And on it being 'simple', well take a 'simple' phrase like 'folk song'. Can anybody who has followed the multiple, often acrimonious discussions on this thread, and MUSTRAD, and, it appears other fora, believe that deciding what is and is not a 'folk song' is a simple matter. And, and this is my interest, which you don't have to share, my interest is in how these different ideas and views inform/shape/bias what people have had to say about Pardon. I got thinking about it because the stuff I found about him was far from 'simple'; it was, as I say, often contradictory and the answer to the contradictions often seems to be that they reflect the differing ideologies and perspectives of the people whose comments I was reading. Sometimes, as in the case of Mike Yates (whose work I speak well of in my opening piece) the theoretical approach is discussed and open. Often, and I think this is a rather typical old left strategy the ideology is kept behind, under wraps.

Did anybody ever say to Pardon, I've been a card carrying communist and I am really happy because you support my view that folk music represents the superstructure in my class based dialectical view of history? I should be surprised to hear it if they did.