revival always struck me as a silly term, much like other silly terms like 'hiring fair' etc etc

i like the tongue-in-cheek term 'folk scare' that one wag coined. Both Utah Philips and Dave van Ronk had a great attitude to the revival, I reckon: both simultaneously deeply involved in it, appreciative of it and yet viewing it with a rather bemused, ironical detachment.

Ultimately, you can say what you like about the 50s/60s folk revival, but it enabled and fostered a lot of good art - not just traditional music - that I love and always will. Music by musicians such as: Martin Carthy, Shirley Collins, Watersons, Jansch, Renbourn, MacColl, Peggy Seeger, Davy Graham, Anne Briggs, Sweeney's Men, and then fed into decent 70s songwriters and guitarists like Nick Drake and Dave Evans.

It also brought to light an awful lot of old traditional singers who we might not otherwise be listening to. It was all part of the same wave.