No indeed, Bugsy, though if there is a group going by that name it shows the Steampunk idea is beginning to filter through into common consciousness - or maybe not. One fears the group Steamfolk to have missed the point entirely, certainly missed the inherent irony anyway, taking too literally the Folk Remit which compells us to mourn the past as a Real Country We Have (Somehow) Lost rather than a creation of our own. There is also (as a Google search will reveal) a SteamFolk site dealing in fantasy art of a Steampunkish Variety but with more Folkish elements. This is not what I'm talking about either, although it figures. Steamfolk is a way of accepting & celebrating the fact that Folk has been a fantasy construct from the off and continues to be so in perpetuation of its own carefully founded Myths, Orthodoxies, Assumptions, Attitudes and Aesthetics with respect of both The Tradition (that it first invents then claims to represent) or else the New Folk Idioms arising therefrom. These New Folk Idioms and artefacts are occuring all the time and are especially fashionable right now in any number of ways. We see Folk Tunics for sale in Women's Clothes Shops and Catalogues (try Marisota) and the very word Folk being used as noun, verb and adjective in common usage both by the intiated and uninitiated.

Steamfolk is about The Old as much as it is about The New. Indeed the very soul of Steamfolk would be those old Shirley and Dolly Collins albums they made for Harvest at a time when a (relatively) mainstream label would consider such a venture viable. Remember, they shared Harvest with 'pop' acts such as Pink Floyd, Third Ear Band, & The Edgar Broughton Band etc. In their original states Anthems in Eden and Love Death and the Lady have become definitive documents of an aesthetic which one might call Pure Steamfolk in terms of both its cultural viability and innate mythology & imagery - and that's not saying anything of the music! The CD reissues seem to miss the point rather (Staines Norris anyone?) although maybe only go so far as to confirm it after all*. Other re-issues of the Collins Canon, such as Adieu To Old England (which features a gawdy painting of the South Queensferry Burry Man - adieu to old England indeed!) and the erotic 'folk art' stylings of The Power of the True Love Knot (pert breasts but why the skirt?) seem to be the very essence of what I'm on about here. Then there's the very wonderful Snapshots CD of hitherto unreleased live material with its digipak vintage family photo album feel.

In any case, the status of Shirley and Dolly Collins to Folk Outsiders such as Current 93 and the old Woven Wheat Whispers 'community' (I ask you!) is something that, whilst not being fully understood by regular folkies, is par for the course to Steamfolk. And how nice to see the long overdue CD editions of Peter Bellamy's classic ARGO albums Oak Ash and Thorn and Merlin's Isle of Gramarye which confirms Rudyard Kipling to be the Godfather of Steamfolk, though at £15 a pop (in HMV MCR) I'll be making do with what's at hand in the unofficial stash a wee while longer yet. And yes, the Folk Police Oak, Ash, Thorn album is quintessential Steamfolk and very fine to boot. Anyway - I'll shut up about this soon, but not before preparing my Steamfolk t-shirt for this year's Fylde where our Bellamy: Kipling With the Tradition show will be Steamfolk par excellance, perhaps even more than the pevious years' Demdyke (who's grave has just been found so I hear... oo-er...). One of the things I miss most about the old Woven Wheat Whispers / Unbroken Circle / Harvest Home sites was the constant search on the part of the perpretator & self-styled Lord of Misrule for Convient Pidgeon Holes for the various aspects of Folk featured thereupon. No need now, Mr Coyle, for Steamfolk covers 'em all!

S O'P (in a waking dream...)

* I stumble upon seemingly inherent contradictions and dualities in the music all the time; I'll ponder this and come back to it later, or not, depending on how it goes, but in my experience Duality is A Very Good Thing.