Glueman, whoever said that was *really* wide of the mark there! Clearly they'd never heard of Woodie Guthrie, Ewan McColl, Bob Dylan, Cyril Tawny, Jez Lowe, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Steve Knightley, Christie Moore, etc., etc.. All writing songs about the modern-day world around them.

You want pure traditional folk, it's a niche market. So is pure traditional country music from the days before the "&W" was added. Although it affects today's music, people mostly prefer to listen to today's music. In this, we're no different today from how we were many thousands of years ago. If we weren't, we'd still be bashing a rock against a treetrunk because it was good enough for our great-great-and-then-some-grandfather.

On Carthy: But to listen to his thought processes, because he doesn't chat a lot onstage

The one time I saw Carthy, there was 10 minutes of chat between each 5-minute song!

Graham.