Potted history: aged about 16 I began going in to folk clubs. I liked the music but thought the stuff that came with it was complete crap. So I had to decide, do you throw away the music or continue with it as a secret vice? I kept buying records and the one-way relationship with folk continued.
Occasionally I'd long for something of the 'community' of folk but it was like selling everything you believed in for a small hit of the good stuff, the attitude, clothes, what's right and wrong, one of us or them, absolute bull. Provenance means nothing to me in the sense I can tell the real thing with my ears and memory, if I'm duped it'll have to be a damned good ringer.

So for most of the time I'm folk's n****r, always on the outside looking in the shop window, wanting the sweets at the back but not prepared to swallow the twaddle. BTW, that isn't a romantic vision of folk or myself, it's a fact and people might examine their own consciences to see whether they fit the picture.
It's music, that's it.