Spider Tom, you have only been in the folk scene a short time, you are not aware of the politics that goes on, in NSW we have a clicky group of people, I prefer to call them folk nazis who will not allow folk music to progress and breathe, they want to protect their own patch and keep folk music in the past even to the last century. As a result folk music has not moved for years, we do not have any highly trained instrumentalists or singers (who can read music and playor sing in all keys), no one can possibly make a good living out of folk music and to top it all, a lot of folk musicians are luddites when it comes to amplification.

I do not play in the folk scene these days because there is very little money attached, Spider Tom and I have played together on a couple of occassions and you Spider Tom know how much work I get outside the folk scene, heaps, the average person loves what I do if I have a good night even if I think I had a bad night, but over the years I have heard all sorts of comments from the average person that folkies are weird, in other words they have bad PR. To give one example I was in a line to purchase food at the St Albans festival about 8 years ago and this woman turned to me in the line and asked why there was all these strange people around.

I agree with harmonclive, mudcat is not reserved for the folkies. This is a forum and as such is open to all forms of free speech, whether the folkies like it or not.

Folkies need to broaden the music and not be stuck in this never ending spiral of Irish tunes in G or D, try some scottish tunes in Eb, that test most folkies.

I play with classical musicians, in a bushband, play some jazz and blues occassionally and it is so good to work with musicians who can read music and improvise in any key and take a simple folk tune and push it in all directions.

I have to say that most of the classical musicians I know put folkies down, they rightfully argue that there is a lot more to music than folk music and folkies need to open their eyes and broaden and move the genre on.

As a result I agree with some of the others on this page that the festivals continually have the same tired old talentless acts