"Saying he's singing ballads the wrong way is not criticism"
Did I say he was singing them "the wrong way"? I seem to remember my comment (before the hissy-fit) was that they had become non-narrative and therefore something else - right and wrong didn't come into it. I went on to express the opinion that ballads, by definition, are narrative songs.
There followed a long and incresingly bitter tooing-and-froeing where I feel my argument was totally and rather spitefully misrepresented - prepared to pull out the relevent bits, but would rather not open old woundds.
Sean has contiued to distort my attitude - each time I have asked him to clarify his distortions I have been met with silence.
Sorry John - don't get the irony - our depositing our collecton at NSA was one of the instigations to developing the archive from non-British (largely African and Asian) to include British traditional material (Lucy Duran was in charge at the time and a massive instigator of this).
While we were happy that our recordings were to be held there we have always thought the whole archive could have been more usable - which is why we pushed for the development of a fully accessible archive - there or somewhere else. What I do find ironic is that the NSA houses the earliest and one of the most important set of recordings of folk songs ever made, the Grainger Collection, which, as far as I am aware, remains virtually inaccessible.
Personally, I still find the British Library, where the collection is housed, a fairly forbidding experience to visit and while we were happy to see the 'Bright Golden Store' project embarked on, its limited resources meant it could not even begin to tackle the recordings of traditional material existing unarchived in the UK, let alone make them generally available, which was the point of our depositing our recordings there in the first place - it still seems very much hand-to-mouth and inaccessible.
The Irish Traditional Music Archive, on the other hand, has taken full advantage of the change of heart of the Irish establishment and is putting up new material on a monthly basis - suggest you ask Malcolm Taylor or Derek Schofied how it has progressed
Sorry Sean - don't get the point of your link - we tend not to have competing threads entitled "Occupy Irish Folk Music" and fight for the scraps fallen from the establishment's table - Irish music caters for a broad church with a wide ranging congregation.
Explain please!!
What do you think of my "crossroads" examples?
Jim Carroll