Why is it that whenever a subject like this comes up - bang - sound of breaking door and in comes the heavy mob telling me what I should and should not be discussing. This will be the 'Folk Police' everybody talks about I presume (maybe they've opened a special 'forum protection branch' to make sure we don't disturb the little niche they've constructed for themselves on the ruins of what used to be a thriving and healthy scene where at one time I could go and listen to ballads (some of them even more than 2 minutes long) and shanties and bothy songs and bawdy pieces and all the other things it used to be worth leaving a warm television for).
If I drive across the county to visit a 'folk club' I've just read about and some burke gets up and sings American Pie, and another mutters something private enough to be unintelligable into his armpit, and another stumbles his or her way through something I vaguely recognise but I can't quite make out the tune or the words (which they are reading from a sheet of Andrex) and are not projecting loud enough to quite reach the third row, and, as they have forgotten their glasses they have to ask the audience what the next line is......... what do I do - suffer in silence and stay at home next time I see the word 'folk' advertised in the '''entertainment''' columns?
That's what I, and thousands like me did - we left the clubs to wallow in the shite-holes they'd been turned into by the 'anything goes merchants'?
Sorry - I'd rather try to win back a little of what we had before the tat-purveyors moved in:
a) Out of respect for the old singers I had the pleasure to meet and who gave me their songs, like Walter Pardon, who knew what folk music was and took the trouble to get it right before he stood up in front of an audience - and
b) So that others can experience a little of the enjoyment I had out of folk music before it was re- (or de-) defined.

"Just enjoy it and stop putting fucking labels on it"
Certainly ******* not; get back to Coronation Street and mind your own ******* business.
Jim Carroll