"These are the best of times, these are the worst of times." Dickens did have a way with words! When I was young I often felt I was living in the wrong century...wanted to be on the land here in California before the mark of man had even begun to destroy the natural beauty. Then I went to live on a rural farm with no 20th c. amenities, and began to understand the downside of 19th c. living. Now in my 60's I look back with real nostalgia, not just on the 50's folk music/beatnik scene, but also back to the music, the innocence, even the shape of cars from the 30's-40's. I remember being a young female in Los Angeles at a time when I could frequent jazz clubs in Hollywood alone without fear...now I don't even like to DRIVE through LA. But though my heart may yearn for those times, my head knows that during much of that time black members of those great bands couldn't stay at the same hotels as the rest of the guys (and female musicians were relegated to the position of "songbird"), agricultural workers had little or no power to demand a working wage, prosperity in the US was the outcome of a terrible war, women's rights, for equal opportunity both financially and culturally, were in their infancy...and on and on.

From my prospective, there was a golden age of popular, then folk music. But independent distribution, via the Web, for instance, is now providing a new world of opportunity for musicians and writers. And I defy anyone to listen to the Mudcat CD's and not think this is a pretty good time to be alive, with ears (flood Dick!).