The Pogues. But the Sex Pistols too, not only did a thrashing kind of folk music but also performed some baudy songs like Friggin' in the Riggin'.

I think I should revise one of my statements. I said that folk never dies, that it waxes and wanes. Now I'm inclined to think that folk is always on the move yet we don't recognize folk when it's happening because so much of it first enters as pop music.

The Lomaxes not only introduced cowboy songs and blues (both anathema to the purists in the 20's and 30's) but Alan Lomax named Louis Armstrong as a folksinger in his classic Folk Songs of North America. That statement put a frown on my face when I read the book in the year 2000, some 60 years after the publication. Less so now.

There is always this resistence to folk, mostly from the folkies themselves. Has any visitor to this forum introduced the idea of reggae, rap and punk to be considered as folk music? I think all of this music was made with a folk sensibility.