Richard, we've all heard the weird concoctions you speak of. Thirty years back(God help me!)I was so enamoured of Derek Brimstone's style of presentation that Derek himself asked me where in London I'd come from, at one point. Its funny, I can laugh at it now. But I was doing a full time job at the the time, taking care of disabled wife, and folkmusic (okay what I thought was folkmusic) just obsessed all my waking hours. It sustained me, and I was deadly serious as an artist. And I wrote my most memorable songs in that period.

Its like this thing about the tradition - you SHOULDN'T discount somebody's life's work because of an idea or set of ideas you have, Its too important - what a man has to say as an artist. We owe our fellow men that much.

These people who come on Mudcat and and diss Ewan MacColl cos apparently his accent isn't kosher, echt Deutsch or it doesn't pass the Scottish Wool Shop Test or the 1954 Definition of Haggis Making - as far as I'm concerned, they're bloody bonkers. Ewan had SO much to say as an artist - and you're going to be a poorer man if you won't listen to any of it for reasons of predjudice. Or for something like ideas, some poxy product of cerebration. Every arsehole's got ideas. Ideas are nothing, comapred to what a capable artist produces.

Its like my Dad saying abstract art is bollocks. Dad had his ideas, but am I going to be so in awe of Father that I say Picasso and Kandinsky life's work was rubbish. To honour Dad's ideas. Course I'm bloody not.

Granted however, there is some real shit around. Just don't assume its shit, cos your criteria aren't met.