I agree, Frank. One* of the reasons I don't wring my hands too much over the death of the Traditional Folk Song (any more than I do at the passing of the skills of traditional craftsmen) is because out here in the real world real folks are still playing real folk music - irrespective of genre. I love Traditional English Speaking Folk Song, but that's just something I sing for the hell of it - the magic of sitting in filthy back rooms of filthy old pubs getting pissed drinking filthy old beer from filthy old glasses and merrily roaring a few filthy old chorus with a bunch of filthy old like-minded souls.

At its best, it touches passers-by very deeply, convincing me of an enduring potency, if not authenticity, but that's just a hobby of mine. I have questioned - and continue to question - the extend to which this stuff ever permeated society as a whole much less the extent it does so now. But as it stands, it is a pragmatic means of a very purposeful Entertainment, and so to that end alone I will sing the old songs, and listen to others doing likewise. Seldom however, will I buy the product.

Like folklore, real folk music is done in complete innocence of it being folk music. This has always been the case, and remains the case away from a revival that only concerns itself with folk as genre rather than as the universal human phenomenon it is now, and always has been. Where there is folk, there will be folk music, just not that sort of folk music. To hell with it. I'm passed caring. The important thing is to play what you will. After all, as Duke Ellington said, there's only two types of music anyway - good and bad.

S O'P, 3.30pm GMT, listening to The Clemencic Consort's Play of Daniel.

* Of course there are others, but being entirely subjective they have no relevance here.