From: jonb@Ingres.COM (Jon Berger)
Newsgroups: rec.music.folk
Subject: Re: Vancouver Folk Festival
Date: 13 Aug 92 17:58:55 GMT
Reply-To: jonb@ingres.com
Organization: Ingres, an ASK Company

In article <1992Aug11.014724.12236@sco.com>, evanh@sco.COM (Evan Hunt) writes:
>
>In article <1992Jul28.162705.7033@pony.Ingres.COM> jonb@ingres.com writes:
>>that can only be described as regrettable, such as the time when Robin
>>Williamson was booed into silence by a contingent of women who didn't
>>approve of his song "First Girl I Loved".  
>
>
>Forgive me for asking for a rehash, but I came into this conversation late
>and can't help but wonder why Robin Williamson was treated this way. What did
>they find offensive about the song?

Judy Collins fans will remember the song as "First Boy I Loved".  It's the
one with the haunting chorus that starts 

   But you're probably married now,
   Kids and all,
   And you've turned into a grown-up male stranger.
   But I want you to know,
   I just had to go.

Collins reversed the genders and generally tidied the song up, but, as
done by Williamson, the song is about the (presumably autobiographical)
narrator's first sexual experience, as a young teenager.  His partner was
a girl of the same age, who gave herself to him as a birthday present.
There's a sort of sung/spoken narrative section in the middle of the song,
which describes what happened in, well, rather greater detail than some
of the members of the audience apparently wanted to hear.  It was all
terribly sensitive and poetic, borderning on the misty-swirly -- anyone
who's heard Williamson in concert, especially his stories, will understand
-- but it was definitely about sex; it was, moreover, definitely about
heterosexual sex, and it was, icing on the cake, about heterosexual sex
with an underage woman, which, as you know, is rape.

The rationale behind the booing might have been a profound moral
conviction that rapists must be silenced at all costs.  At the risk
of sounding overly cynical, it might also have been the fact that the
big headliner who was closing the show that evening was Holly Near,
and the hecklers were in a bad mood because they had to sit through all
that stupid folkie stuff ("the folks who sing it ain't got no social
conscience; why, they don't even care if Jimmy crack corn!") before they
could hear the only thing they were actually interested in.

I don't mean to suggest that this sort of behavior characterizes
all politically-motivated female folk fans.  I don't even think it's
especially common.  It did happen, though, and it was certainly rude.
Whether the rudeness was justified, on the grounds that only by people
speaking their minds can change come about, is a matter of opinion.
Mine, for what, coming from a middle-class white heterosexual male,
it's worth, is that this was one of the silliest examples of preaching
to the converted I've ever seen.  Everyone in that audience who already
agreed with the booists said "Right on, sister", everybody else said
"What a bunch of jerks", and not one single mind was changed; the only
tangible effect I could detect was that an extremely talented folk-music
legend got totally pissed off.

Right, let the games begin.  I went to school in Santa Cruz, and I live
in Berkeley, so I've heard it before: "Rudeness is inconsequential next
to the oppression we've borne for a thousand years."  "You've never
suffered so you have no right to speak."  "We won't be docile little
darkies just to suit your convenience."  I wish there were some way I
could express the desire to enjoy a concert in peace without hearing
all of this, but somehow I doubt if there is.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
   -__ __ /_   Jon Berger              "If you push something hard enough,
  //_// //_/   jonb@ingres.com          it will fall over."
_/ ---------                              - Fudd's First Law of Opposition
Newsgroups: rec.music.folk