I've always considered easy listening to be a close bedfellow of olde music. Those keepers of the tradition of my acquaintance, which is to say people steeped in multi-generational word of mouth traditional song, have almost to a man and woman been fans of stuff like Neil Diamond and Perry Como. That being a damned fact one is forced to confront the reasons why such music proximity, even seamlessness might exist? In fact it's hard to think of the home of a song carrier without some Matt Monro or a Music for Pleasure album slowly warping by a peat stove.