"Keep smiling, life's too short"
Bit presumptive you're assuming I'm not "smiling" don't you think?
I've spent a lifetime enjoying the songs I love, singing them, listening to them and helping preserve them.
When our last 'big' singer died in 2005, I thought 'that was that' - the stuff was archived safely and we could put the finishing touches to the collection and sit back - didn't happen like that.
People have shown an interest in what we've done (not necessarily in the UK but here in Ireland.
Our Clare double CD has become a field recording best seller, despite the bad behaviour of some people and a our County Library responded to our suggestion that they might like to pair it with their excellent music website - thy put two librarians to work on it for over two years and put over 500 of the songs we collected up just over a year ago - a truely magnificent job of which we are extremely proud - thy have helped us return the songs we collected back to the county we got them from - couldn't begin to tell you what a buzz that gave us.
Carroll Mackenzie collection
Early last year we completed two programmed dedicated to Ewan for Irish National Radio - another high.
Last month the World Music Department at Limerick Uni. accepted our entire collection for their students and have mooted the idea of opening a Travellers website based on the work we did with Irish Travellers in London.
Lighten up!! If we were any lighter they'd have to send up rockets to shoot us down.
None of this would have happened had our sole concern been to put bums on seats a you seem to imply is (or was) yours.
You are right about one thing - life is too short.
We are now quite old and have yet to sort out the twenty years of work we did with Walter Pardon - can't think of many English clubs interested enough to weigh in and give us a hand.
That we should live long enough to get it all done!
"What happened between 1961 and the seventies was that certain people started taking the piss out of chorus singing, which was the backbone of the revival."
Choirus singing was never the backbone of the revival and audiences joining in solo singing has become one of the rapidly spreading infections of the present day.
The Singer at no time "took the piss" out of chorus singing - ever - on the contrary, Ewan and Peggy were often accused of taking too long to teach choruses - they were an essential part of what we did.
This is a total new one on me - I have never visited a club that discouraged chorus singing - ever.
Jim Carroll