The dancer with the beard was a lot tidier. The younger one I thnk belonged in the Guinness tradition. Both of them more "Ceilidh" than formal Irish dance.

The Chieftains once again proved that everyone else who plays Irish converts it to the unsubtleties of disco-folk. With them you can still hear the lilt and the light and shade, as when I first heard them at the Albert Hall in the early 70s. If all Irish music was that good I might listen to it and be able to tell one tune from another.

Again 100% sad to have no English folk, and indeed to see the only English folkie viewed (I regard Thompson as contemporary, not folk) namely Eliza Carthy, making a bad attempt at (and lamely jigging about to - what a contrast to the way she used to dance at the age of about 14 when her first band (I think) played Cambridge and I saw her in the club tent) Salsa, a tradition (if it is a tradition) nothing to do with England.

As for Thompson, I like Vincents a lot (and indeed have ridden both a C series and a D series) but I thought his guitar work both untidy and unrhythmic.

How bad it is to see perhaps the most famous English "Folk Festival" drift further and further from folk, and particularly from English Folk.

As to folk music, can it be like religion? "I say to you a prophet (transpose a folk tradition) is not without honour save in his own country."