The point is - and this has been a large part of my reason for getting into these ridiculous arguments all along - the old songs groove. It goes like this - the fourth, the fifth... - they hit those intervals that evoke sweetness and sadness and joy (and sometimes all three), and then they hit them again. The kinds of effects that a contemporary songwriter would try to evoke by the end of the second middle-eight (I know, I've done it) - the old songs just go straight for it. There are subtleties and shadings, but they're carried on a big, definite framework: this is a song about love and death and you are going to feel it.

And that's why I love them. And that's why I feel short-changed if I go to a folk night and I'm the only one singing them.