lets leave it at that.

you've got your definition. you've got the Irish scene and you're happy with that. to be honest to me it sounds like a vision of hell. thirty kids sawing away on fiddles at the same tune. a hundred kids cocking their leg up at the same time in Irish trad dancing. about as much individuality as the Nuremberg rally.

we've got the folk - the people who turn up to ur folk clubs, thinking mistakenly that what they enjoy is folk music - when they sing all sorts of stuff.

i think we've got the best of the deal. but if you're happy. so be it.

and BH - do i dislike traditional folksong. no i love it, and many of the people involved. i think its 'the tradition' that sends a cshudder through me.

i think its when people interpolate something great out of something that is well dodgy - like these source singers Jim's always going on about.

Take that Taylor bloke thaat we get Brigg Fair from. Bert Loyd interpolates a modal style of singing. Carthy puts it into practice. It seems more likely to me that the bloke just couldn't sing in tune.

if you went to the old crown digbeth in the mid 70's you would find an entire roomful of people deconstructing songs like Byker Hill along Carthy lines.

its that whiff of extremism i get from Jim's insistencies that get my goat, and i'm a capricorn.