Back in the 1970s it was either 'Trad Folk' or 'Contemporary Folk'..

Add electric instruments and amps into the mix and it became 'Folk Rock'....

Middle of the road laid back acoustic music with hints of folk,
augmented with bass guitar & drums was 'Soft Rock'

What was difficult about that, we knew more or less exactly what to expect within those categories...

If a 14 year old school kid watching 'The Old Grey Whistle Test' on telly,
reading 'NME', 'Sounds', and 'Melody Maker'
and rummaging through 'Topic' LPs in the town library
could understand those rule of thumb classifications
of 40 years ago..

how come it's such a big problem now !!!???


By those criteria, that's even how we eventually regarded a fair proportion
of newly written punk rock songs
to be considered on the fringes of 'Contemporary Folk'.........