The wonderful Miss Eliza Carthy said-"The folk scene should surely be about supporting independence from the mainstream; it so happens that success can spring from that. So do we abandon people the minute that happens? Leave them for cultural dead? To be a folksinger must inevitably mean to be unable to make a living?"

The wonderful Mr. Phil Beer said- "In a dumb celebrity culture where non acheivers can become household names and earn obscene sums of money it's refreshing to find a young man who has worked hard and created something worthwhile out of the building blocks of our past music and culture. By making something new out of it, he carries the thing forward. I for one am utterly delighted.

Well said, both of you. And a reminder that with people like Seth, and Eliza, and Phil Beer, and John Tams, and Jim Causley, and John Kirkpatrick, and The Young Coppers, and Kate Rusby, and Kathryn Tickell, and......you get the point, we have an across the boards representation of traditional music, whatever your own particular likes and dislikes may be. I for one am not particularly enamored of Jim Moray (sorry Eliza!)-he just doesn't do it for me, or as Eliza said, he leaves me cold. No harm, no foul. I'm a huge Great Big Sea fan. They do a mix of traditional Newfoundland music and pop songs. I probably only like about 40% of their pop material-a lot of it I think is ok, but its dime a dozen, it could be done by anyone. Seeing them live, and hearing a large crowd-and I mean thousands, not hundreds of people, but at their larger shows, thousands singing Lukey's boat, General Taylor, Old Polina, etc. is just awesome. People who got into them for various reasons, most of them probably not via the usual folk route, who now have a starting point for future listening are now exposed to folk music. The same thing happened to me (you can read WAV's Glastonbury Folk Festival thread to see how it happened for me),and if Seth's success brings more interest from anyone, I say its worth it. Nice words again, Eliza and Phil!