Jim

I wonder if you can understand that I value different things about the tradition within which I make music. To me, it isn't always the song that you sing but about how and under what circumstances you do it.

There's a difference between songs that people sing and ones that they listen to. I don't see any slippery slope out there.

I go round to The Rose & Crown and sing songs I like to sing, with other people who like to sing songs, often different from the ones I like to sing. In doing this, I happily accept that they'll occasionally be singing songs that I don't even like very much or I don't think are really being sung in the right place. Fine. I don't have some automatic right to decide for them.

I went to folk clubs for a fairly short period of time because I thought they were singing songs I liked to sing and to hear. I stopped going for a different reason than you. Because of the snobbery about singing songs like "The Wild Rover" and people telling other people what they should and shouldn't be singing.

When I stopped doing that, I reverted to what I now recognise as the tradition I was brought up in and started a music / singing session in The Rose & Crown. I wish I hadn't called it folk, but that's what it is known as now.

I'd honestly rather listen to a bad punk band in a pub than have it full of piped muzak, which seems to be the other option.

I get pleasure from researching songs and knowing about their background but it's singing them that gives me most pleasure and that's why I do it. I really don't get a buzz out of ridiculing other people or trying to make them look small, nor do I find it helpful when other people do.

Ian