I'm not saying the Folk Revival was bad, Brian - I'm just being realistic in how it operates in terms of social class, which is something Georgina Boyes confirms quite nicely in The Imagined Village. I might have certain issues with this, but who doesn't? The Left Wing Idealism of Folk rarely squares with the Red Neck realities of Country, though like I say there are significant exceptions.

In any case, when I talk about English Country Music, I'm dreaming of a genre that never happened because English Folk Song never became part of the popular consciousness the way that Scots, American or Irish did (though things do blur rather horribly in Hot-Pot country, but the less said about that the better). Instead, English folklife was primarily urban and randomly rooted in a multi-culturalism which accounts for the gloriously impure realities of true English popular music over the last half-century or so, which remains crucially English - everything from Mersey Beat to the Canturbury Scene to the post-punk glory days of Manchester to UK hip-hop - but also truly Global. I remember back in the day when The Fall recorded their rockabilly tribute to The Container Drivers people were speaking in hushed tones of Country & Northern.