quite a few that many of us have been singing for a long time.

Looking down that track listing - Byker Hill, The Old Dun Cow, Thousands Or More - it does look a bit like Bellowhead Play Singaround Favourites. I wonder if it's connected with Jon Boden's new-found enthusiasm for social singing, as shown by the AFSAD project.

Does it matter? If they mess the songs up and lots of people then turn up at clubs & singarounds singing the messed-up versions, that would be mildly annoying. But it's like Ruskin complaining about the railway coming to the Lake District, on the grounds that if you wanted to experience the beauties of nature you should be prepared to make an effort. We might prefer it if fewer people did some of those songs, just as we might prefer to have the Lakes to ourselves, but ultimately it's better for more people to hear them (or see them). And the songs (and the Lakes) can take it - they'll still be there afterwards.

Pausing to get my breath back after that extended simile... The other thing that comes to mind is that a lot of singaround standards don't get heard anywhere else. If you go to a singaround regularly it's only a matter of time before you hear Fathom the Bowl or Glorious Ale or Byker Hill; if you don't, you might never hear them at all. This struck me when Ian "not that one, the other one" Anderson wrote something on fRoots "about traditional songs which are your chorus songs from hell". His list went like this:

The Old Dun Cow
The Keeper
Jones's Ale
Joe The Carrier Lad
The Threshing Machine
Whisky In The Jar
and of course The Wild Rover

I'm not crazy about the last two, but I like the Old Dun Cow and I sing Jones's Ale myself. More to the point, the other three are songs I've actually never heard sung live. (And I heard Jones's Ale for the first time about three years ago, at a singaround.) One folkie's hackneyed old chestnut is another's exciting new discovery.