I've tried hard enough Bryan - can't even find a home for Walter Pardon's recordings nowadays - God only knows how Walter himself would have fared in todays scene
Still remember Pat trying to get him a booking thirty years ago and being told "we don't do anything like that, we're a folk club"
It's no longer my job to do anything - I'm not part of the British club scene any more
I can only hope to find a home for the archive that me and a bunch of others accumulated over the time we were part of the revival - Limerick University seems to be the nearest it'll ever get to the UK
A bunch of us did our best to get funding to assemble the recordings and the research that was scatter all over the place in order to make it readily available and give it a chance of surviving, for which we got the co-operation of the then N.S.A. -
We had a limited success when N.S.A. took our collection (then it's grown four-fold since then) and expanded their ethnomusicological approach to include British material - the end result was the 'Bright Golden Store' website, limited, but at least something.
It always has been up to the clubs to get their collective acts together and give British (I should say "English" - Scotland has made some strides in recognising their heritage) the chance of a future.
The present - "anything goes at whatever standards" approach clearly hasn't worked and your "iceberg, what iceberg?" complacency is not going to change that situation.
I get rather tired of being treated as a foreign interloper by people like you - I've done the work and I will continue to try to pass it on until I run out of puff
The British revival is the most defensive "don't you dare criticise us" art movement I have ever encountered - it's even invented a private language - "folk police", "finger-in-ear", to ward off any form of criticism - what next - garlic and holy water?
I've always described the work of organisers like you as essential to the future of folk song - you and Joy Ashworth and Ted Poole and all the other folk-face workers have my undying respect for that, but your aggressive and often insulting attitude to those expressing honest opinions that don't suit your smug complacency sometimes appals me.
I don't give a toss about your opinion of me personally, but I do worry about what has happened to the music that I have spent a lifetime enjoying, as a singer, listener and researcher.
I would like to think that those who follow us will get the same opportunities we have
Jim Carroll