Actually Cap'n if you try to play the accompaniment of Nottamun Town to Masters of War it doesn't work (unless of course I have been "jazzing up" folk song again - which I probably have but I didn't intend to change the tune on that one).

WLD, what I aim to do is to take a folk song (or sometimes a neofolk song) and play it my way. Mostly (there are some exceptions, for example a variant of "Summertime Blues" that owes more to Blue Cheer than Eddie Cochrane, but it doesn't go out very often except on "silly nights" and a version of "The Morning Dew" that owes more to Nazareth than to Tim Rose, but I may ahve been at the tune a bit, it's just the way it is in my head) my purpose is to take the meaning of that song and present it with attitude.

THere are other exceptions, for example "Substitute" nello estilo folk song, and "Play with Fire" as an acoustic song with a sort chorus - but the wellspring is folk song.

That is because (I believe) English folk song is in a sense inherited.

Billy Brag songs may be excellent (I quite like "Sexuality") but they are not folk song. The Stones used to play some Afro-American traditional material (is it still OK to call it "blues"?) but have no perceivable conection to British folk music that I have perceived. The Quo - do me a favour, I have had some interaction and do they ahve any connection toany folk music and do they still have a fan base? Not hte same since John and Alan "left". As for "Status Quo, Cliff, MacCartney , The stones, Oasis" oh shit oh shit oh shit, do you mean that folk is Radio 2 material? I remember the day I was grooving hard in the greengrocers to the wireless playing, thinking "this is hot" and it turned out to be Radio 2. I knew I was not jsut old, but OLD in mind that day.

Shimrod, there is no need to dismiss rock as an artform nor as a metohd of interpretation of folk song. What isn't needed is people like Sniff Lakeperson taking songs like "The setting of the Sun" and totally ripping out the plaintive tune that gives meaning to the original and replacing it with a zero melody with a bit of "thud-thud-thid".