No they are not Dick - we don't need gods - but we do need everyy ounce of information gathered by them and others if we are evevr going to understand our music
As you say, we would be far less informed than we are without them
Perhaps it's time to put this "Marxist" nonsense to bed once and for all
Pseud quotes Vic Gammon - who I have laways understood to be a Marxist or at least fairly left
Vic certainly wrote for teh Marxist, Histort Workshop Journal edited by Marxist Raphael Samuels
We still have his excellent article claiming that songs like "All Jolly Fellows" were political outbursts
If there is to be a blacklist, then Vic's name would be on it

One of teh most outspoken and extreme Marxists on the scene was Dave Harker" who was doing exactly what Pseaud and others are doing in pulling down the work of Child, Sharp, MacColl, Lloyd, and even the timid Frank Kidson and Lucy Broadwood
He had a hitlist of all the poineers which he once decared he woul d expose for the romantics and charlatans they were one of Pseaud's supporters here once declared Harker "a great scholar"

"I would rather take advice on how to think about the researchers of the past"
I would much rather not need to be advised on how to think about anything and would much rather read everything, compare it to my own researches and think for myself
The supporter I mentioned above, rather than discuss the problems his own theories raised, offered to provide me with a list of people who agreed with him - that's a tad Messianic as far as I'm concerned
Relying on Gurus rather than your own common sense is as likely to produce a Charles Manson or a David Koresh as it it a Mahatma Ghandi
Jim Carroll