I just don't get Steeleye Span. Sorry. I got a couple of their CDs (which I'll grant may not be the best sample from which to make a judgement), and realised I'd heard better from halfway-competent pub bands.

Given that I was born in 1974, obviously I wasn't around to hear them at the time. ;-) So I guess there must have been a first person to play folk tunes on an electric guitar, and at the time I guess it was innovative. Looking back on it though, is their stuff really any good?

There are plenty of occasions of people doing things for the first time, and blazing a trail. Guthrie and Dylan for their writing; Dylan for electric guitar accompaniment; Renbourn in reviving old music; Jansch and Graham in mixing blues and jazz into folk - all of those are still recognisably top-quality music today, even though they were new at the time. In the same vein for later music from when I was growing up, Kraftwerk and Queen are still recognisably top-quality music, in spite of being revolutionary at the time. But look back on Steeleye Span, and is it still top-quality, or was it just a novelty of the time, like a folk-rock equivalent of all those permed one-hit-wonders in the 80s?

I know everyone will have their own opinion, but I know where mine is.

Graham.