the pure magic of a live performance and the "make do" of a recording,

All popular / traditional / folk music involves recording, so it's hardly "make do", rather it's an integral a part of the creative cultural process. Just as records are ethnographic artefacts in and of themselves, in recorded form the generative meme of the folk process exists as both corporeal and ethereal, be it as document, as product, as item of veneration, fetish, or otherwise somehow forever definitive in terms of performance. The Lomax Archive is a very good example of this, The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection is another. What Jim Carroll has sent me of his own archive is likewise revelatory, and though I have my doubts about about the VOTP series most of it resides on my CD shelves, pride of place etc. Each day I wake I give thanks that Jean Ritchie was on hand with her tape recorder when Seamus Ennis was giving voice to Sean Aerach & St. Peter, and where would folk be without This?

To the Feral Folk Musician the Zoom H4 is just as crucial an instrument as his Black Sea Fiddle; for whilst it is one thing singing The Molecatcher whilst walking at low tide beyond the pier ends on Blackpool beach to the found-accompaniment of the waves, the sea-gulls, the joyful noise from the rides on the central pier, ditto from the aecades along the Golden Mile etc. BUT it would have been nice to have been able to listen back to it afterwards as I don't think I've sang it quite as good as that before. Note to Self: next time - be prepared!

Singarounds might be the exception here, no recording can ever capture the pure joissance of simply being there, which is one of the things I love about it - the sheer sonic intensity of a dozen or more ill-educated voices braying forth in the inebriated assumption that they are making great music! Never fails for me.