I'm sure there's something I disagree with in SS's last, but so far I'm struggling to find it. I'll let you know.

Rather than seeing it as something to sneeringly dismiss as 'fashion' (come on, Pip, you're better than that!), I believe it's something to celebrate - even if the music itself and the trad qotient isn't to your taste. Personally - lack of trad notwithstanding - I find much of what I hear from the nu-folk/Green Man/whatever scene far more to my tastes than the non-trad folk music I hear on the official folk scene.

People keep reading a sneer into what I think are straightforward statements of opinion. It must be the text equivalent of David Baddiel's Man Afflicted With A Sarcastic Tone Of Voice ("Oh, *go on*, I'm finding it *really interesting*... No, what?").

Yes, Green Man and all that stuff (no, what?) is a lot more than just a fashion - and yes, they're a lot more to my taste than a fair amount of Designated Folk. (If I had to choose between Jez Lowe and Espers I'd go for the creepy Yanks every time.) But I don't think it'll last forever. (In terms of coolness or hiposity it's probably peaked already; there's a definite nu-prog thing rolling in at the moment.) The lure of possibly hearing the next Meg Baird or Sufjan Stevens isn't going to get people into folk clubs for much longer, any more than people were going to folk clubs to hear the next Sandy Denny in the 1980s.