I must be going round the bend (again.)

I am not sure I or anybody in broad agreement with any stance I put have taunted anybody for their taste in music. If I have told people what they should be listening to, then be buggered if I can find it, (or write it for that matter.)

Jim, you are sounding like an MP who "fights" the closure of his local hospital on the understanding it isn't closing in the first place and he then claims credit for the fact.

Or keeping it to the thread;

1. The thrust of my argument has been live and let live. Hence describing what I see as purists, who certainly don't live and let live. Stop saying I ignored your plea for live and let live. You are confusing it with encouraging debate, (the idea of threads in Mudcat apparently.)

2. I did say dusty archives, but you were the one quoting me out of context. Are you SURE you aren't a politician?

3. My songs and music? Not doing too bad actually. I get a stiffy when I hear others recording and playing them as always, and enough are published that after I am long gone, somebody could still come across them, both in dusty archives or on albums available on err... iTunes as well as CD (even a bit of vinyl here and there, just to show my age...) I don't call them folk, I just note they are played in folk clubs.

4. Dozy bugger, it isn't that I cannot scratch up a decent definition, its my personal view that a definition cannot be scratched up, as the word means it is definitive, and the whole folk ethos is subjective in the first place.

5. I note you put "And if YOU want to debate the various merits of OUR music..." Ah, sat in the bus peering out eh? It isn't your music any more than it is mine mate, despite your archives. I know that is hard to take on board, but by defining something, you infer it has a form and how can it when it means different things to different people?

6. If ever I did wish to snide at other peoples' music, I most certainly wouldn't try to learn about it beforehand. That would spoil the fun and miss the point. Luckily, I for one never would, and I'm not sure I have read of anybody else doing that on this thread. if they are, then they are purists and Hallelujah! between us we will have defined the buggers! Thanks for your help Jim.

Other bits, he says, reading up... Oh yes, M'Unlearned Friend. "I don't think people do do that, do they? Surely this is something that people make up as an accusation against differing views." Not sure what you are saying there and I really would love to give you the benefit of the doubt for once, however.. If it hadn't happened a few times, I wouldn't have put it. Many people on Mudcat have related instances of being made as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit because there was something "unpure" about what they sang.   

Everybody else; So sorry, but you know sometimes it is cathartic to tell the emperor he has no clothes. In order to do so, it is necessary to become a boring idiot yourself, and I apologise. But when it comes to getting low, I'm a lifelong volunteer. Pricking the bubble of pomposity is a wonderful hobby, just turns respectable people off, hence hiding behind this absurd monicker.