Sorry, people: if there’s a setting to change the filters from my end, I’m not seeing it.
It wasn’t a complaint; it was just the first time I had ever been accused of trying to post objectionable content, and trying to figure out exactly what in what I thought was my innocuous little post was — well, an amusing demonstration of why I’m glad I am not one of those people who always notice the possible lewd interpretations of innocent turns of phrase.
I am still feeling happy about having found the lyrics I’ve been looking for for years 🙂