""one club organiser recently put a time limit of (something like) two and a half minutes on the length of a song, thereby wiping out almost the entire ballad repertoire at a stroke.""

An entirely reprehensible action, and somewhat stupid, given that with fifty years experience I can only recall about a dozen folk songs that short.

I do recall one singer who almost made me set a time limit. He was a resident at a folk club I ran for seven years, and on guest nights when I asked him to do just one song he would invariably respond by singing ten to fifteen minute versions of either Long Lankin or Tamelin. I resisted the temptation, I'm still not sure how I did that.



""I do know that I can no longer follow the narrative of a song if it is buried under a barrage of accompaniment - when, in fact accompaniment ceases to accompany and instead dominates a song. this is one of the common problems with much of the singing I hear today.""

Here again I agree with you. Lyrics are what makes a song. Without them it is a tune. So if the music is so important as to warrant drowning out the singer, why have a singer at all. No matter what style or genre, a song should IMO carry the voice high in the mix, so that every word can be clearly heard.

At least that would solve the problem of years long arguments about what words Garfunkel actually sang in "Scarborough Fair", the answer to which Simon and Garfunkel themselves have forgotten.

At last, two points on which we can agree Jim.

Don T.