Oh dear, I really didn't want to get drawn into this.

My introduction of the subject of collection and source singers into the CotFCs was just to pose the questions "Why do you apply different standards to the floor singers than you would to source singers? Are you saying we have to be better than the source singers?" If a slightly less than average singer turns up at the LAFC singing traditional ballads, how am I to know if he's just found a book in a junk shop or is Henry Burstow's great-grandson? Should my reaction to him be different depending? There are members of Scan Tester's family playing in Sussex these days. Shall we just say, some are better than others. Are they source- or floor-?

I found Jim Carroll's response to my rhetorical question genuinely shocking but it turns out that's not what he really meant either. I could have done without the following ping-pong rally.

On the internet, nobody can hear the tone in your voice.

Some random thoughts on collecting - What are you collecting? The song? The performance? Ths singer? The social history? Who are you collecting for? Yourself, so you can earn cash or kudos by doing it better than the source singer? Other singers, so thay can hear the real thing? The general public, to educate them about their own culture? Posterity, so that ethnomusicologists in the 24C can get some insight into the 21C? Wouldn't you love to know what the drunks in the taverns were singing 200 years ago or the passengers on the outside of stagecoaches to keep themselves warm?

I won't attempt to answer any of those questions.

As for murdering "My Way", it should have been strangled at birth. I can't see that surviving the folk process but maybe it's the Wild Rover of the future.