Curmudgeon, disagreeing with someone's views doesn't constitute "bile" or make one a "troll". Also Gluey and Sweeney are not some double act - they've clearly, from their posts, got totally different perspectives. They are only lumped together in the minds of those who take an absolutist "if you're not with us, you're against us" approach to folk music, as bluntly underlined by your rather selective list of credits (not sure what the Leveller would think about his elevation to hallowed folk insider status, though).

Personally I find this thread very illuminating. It's the only one I'm reading on Mudcat at the moment. Is it not a good thing to question "accepted" assumptions from time to time?

For me the only two genres of music worth a shit are music I like and music I don't like. Luckily for me, a large proportion of the former is traditional music (albeit in it's revival clothing) and what I guess we should now call contemporary-pop-music-composed-to-mimic-a-folk-idiom (or "folk music" as the silly buggers out in the real world call it). Genres, processes, traditions and so on come a very poor second to this as far as I'm concerned - I'm not an academic, I'm a fan, and I don't really care that deeply if it's a Child ballad or one of The Earthbound Souls' (for example) recently composed songs as long as it moves me. The exact definition and compartmentalisation is not that important. I'd rather fleetingly enjoy a butterfly on the wing than pin it down so I can stare at it under glass. I really don't mind what it says on the tin as long as the contents are tasty. Half the stuff I like is unclassifiable anyway. Others can do as they will, as long as they accept different people experience music in different ways.

Incidently, just heard part of a live set from Cambridge Folk Festival in 1981 on Radio 6... by Donovan, including a cracking Hurdy Gurdy Man and a lovely Jennifer Juniper. When I was growing up, the only folk album in the house was "Universal Soldier", a budget Donovan LP on Pye. I loved it and played it non-stop from the age of about six upwards. Funnily enough, I only realised it wasn't a folk album when I hit the rarified world of Mudcat. I'm sure most people who own a copy are still labouring under the misapprehension it IS folk. Tut tut. Silly them. We, after all, know better, don't we?

I don't want to denigrate what Jim et al are saying, some of it is fascinating, but I do sometimes get the feeling they are to the folk music buying public generally (y'know, those souls who buy records by Rachel Unthank and Waterson Carthy and Alasdair Roberts and Seth Lakeman and so on) approximately what the Sparticist International were to labour voters... That's not a pretty thought.