Just to pretend we don't know where this thread is going for a moment, wouldn't a Northumbrian piper have more in common with a Scottish one five miles away, than he/she would with an English mill town brass band? Likewise a Oswestry fiddler with one in Llangollen rather than a Midland car works band? Or does Albion's cordon sanitaire act as an effective prophylactic to migrating noise?

There are regional English musical cultures, the West Midlands gave us heavy metal, Sheffield may not have invented electro but gave it a voice and Liverpool's port status gave it access to blues records to mess with a week or two before anyone else. Then there's the unconsidered trifles valorised in Wigan's Casino, Stoke, Manchester, Blackpool and Cleethorpes. But as for a single domestic musical culture, I ain't buying.