Guest sez: "What actually killed it (folk music) was a decision in 1975 within the music industry to kill anything which wasn't hip-hop or punk, for purely commercial reasons."

What an odd comment. Although the early punk bands were in existence by '75 (especially in New York), you didn't really get the first punk record releases till late '76. Hip hop came even later. From what I recall, listening to Radio One and commercial radio at the time, checking out the charts weekly and watching Top of the Pops, punk was a small minority of what was played. It was mainly the same mainstream pop that had been featured pre-punk: Boney M, Abba and so on. Oh and the odd folky monstrosity like "Day Trip to Bangor"... Culturally, punk had the excellent sense to point out that overblown prog-rock epics were a bit on the wanky side, but I'm sure Yes and Pink Floyd weren't exactly quaking in their boots!

Guest also talks about "the commercialisation of the music industry of the mid 1970s." Again, this is very weird. Is the suggestion that prior to 1975, the music industry was a bastion of DIY, anti-commercial bohemianism? If anything, it was punk (or at least its immediate aftermath) that enabled that to happen - wrestling the means of production out of the hands of big business, resulting in a plethora of DIY records, gigs, labels etc... and with it, the artists taking control of their music. Sure, folk had already been doing that for years, but that was the exception not the rule: the industry norm was all about the big business model, as it still is.