Ok, when did it all start ?
Why do I have the idea it was begun in a session at Sidmouth Folk Festival ?
I do know that no-one seems to want to start Dingle Regatta at my sessions anymore. Maybe we're just to old to be hopping up and down like that.
Considering that very few people have a clue what a slide should actually sound like, it's completley irrelevant whether they make tits of themselves leaping about the room while they murder the poor little tunes.
I have also seen it done/done it in Haste to the Wedding.
The rumour that goes with the tune is a wedding party late for the wedding takes a shortcut through the fields and there is a "hop high" as they jump over the fences.
Or so I am reliably informed.
Well, it sounds OK anyway and always gets a laugh or two.
Oh dear, I've gone and upset Gilly again, mentioning laughter..
I remember back in the '70s it was regular at sessions in Liverpool and the North of England in general that players stood up for Dingle Regatta.
Also everyone would sing the "Hey Ho!"
I don't know if this pre-dates what is mentioned about Sidmouth.
The times I've seen it done out of time with others standing up a couple of bars later, I understand to be a "one off" bit of humour which doesn't carry over as much in a session as it might to an audience in a concert/gig situation.
The Fiddlers' Companion seems to explain it perfectly. Anyone who has played for some time in a band will be aware of the need, after familiarity with the music has rendered a good performance a standard result, to enliven an evening of otherwise routine music-playing with your friends.
It's a bit like the bobbing up and down by the flag waving audience that takes place every year during the Pomp and Circumstance march at the last night of Proms http://youtu.be/vpEWpK_Dl7M
There was a tendency back in the early nineties to lift your arse of the seat whilst playing the the three notes ....C natural, B and A at the start of the second part of the 'Nine Points of Roguery' That seems to have died out, probably because the Nine Points was a harder tune to play than the Dingle Regatta.
Yes, Free Reed, I think I'd probably fall over if I was trying to stand up while remembering how that tune goes.
Did anyone else ever do the thing during John Ryan's polka where the whole session plays the first two Ds in the first bar, then someone shouts "fiddles" and all the fiddles play the next couple bars and the whole session comes back in for the B part. Next time round, someone shouts "flutes" and all the flutes play the those next few bars, whole session back for the B part... and on it goes 'till you've gotten through all the instruments in the session.
Or was that just the one session in Denver that did this?
SS - that John Ryan Polka plague with it's intrument call outs has spread across most of the Western US. I've even seen - (Gawd save us) - bodhrans get a solo bit!
Yes, at the Denver session the bodhrans definitely got their solo bit.
The good news is that the plague does not yet seem to have crossed the Atlantic, although we must remain vigilant as it could be hidden in imported fruit and wine from the Western US.
I've seen an extended version where the fiddles, then flutes, etc get a go then the 'audience' gets several goes - first singing ('la la lalalala la la') then a laughing version (ha ha etc) then a crying version (boo hoo etc)
Hmm SS, the plague may not have hit sessions over here but I can confirm that our kids were directed as outlined above in the John Ryan thing in their school trad group. But has to be said, that the music teacher, good and all, as she is, is not from a trad background and would view such arrangments as just 'improving' the music.
I recall hearing the tune for the first time in Mark's Bar, Dundalk, It would have been around 1966.
Leslie Bingham cornered me and played it on his whistle.
The upping and downing happened in the Belfast folk scene in the late 60's, source unknown.
I resent all the loose talk about produce from the Western US being tainted. These accusations are baseless. While I may not know what the export figures are for fruit, I can say that sales of California wine to the Irish national school system are at an all time high. Our competitors in other wine producing areas know this too. I suspect they are the ones behind this rumor.
In the 1970s I was playing with a group in an Irish pub in Kilburn, London. Whilst on a break I got talking to one of the regulars, a little old Cockney lady who used to come in every night for a few bottles of Guinness. In all sincerity she asked me if we could play "that song where they all stand up". I discovered she meant the Irish National Anthem which was always played at the end of the gig in that particular pub.
"I've seen an extended version where the fiddles, then flutes, etc get a go then the 'audience' gets several goes - first singing ('la la lalalala la la') then a laughing version (ha ha etc) then a crying version (boo hoo etc)."
Oh, there'd be crying. But for an entirely different reason.
People do all sorts of strange things when they're bored. I think the most sensible reaction would be to stop playing the music if you're bored with it, but whatever.
(I can understand the need, in a live performance, to provide some sort of distraction from the audience, if you're playing for small children or people who don't like the music, or if you're not very good. In that case, anything goes)
Well, really !
To have people shouting out who gets to play during the quiet bit in John Ryan's, I ask you.
Here in Highgate we rely on morphic resonance to know who's due to play when everyone else drops out. (Thought I'd just drop that Torchwood reference in.)
