I have purchased about 6 CDs in the last year, while my 18 year old employee purchases 3 or 4 CDs a month. I believe this is the bottom line on why pop music sells in such huge numbers, and Folk and Blues don't- the numbers reflect the corresponding demographic of the consumers. Teenagers and twenty-somethings are the group who devote the greatest proportion of their disposable income to things like buying music, while old geezers like yours truly are busy putting their income into college funds, snow tires and the mortgage. The quality or lack thereof has little to do with the sales of the product. Until you can get Young People to understand and appreciate traditional music, sales will continue to be marginal compared to pop.

Unfortunately, there also seems to be a dwindling cross-over between Pop/Rock and Folk/Blues. My introduction to Robert Johnson came through Eric Clapton and Cream. My intoduction to many traditional folk tunes like Wild Mountain Thyme and John Riley came through The Byrds and people like them. Current "young" bands like Cordelia's Dad, who are playing traditional music in a more contemporary format,rarely have the kind of hit songs or albums that would bring the music into common recognition among their peers.

The terminology "good" has only a contextual and subjective meaning, and Catspaw is right about that. There is much in popular music that I find "good", and most young music fans are more intelligent and discriminating than we give them credit for. The problem is the limited exposure they get to our music, and the archaic connotation attributed by them to our terms "folk" and "traditional." Perhaps they also see it primarily as "our" music. What we need to make them realize is it is "their" music too.

LEJ