Bryan,
"Oh dear, Jim, I wish you wouldn't write such long posts. It makes it very difficult to respond."
Big subject - for me anyway, but I'll take you posting in smaller bits for now.
"I don't think you have the right to withhold that material"
Every recording we've ever made has been lodged at the National Sound Archive and in ITMA in Dublin, with full listening access - thought you knew this. There is an article in The Living Tradition archive entitled (I think) The Carroll-Mackenzie Collection at the British Library.
Coming from the provinces, I have always realised how difficult it is for anybody outside London to use the British Library, so it's always been a question of whether we take our work further - and whether there are enough people interested to warrant our doing so.
Ours was one of the first British collections to be housed at NSA and I'm proud to say that depositing it there had much to do with their opening up the archive to include British material.
We have issued some of our Irish material on CDs (though thanks to a vicious brain-dead of a reviewer we will think twice before we do this again).
I would still like to know if I was mistaken in thinking that you proposed that the only criterion for having someone sing in public was that they should want to.
Nuff for now.
Jim Carroll