Ah.. Just because Carthy is doing music that reaches a wide audience, that's alright but the rest aren't.. That Carthy is the driving force behind The Imagined Village and their aim is to reflect the folk heritage of a multicultural UK isn't enough? You'd prefer it if Paul Weller stuck his finger in his ear perhaps?

I'm not patronising you Jim, I'm trying to understand you and failing here, trust me. If folk as a concept to influence music has a future, we aren't going to get it by saying Larner this, Pardon that and McColl the other. None of them had any idea of today's society and it is today's society where we get today's folk culture from.

Festivals and virtual are the future. Upstairs rooms in pubs belonged to a different century, and sadly, will die out as those who frequent them get older. If a young person wants to discover and play for others now, a more natural reaction is to YouTube their songs and spend hours listening to others doing the same.

I suggest you listen to the Fifty Years of Cambridge Folk Festival album, it might surprise you.





ps. I actually like Lady Ga Ga's music and when I saw her at the O2 a few years ago, she sang what she referred to as a traditional song from the time of American war of independence. Can't recall what it was called and I certainly hadn't heard it before, but the words certainly suited her fast tempo rendition...