The John-Ryan's-Instrument-Callout is a great hit with the punters around here. But the guitar players get up at the first two notes and head for the restroom lest they be called on to play melody for a few bars. One guitarist has protested that tune so much that on one occaision five other instrumentalists followed him to the loo and played the rest of the tune outside the door in hopes of converting him.
The Stand-Up comedy happens every once in a while here too, but I stll don't get what is so funny about it......
"I resent all the loose talk about produce from the Western US being tainted."
It is all right, Quigley.
Let them rag the nasty old USA.
Let us just consider the sources.
I have followed how some folk here scoff at this (IMHO) silly standing and sitting thingie, and read the snuffy arrogance.
But, as documented already by better heads than mine, it started over there, it was popularized there, and it was then exported to the "colonies".
(Probably in sweaters and the whiskey from the West of Ireland)
Perhaps we also should note, for all the whinging from the Old Sod and their neighbors to the East, that the Irish invented the lowly bodhran, they first brought it into ceili music and sessions, and if they had not it would never have been accepted by us "exiles" over here.
I think the North Africans were playing the bodhran first ( because we're all africans under the skin ), whilst the Irish used to play these things with jingles ( you know, like the Sally Army ). LOL
The first time I heard Dingle Regatta, at a concert in London with The High Level Ranters, they played the tune through a couple of times, then all put down their instruments, advanced on the audience with the most twisted, menacing faces they could muster, and all sang
NYA NA NA NA NA, NYA NA NA NA NA, NYA NA NA NA NA NA NA, NA NA etc.
Brought the house down with nervous laughter.
Locally, everyone has taken to standing up when I play One Horned Cow
"The One Horned Cow" - possibly better known as "The "Owd (Old) Horned Sheep.
Great tune that - though I've never heard it played at a session in my neck of the woods.
Presumably the "standing up bit" would be done in bars one and five of the first part of the tune, Oldstrings?
Dingle Regatta - not much played these days, although I'm old enough to remember the days when it cropped up at almost every session - including the "bobbing up and down with the waves" bit. 'Twas always played with "The Sweets of May"
As it so happens, someone did start Dingle Regatta at one of our local sessions recently. For old time's sake, I joined in with it - including the "standing up and sitting down" bit.
The other musicians looked at me as much as to say "Have you gone stark raving mad?"
... And one of them asked me afterwards how I was able to stand up and sit down whilst playing the tune at the same time ...
... maybe some of those old-time skills are in danger of being lost ...
That's right, Mix, one and five. I did mean to write "One Horned Sheep".
Emphasize the high and low G, and it's irresistible.
The Northumbrian piper on youtube is much too subtle for that result.
Dingle regatta is a 2 part tune, it has the a part the same in both versions, but the original version has a different turn.
The 3 part tune was a mistake by the composer ORiada, he muddled up two parts of another tune and joined them to the a part of Dingle Regatta.
The original superior version is the 2 part one that was recorded by Sliabh Luchra musicians JackieDaly and Seamus Creagh
I got a phone call mid-tune so I went outside as it was for a booking. The rest of the session all followed me outside, still playing. The bride-to-be laughed that much, we got the booking.
I didn't ask the rest of the session to play at the gig though.
Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
Ok, when did it all start ?
Why do I have the idea it was begun in a session at Sidmouth Folk Festival ?
I do know that no-one seems to want to start Dingle Regatta at my sessions anymore. Maybe we're just to old to be hopping up and down like that.
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
Here's some explanation from the Fiddler's Companion:
http://www.ceolas.org/cgi-bin/ht2/ht2-fc2/file=/tunes/fc2/fc.html&style=&refer=&abstract=&ftpstyle=&grab=&linemode=&max=250&isindex=Dingle%20Regatta&submit=Search
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by John Culhane
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
Considering that very few people have a clue what a slide should actually sound like, it's completley irrelevant whether they make tits of themselves leaping about the room while they murder the poor little tunes.
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by Dragut Reis
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
He says, completely murdering the word completely...
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by Dragut Reis
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
Those bobbing tits! Do they have no shame?
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
I have also seen it done/done it in Haste to the Wedding.
The rumour that goes with the tune is a wedding party late for the wedding takes a shortcut through the fields and there is a "hop high" as they jump over the fences.
Or so I am reliably informed.
Well, it sounds OK anyway and always gets a laugh or two.
Oh dear, I've gone and upset Gilly again, mentioning laughter..
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by mcknowall
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
Pete
I remember back in the '70s it was regular at sessions in Liverpool and the North of England in general that players stood up for Dingle Regatta.
Also everyone would sing the "Hey Ho!"
I don't know if this pre-dates what is mentioned about Sidmouth.
The times I've seen it done out of time with others standing up a couple of bars later, I understand to be a "one off" bit of humour which doesn't carry over as much in a session as it might to an audience in a concert/gig situation.
