After nigh on 20 years out of the country, there are a number of items needing correction.
Firstly, Richard Bridge commented on the death of the Concept Album in 1975. Mike Smith resigned as Program Controller of University Radio Loughborough to go and work for Dave Kettlewell collecting All The Tunes That Ever There Were for hammered dulcimer, and I succeeded him in post. Mike had been instrumental in promoting Mike Oldfield and Kraftwerk before ever Radio 1 made them popular. Nick Philips was the Prof in charge of the laser lab, so we had the bands coming - he was the man behind the laser effects of the 1970s, and part of his price was the bands had to gig, so I I got to SM (notionally!) Queen the weekend Bohemian Rhapsody hit, one week before the Hammersmith recording, performing to 500 in the hall and an innumerable mob outside. Loughborough in those days hosted one of the top folk festivals. What actually happened is that the US recording companies decided that there was too much autonomy in the industry and that all promotion for every form of music was to be cut, or rather reapplied to hip-hop and punk. It was not just progressive rock, nor folk rock, it was everything.
Secondly, what has happened is that commercialism has set its roots in the folk world too. That means too many people are making their livings from what should be the music of the people, and are shutting people out. Read it carefully, it establishes exactly what Katy Spicer is actually doing in her interpretation of her responsibility in promoting the interests of the folk world. The last Minutes published by the EFDSS Board are almost a year old, and were woeful reading: it is not therefore any surprise that the link to them has been suppressed in the redesigned site. Suffice it to say that so short are the funds and so tatty are Kennedy Hall's curtains they had to call upon the Choir to fund-raise the £50,000 they need to replace them. That's asking ordinary joes about £800 a head: perhaps if they'd bothered to record the Choir they may have had some income to pay for them.
Thirdly, the worked example of what's been going on is that the music industry was crying out for input from the folk world these last two years. None was forthcoming because it threatened the established names. It's why the EFDSS has still not recorded its Choir. It's why I've left and am doing something useful: I've moved to a Community Choir, because it's truly the music of the people, we're gigging about twice as much as CSHC does, and with far less experience. I'm supporting the foundation of a new Choir too, I'm working in my own voice once a month, there are gigs out there, not enough to make a living, but enough to move the industry. People are sick and tired of commercialism, and that's all you get on the scene these days. If you set aside the elder statesmen of these pages, who are too busy telling you what you can't do and not busy enough getting out there doing, then perhaps you'll find you're able to go right.