Well yes, the point at which I accepted the King's shilling and signed up to become folkie footsoldier was around 1964.

By 1965, every town had two or three folk clubs. People used to organise tours of just the folk clubs in one major city. The late Barrie Roberts told me about a guy who actually sold folk clubs as thriving businesses.

What had sparked all this was the American folkscene. The music charts had acts in it like Peter Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon Bob Lind, Leonard Cohen, John Sebastian's The Loving Spoonful, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez - all big names on the American folk scene.

John Lennon said one week that his favourite album was Blues, Rags and Hollers by Koerner , Ray and Glover - and straight into the English top twenty went their album. The American bands like the Byrds were copyng English bands like the Searchers and tackling Dylan material, and that was the first time I heard the phrase folk rock.

More important than all that was the fact that everywhere you looked - people all around you were having a go. Folk music was a genuinely exciting artistic movement, embracing just about everybody and everything.

Cotrast this with the exclusivity of today. People being told as I have been on this thread(albeit in a kindly way) what you have done with your life isn't folk music.

Theres a book called Baby Let Me Follow You Down by the late Ric Von Schmidt - its just been reissued in paperback and you can get it on Amazon. Its about the generous spirited people who got that ball rolling. And its that folk revival I have kept faith with, long after its demise. It was to my my mind jealousy and self interest that set up all these boundaries, and thats when folk clubs got all sneery and unpleasant.