Thanks Howard,

Not sure why you are finding stuff so 'extraordinary' when up to the point when you get theoretical (which I think you do) I agree. We are looking back to the early days of recording, turn century. So nothing extraordinary there.

The discussion I referred to interested me because some people found the singing very high, and this did not fit what they expected to hear and some started to find reasons why the recording did not fit what they thought that the facts should be.

The piece by Matthew Ord helps us to see that a tape recorder is not quite the 'pure' record of what was there one might assume, any more than 'the camera never lies'. This was one of the interesting parts of the package. Indeed, one thing MacColl did in the radio shows was apply techniques from film to sound recordings, a sort of montage technique. Yet it gives a sense of being 'real life', the nitty gritty..... I do think he was a clever person and very good at using modern technologies. Maybe today he would be a film maker?

For me the questions about what you put as I understand it might include:

1 What makes people label those whose singing was recorded at the turn of the 20th century 'traditional' instead of just people whose singing was recorded?

2 How when we listen to a recording made of an elderly person at the turn of the 20th century might we somehow be back in the early 19th, for this is how I have read your comment? (please correct me if this is not the way you intended it to be read)

Regarding 2, it seems to me that the backward jump in time is an inference. It would be an inference to say that a singing style recorded at the later time enabled us to peer back into earlier singing styles. This is perhaps a good example of the sort of problem indicated in the heading to my original piece, it's about fact, inference, theory, ideology.

I could say it was 'extraordinary' that people made leaps like this, but it seems to be the way it sometimes goes...

Tonight I had fried egg, brown bread and butter, vinegar and an orange afterwards. Then a banana and some tinned custard. Love to say there are no flies on me but maybe this would be a step too far (swats the air).

Thanks to everybody for the discussion.