I first heard the Corries in '66/7 at the Ballad & Blues Club in Swindon (which club, incidentally, was packed to the rafters every Sunday night, and had a very broad booking policy - fantastic club!) I was a very enthusiastic but woefully ignorant relative newcomer to folk music back then, and soaked up everything, although not totally uncritically. The Corries, to me, were wonderful - consummate musicians, good singers, not as nationalistic as perhaps they appeared to be later, and charming people.

I'll never forget them explaining that, if they felt a song needed a particular instrument to accompany it, they learnt the instrument if necessary. That was why they invented the combolins mentioned above, so that they would have less instruments to carry round with them - all that happened was that they ended up carrying them as well as all the others!

It certainly made me think in later years about what instrument would sound right for a certain song, just as Roy Harris made me think about whether certain songs needed any accompaniment at all.

I haven't listened to the Corries for a number of years now, not having got round to transferring the several albums I have onto CD, but I suspect I would still very much enjoy what I have of theirs, commercial/popular as it may sound. That doesn't have to mean it's bad.

Barbara