Too stay on topic: My guilty pleasures include Blue Jean Baby Queen prettiest girl I've ever seen,,,,and any old song by Van Morrison.

Now I'm a lover of traditional music, and the older I get the more fascinated I am by the history and times past that traditional songs convey. (I walk in people like Bruce O's shadow). When I learn a tune I like to trace it back to its origins and find as many variations as I can. Then I learn it.

At the same time I'm dead set against setting up barriers to folk and the music I love. According to "Blue Grass" nazis an autoharp can't play bluegrass. According to Celtic traditionalist Steeleye Span, Mr. Fox, and Horslips shouldn't be tolerated. I hate it when someone tells me the version that I have learned of a song is WRONG. Or that I forgot a verse, etc. etc. I get very tired of folk oldsters continually trying to impress each other about how long they have been involved in the folk community, or if you could have only been there when X sang that song... It was so much better... The folk community is alive and vibrant TODAY and if it takes new directions and changes frome when we knew it in the 60s and 70s then so be it. Listen to Bela Fleck,Eliza Carthy, Cordelia's Dad, Mouth Music, Shooglenifty, Afro Celt Sound System,and even people like Sinead O'Connor, or Shane Macgowan. They are doing NEAT STUFF. They are, however, breaking the bounds of what we call folk.

Think back on how odd some of the Incredible String Band stuff is.

That is one of the things I like about the Mudcat. We do (and should) try to stay in the folk vein, but beyond that there seems to be an openess here that doesn't exist in other forums. It lets us exlpore new territory.

So Hurray for the Guilty Pleasures!

JAB