"You claim to have set up your recording session as a reaction to all the publicity that "English Music" was getting in the south........ I'm sorry if their enthusiasm went over the top, but there was a palpable sense of discovery and excitement about it all."

When I started getting interested in playing tunes on squeezeboxes, there were only two kinds of session available in which to play: "Irish" or "English" - the latter comprising Southern and especially East Anglian dance music dominated by the polka, with a repertoire lifted mostly off the Old Swan Band's first LP. The title of said record, "No Reels", was deliberately inteded to wind up EFDSS types who enjoyed the sort of mid-Atlantic dance repertoire that Anahata describes, but it didn't half annoy some musicians in the North, who were well aware that the reel is a part of the English tradition.

It also has to be said that some of the "English" music sessions going on in the seventies could be turgid affairs, the predominant melodeons not always being played with the kind of skill we take for granted now.

I daresay that kind of thing was in Greg's mind when he wrote those sleeve notes. Certainly it was an important motivation for Jamie Knowles - the chap who did more than pretty well anyone else apart from Greg for the revival of North-West English music. His tune books (Northern Frisk, Northern Lass, and contribution to the publication of Joseph Kershaw's manuscript) have been a great influence on many musicians, including Eliza Carthy.

And if anyone wants to play this kind of thing, there's a session in the Swan at Dobcross on Thursday nights where you'll get plenty of it. Incidentally I believe Rod Stradling's new band is now playing some Northern stuff too. The final defeat of the poncey South!