All the best
Brian x
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by briantheflute
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
The Fiddlers' Companion seems to explain it perfectly. Anyone who has played for some time in a band will be aware of the need, after familiarity with the music has rendered a good performance a standard result, to enliven an evening of otherwise routine music-playing with your friends.
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
It's a bit like the bobbing up and down by the flag waving audience that takes place every year during the Pomp and Circumstance march at the last night of Proms
http://youtu.be/vpEWpK_Dl7M
There was a tendency back in the early nineties to lift your arse of the seat whilst playing the the three notes ....C natural, B and A at the start of the second part of the 'Nine Points of Roguery' That seems to have died out, probably because the Nine Points was a harder tune to play than the Dingle Regatta.
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by Free Reed
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
Yes, Free Reed, I think I'd probably fall over if I was trying to stand up while remembering how that tune goes.
Did anyone else ever do the thing during John Ryan's polka where the whole session plays the first two Ds in the first bar, then someone shouts "fiddles" and all the fiddles play the next couple bars and the whole session comes back in for the B part. Next time round, someone shouts "flutes" and all the flutes play the those next few bars, whole session back for the B part... and on it goes 'till you've gotten through all the instruments in the session.
Or was that just the one session in Denver that did this?
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
What!, arrangements in sessions? I thought that was the preserve of the Grupa Cheoil type thing..
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by the wounded hussar
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
That's not an arrangement. It's free-form democracy!
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by c.g.
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
SS - that John Ryan Polka plague with it's intrument call outs has spread across most of the Western US. I've even seen - (Gawd save us) - bodhrans get a solo bit!
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by Jusa Nutter Eejit
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
Yes, at the Denver session the bodhrans definitely got their solo bit.
The good news is that the plague does not yet seem to have crossed the Atlantic, although we must remain vigilant as it could be hidden in imported fruit and wine from the Western US.
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
You guys ain't seen anything!!
I've seen an extended version where the fiddles, then flutes, etc get a go then the 'audience' gets several goes - first singing ('la la lalalala la la') then a laughing version (ha ha etc) then a crying version (boo hoo etc)
Beat that!
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by domhnall.
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
Weeping is appropriate.
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by Dragut Reis
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
Hmm SS, the plague may not have hit sessions over here but I can confirm that our kids were directed as outlined above in the John Ryan thing in their school trad group. But has to be said, that the music teacher, good and all, as she is, is not from a trad background and would view such arrangments as just 'improving' the music.
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by the wounded hussar
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
I recall hearing the tune for the first time in Mark's Bar, Dundalk, It would have been around 1966.
Leslie Bingham cornered me and played it on his whistle.
The upping and downing happened in the Belfast folk scene in the late 60's, source unknown.
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by sam bracken
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
We do the John Ryan's thing in ceilidhs, mainly because the dancers actually take note of what we're playing all of a sudden!
And because we have a trombone...
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by SmashTheWindows
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
If memory serves, (and it often doesn't) this polka also gets the occasional up and down treatment too
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/481
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by Jusa Nutter Eejit
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
I resent all the loose talk about produce from the Western US being tainted. These accusations are baseless. While I may not know what the export figures are for fruit, I can say that sales of California wine to the Irish national school system are at an all time high. Our competitors in other wine producing areas know this too. I suspect they are the ones behind this rumor.
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
I assumed it was the Irish National Anthem.
Then I realised it was just the Kerry National Anthem.
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by nicholas
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
In the 1970s I was playing with a group in an Irish pub in Kilburn, London. Whilst on a break I got talking to one of the regulars, a little old Cockney lady who used to come in every night for a few bottles of Guinness. In all sincerity she asked me if we could play "that song where they all stand up". I discovered she meant the Irish National Anthem which was always played at the end of the gig in that particular pub.
# Posted on August 12th 2011 by Free Reed
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
"I've seen an extended version where the fiddles, then flutes, etc get a go then the 'audience' gets several goes - first singing ('la la lalalala la la') then a laughing version (ha ha etc) then a crying version (boo hoo etc)."
Oh, there'd be crying. But for an entirely different reason.
# Posted on August 13th 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
Don't recall hearing that approach to Ryan's around where I'm from (thank you, God!).
# Posted on August 13th 2011 by AlBrown
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
People do all sorts of strange things when they're bored. I think the most sensible reaction would be to stop playing the music if you're bored with it, but whatever.
(I can understand the need, in a live performance, to provide some sort of distraction from the audience, if you're playing for small children or people who don't like the music, or if you're not very good. In that case, anything goes)
# Posted on August 13th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
Well, really !
To have people shouting out who gets to play during the quiet bit in John Ryan's, I ask you.
