Hmmm now the difference between rock and roll, and rock?

The difference between folk and rock and roll is where we started.

Perhaps the two differences have some similarities.

Rock and roll can range from Elvis Presley to Buddy Holly (two very different styles indeed) to The Sex Pistols, Motorhead, or the Buzzcocks. It's to do with attitude and context as much as with sound.

And folk... was Whiskey in the Jar folk music when played by Thin Lizzie? When I saw the Pogues at Rock City, was that folk? It sounded a bit like folk, but I don't think it was, because the attitude and context were wrong. It was rock and roll.

Folk is about participation. Folk is about being on a level with the performer, taking part, feeling a sense of ownership of the songs and tunes. So Rave On, or Leader of the Pack, can be folk music, if sung for fun by a group of mates in the pub; but Whiskey in the Jar, played to an audience of 10 000 is rock and roll.

Question: is it an activity (folk) or a product (rock and roll) or a slightly more arty product (rock)?

So what don't you like about rock and roll? Is it the electric instruments (would they sound better playing traditional 48 bar reels?), or the lyrics (often about love, separation or death - oh, sorry, that's folk!), or the simple repetitive format with a limited number of chords and a predictable sequence of bars (oh, sorry, that's traitional music), or is it that it's very loud?

We're all entitled to preferences, and we're all entitled not to broaden our outlooks to encompass other genres of music. Seems to me, though, that context is a real thing, but labels only promotye prejudice.

If you're paying to go to a big concert, with a live band up on stage, playing through amplifiers, it might just be rock and roll, even if the songs are 200 years old. If you hear a song on a Saturday night in the pub, beware: it might sound like folk, but I could have written it last week...

And it couldn't possibly be folk if it was recently written by a working class bloke on the basis of his own life experiences, and using techniques and sounds he'd picked up by ear, with no formal musical training, and only sung in the pub to a few like minded friends, could it?