" ......a well-known melodeon player now in a very large band who took his first Pokerwork out busking in the days when he needed the cash and wondered why it fell apart in the rain."

Playing it inside a bin-liner is the answer to that, of course. And it looks so cool as well.

Going back to Bob's point: ".....just where to "draw the line" between legitimate folk style and ... errr... whatever I'm doing", the answer is that any good musician who has the time to spend exploring their instrument's potential is going feel a compulsion to take things as far as they can. With an instrument like the melodeon, which in many ways is quite limited, the challenge is all the greater. But because the potential is there doesn't mean that it has to be fully exploited all the time. Mark Bazely is a great melodeon player despite staying more or less within the constraints of his grandfather Bob Cann's style. Players like Andy Cutting or Julian Sutton, on the other hand, have been more innovatory in the way they've explored basically the same instrument. Where you or I choose to 'draw the line will' depend on our personal taste, and possibly on our view of the relative importance of continuity versus evolution as the predominant characteristic of traditional music. Some of the very jazzy stuff (particularly in left-hand accompaniments) heard from young melodeon players in England these days is technically impressive, but takes the instrument further away from the sound of our traditional role models (like Bob Cann or Oscar Woods) than I would wish to go. But that's just me. The tradition belongs to the people who play, not the pundits.