Here in Highgate we rely on morphic resonance to know who's due to play when everyone else drops out. (Thought I'd just drop that Torchwood reference in.)
# Posted on August 13th 2011 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
If the Dingle Regatta verticalisation issue ever comes up in a session I'm quite happy to play the age card and remain seated.
# Posted on August 13th 2011 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
I have been told by a reliable source that the John Ryan's instrument call-out thing was being done in Cambridge about twenty years ago.
# Posted on August 13th 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
The John-Ryan's-Instrument-Callout is a great hit with the punters around here. But the guitar players get up at the first two notes and head for the restroom lest they be called on to play melody for a few bars. One guitarist has protested that tune so much that on one occaision five other instrumentalists followed him to the loo and played the rest of the tune outside the door in hopes of converting him.
The Stand-Up comedy happens every once in a while here too, but I stll don't get what is so funny about it......
# Posted on August 13th 2011 by y-nought
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
"I resent all the loose talk about produce from the Western US being tainted."
It is all right, Quigley.
Let them rag the nasty old USA.
Let us just consider the sources.
I have followed how some folk here scoff at this (IMHO) silly standing and sitting thingie, and read the snuffy arrogance.
But, as documented already by better heads than mine, it started over there, it was popularized there, and it was then exported to the "colonies".
(Probably in sweaters and the whiskey from the West of Ireland)
Perhaps we also should note, for all the whinging from the Old Sod and their neighbors to the East, that the Irish invented the lowly bodhran, they first brought it into ceili music and sessions, and if they had not it would never have been accepted by us "exiles" over here.
"No Yanks need apply", eh?
# Posted on August 13th 2011 by Piece
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
I think the North Africans were playing the bodhran first ( because we're all africans under the skin ), whilst the Irish used to play these things with jingles ( you know, like the Sally Army ). LOL
# Posted on August 13th 2011 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
So, Gurnsey Pete, are you saying that Ryan's Polka is part of the nefarious plot that brought Miracle Day to the world?
# Posted on August 13th 2011 by AlBrown
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
The first time I heard Dingle Regatta, at a concert in London with The High Level Ranters, they played the tune through a couple of times, then all put down their instruments, advanced on the audience with the most twisted, menacing faces they could muster, and all sang
NYA NA NA NA NA, NYA NA NA NA NA, NYA NA NA NA NA NA NA, NA NA etc.
Brought the house down with nervous laughter.
Locally, everyone has taken to standing up when I play One Horned Cow
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/3644
For the notally challenged (like me)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFYyVj6he_g
- starts at 1:08.
# Posted on August 16th 2011 by oldstrings
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
"Playing the One Horned Cow" - that sounde suspiciously like a euphemism, but for what, I have no idea...
# Posted on August 16th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
"The One Horned Cow" - possibly better known as "The "Owd (Old) Horned Sheep.
Great tune that - though I've never heard it played at a session in my neck of the woods.
Presumably the "standing up bit" would be done in bars one and five of the first part of the tune, Oldstrings?
Dingle Regatta - not much played these days, although I'm old enough to remember the days when it cropped up at almost every session - including the "bobbing up and down with the waves" bit. 'Twas always played with "The Sweets of May"
As it so happens, someone did start Dingle Regatta at one of our local sessions recently. For old time's sake, I joined in with it - including the "standing up and sitting down" bit.
The other musicians looked at me as much as to say "Have you gone stark raving mad?"
... And one of them asked me afterwards how I was able to stand up and sit down whilst playing the tune at the same time ...
... maybe some of those old-time skills are in danger of being lost ...
# Posted on August 16th 2011 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
A one-horned cow is an illicit still (eg http://web.me.com/kingrail/The_Will_Trout_Website/Celebration_of_the_one-horned_cow.html).
# Posted on August 16th 2011 by Slightly Mad Scientist
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
That's right, Mix, one and five. I did mean to write "One Horned Sheep".
Emphasize the high and low G, and it's irresistible.
The Northumbrian piper on youtube is much too subtle for that result.
# Posted on August 18th 2011 by oldstrings
Re: Standing up in Dingle Regatta.
Dingle regatta is a 2 part tune, it has the a part the same in both versions, but the original version has a different turn.
The 3 part tune was a mistake by the composer ORiada, he muddled up two parts of another tune and joined them to the a part of Dingle Regatta.
The original superior version is the 2 part one that was recorded by Sliabh Luchra musicians JackieDaly and Seamus Creagh
# Posted on August 18th 2011 by Nicholas Jelinek
Re: Standing up in sessions
I got a phone call mid-tune so I went outside as it was for a booking. The rest of the session all followed me outside, still playing. The bride-to-be laughed that much, we got the booking.
I didn't ask the rest of the session to play at the gig though.
# Posted on August 22nd 2011 by geoffwright