I think it's where the songs played slip out the coffee-shop doors and windows, and end up crawling the alleys, resonating down the streets, leaking into church services and disrupting the stiff-collared hymn-singing, oozing into diners and discombobulating the teenagers trying to listen to the jukebox and putting stranger ideas in their heads, and seeping into banks and ruining the Muzak there. It's a terrible thing, causes all kinds of disruptions and leaves people with their hearts raw and bleeding.

Towns where feral folk music has become a problem have been known to hold special elections to appoint an official Song Catcher and provide him with a good supply of duct tape, styrofoam, and weather stripping to put things right.


A