"the general public...... now use the term in a much wider sense."
Can you give me an example of this Phil?
"For years the folk clubs thrived on a mixture of 1954 and other folk"
and one more or less drove out the other - guess which one?
When folkies describe 'boring folk songs at folk clubs' and whinge about 'long' ballads, I wonder whether we inhabit the same planet.
"I'm not sure what damage has been done to 1954 folk music by this" is it my imagination or didn't most of the clubs disappear in the 80s?
I decided that my last visit was the night I sat through an evening where I didn't hear a song which remotely resemble a folksong; and when I hear ... Penny Lane, for god's sake.
I think I might have fallen down a rabbit hole, now wher are the hatter and the doormouse?
Don't know "James Yorkston" - please don't enlighten me; this is depressing enough as it is.
I have no doubt that the real thing will survive and that people will be listening to Walter Pardon and Tom Lenihan a century hence. I doubt if you can say the same about your music as you seem totally at a loss to define it - surely that says something.
Jim Carroll