I'm with you, Joe. I guess the question has to come up, though, how do we find the original form of much of our music? I recall going to the Fiddler's Grove Festivals (just down the road from the Union Grove Bluegrass Festival, each put on by one of the VanHoy brothers) back in the 70's. The whole thing, as far as music on the stage was concerned, was set up as a contest; one for each instrument and one for stringbands. If your band didn't sound a whole lot like the 1920's records (in other words, the first records) of stringbands such as Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers, you had not a chance of winning. Those 1920's records had become their idea of the "original" form, and it was not to be messed with. If you had something as exotic as a mandola or a pennywhistle in your band, forget it. We all played anyway, because they gave you the price of your ticket back. I often wonder how people decide on these kinds of standards. For a non-musical example, how did the Hassidic Jews in New York, a five thousand year old religion, decide that men's clothes fashionable in the 1850's were to be important to them. Beats me. There is a super-fundamentalist college in Greenville, SC called Bob Jones University, where the students wear clothing of the 1950's. I went to another college in the same town; never got a handle on that one. Fascinatingly, they (BJU) at least once applied for a permit to have mounted 50 caliber machine guns in their guardhouse at the gate. Boy were they righteously upset when they didn't get it. I know I've gotten off the subject. It's been a long week and I'm going to bed.

Music is a wonderful thing, Chet W.