I still await the evidence that recent songs are getting passed on down the generations

What evidence do you need?

I've said above, a couple of times, that I regularly hear people in their 20s singing and playing songs that are 40-60 years old, or joining in with them word-perfect when they hear them played.

The songs include "modern folk" songs...I've posted before about the young mandolin player who "only plays traditional Irish songs" launching into "Fiddler's Green" and reacting with horror when told that not only was it written in Grimsby, but that the composer was still alive and performing.

As for pop and rock songs, as I said above, "Hotel California" is definitely a generation-crossing "anthem"...if young people from Axminster to Sakhalin and various points between are able to identify it from the first bar and join in word-perfect, including the 3 percussive table-slaps immediately before the vocals start, then in my book it's "there". In the last few months I've heard it done by, and joined in by, people at least a generation removed from its composition in: Axminster; Yeovil; Bethesda; Tunbridge Wells; Den Helder; Stavanger; St Petersburg and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. I would probably have heard it in Turkmenbashi and Ashgabat if I'd been there long enough to come across any singing!

Other pop/rock songs I hear sung by people in their 20s and younger all the time, and in widely separated locations, include:

- Space Oddity
- Wish You Were Here
- Blowin' In The Wind
- Streets of London
- Teach Your Children
- Bad Moon Rising
- Catch The Wind
- Big Yellow Taxi
- The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
- Ruby Tuesday

to name just 10 of many.

And strangely, there seems to have been a recent uptake of "Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag" which is *really* out of its time and place, but which I've heard done recently by under-30s in both Axminster and Tunbridge Wells, and joined in with enthusiastically by others.

I suspect that one's just a flash in the pan, but I'd be willing to bet that at least half the other 10 I listed above continue to make their way down the generations.