Glad to hear what other 'catters think. It all started when I commented unfavourably on a classical tenor singing a song in the folk tradition on You Tube and that I preferred the versions sung by the amateurs. I received several abusive e-mails calling me ignorant, uneducated, pathetic and the like.
Now there's a one way ticket operating here. It's fine for the 'culture vultures' to say 'Lead Belly can't sing, he just shouts' or 'Bing Crosby can sing, he just croons' but you just cannot criticise the tenors, sopranos etc or you open yourself to the comments I received. It should be what you like or what you don't like but there's this attitude in society of what you should like if you're an 'educated' person. This attitude seems to be most prevalent in music: I can say I like David Lynch films and cricket and don't like John Wayne and football and this doesn't cause the same reaction. In this latter case, it's usually the 'each to his own' attitude.