Ooer - I have lots of pristine folk albums from Leader, Sweat Folk All, Topic, Transatlantic, etc., including a mint copy of the Copper Family set 'A Song for Very Season' (our family came from Rottingdean).

When I was in NZ in the 1970s - in Hawera, Taranaki - I was so isolated from any form of folk music, indeed from any form of culture other than boozing at the 'three pub corner' in the High Street - that I got my parents to ship out loads of folk lps by surface mail at great expense I might add. None of these were imported into NZ by distributors.

But then I had difficulty obtaining decent record playing equipment - import restrictions on such luxury items, incl. and cassette tape players and even reel-reel tape players were draconian.

When I moved to Auckland and whilst the folk scene was still pretty sparse, e.g. no folk dancing whatsoever, certainly no morris etc., and a few folk song clubs (3), there was one second hand record shop that used to have a few folk lps - which I visited and snapped up every week.

Then a major importer of records - Pye I think - went bust. Suddenly said record shop had quantities of Brit. folk lps for sale at very silly low prices. That's where all the Brit Folk lps had been stored - in a warehouse in Auckland - undistributed for 'lack of demand.' So my collection increased dramatically.

But now - 40 years later - I lack the equipment to play records, and the said lps are languishing on bookshelves some still sealed. Probably like the master tapes DB has. But at least my records are still playable, whereas his tapes are probably not.