Not odd at all, Shimrod - you're simply exposing that you don't know anything at all about the genre. This may be a reason, but not an excuse, for saying "because I don't understand it and don't like it, it's just a stupid racket".

For the record...

Chuck Berry, the Stones, Led Zep, Rick Wakeman, Aerosmith, Metallica and the Automatic are all recognisably playing rock - and they're all equally recognisably playing in different styles for those who know rock. If you don't recognise the difference, it betrays your unfamiliarity with what to listen for.

Old-time, Cape Breton, Irish, English, Scottish and Shetland fiddle players all play in different styles, so some tunes clearly aren't playable in certain styles, and others are played with different phrasing in different traditions. If you don't recognise the differences between the styles and the tunes, it betrays your unfamiliarity with what to listen for.

Steve Sun, Mike Mirror and Nick Newsoftheworld would likely class everything with orchestras as "classical" - they wouldn't or couldn't differentiate between baroque, Romantic or modern. If you don't recognise the differences between Bach and Beethoven, say, it betrays your unfamiliarity with what to listen for.

This is simply categorisation by similarity of style. Folk *absolutely* does this. Ever been to a tune session, or a singaround? Tried exclusively singing songs in a tune session, or exclusively playing tunes in a singaround? Or to be more specific, ever tried playing Old-timey tunes in an Irish session? Or to diversify a bit, how's about suggesting to a baroque or early-music specialist that you'd like to hear some Gershwin?

As for "liking folk", any folk in particular? I like folk in general, but to be more specific, Old-time leaves me cold, and more than a couple of hours of unaccompanied singing tends to leave me jonesing for someone to play an instrument. We all know you don't like singer-songwriter or folk-rock. And here we are categorising by similarity of style again...

Graham.