I was nineteen when I came to town
They called it the Summer of Love
They were burning babies, burning flags
The hawks against the doves
I took a job in the steamie
Down on Cauldrum Street
And I fell in love with a laundry girl
Who was working next to me

{Refrain}
Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child, oh she was running wild
She said "As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay
And you wouldn't want me any other way

Brown hair zig-zag around her face
And a look of half-surprise
Like a fox caught in the headlights
There was animal in her eyes
She said "Young man, oh can't you see
I'm not the factory kind
If you don't take me out of here
I'll surely lose my mind"

{Refrain}
...So fine that I might crush her where she lay...

We busked around the market towns
And picked fruit down in Kent
And we could tinker lamps and pots and knives
Wherever we went
And I said that we might settle down
Get a few acres dug
Fire burning in the hearth
And babies on the rug

She said "Oh man, you foolish man
It surely sounds like hell.
You might be lord of half the world
You'll not own me as well"

{Refrain}
...So fine a breath of wind might blow her away...

We was camping down the Gower one time
The work was pretty good
She thought we shouldn't wait for the frost
And I thought maybe we should
We was drinking more in those days
And tempers reached a pitch
And like a fool I let her run
With the rambling itch

Oh the last I heard she's sleeping rough
Back on the Derby beat
White Horse in her hip pocket
And a wolfhound at her feet
And they say she even married once
A man named Romany Brown
But even a gypsy caravan
Was too much settling down

And they say her flower is faded now
Hard weather and hard booze
But maybe that's just the price you pay
For the chains you refuse

{As Refrain}
Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing
And I miss her more than ever words could say
If I could just taste all of her wildness now
If I could hold her in my arms today
Well I wouldn't want her any other way

http://open.spotify.com/track/5ODBRyzUOy9CwBtttbjTP8

was set in? I mean it mentions the 'summer of love' but then 'burning babies'....

Anyway, it's possibly the best song ever, or at least the most beautiful.

that the 'burning babies' was a reference to Vietnam. This song is so touching and beautiful that it never fails to make my heart ache in a mournful yet wonderful manner. Check 'The Time Has Come' album by Anne Briggs as well. Sublime. She and Sandy Denny would duet at Les Cousins. What I would give to to have witnessed that.

edit - got accidentally distracted and missed Sheev's Vietnam ref. above.

She is beautiful and what a lovely voice. There's an excellent feature on her in an old Mojo where the journo went to see her in the Scottish islands and spent the day interviewing her, her kids, dog etc, then stayed the night as it was too difficult to get back, and late at night with a whisky by the fire she asked him if he'd like her to sing something.....she sang half of "The recruited collier" or somesuch and he passed seamlessly and joyously into hog heaven - before she forgot the words and stopped!

I love this one

Feeble claim to fame pitch - I discussed how fab a mashup of Anne Briggs with some chillout would be with Rob Fitzpatrick briefly at Cornbury last but one...

For more info on Anne Briggs, I can recommend:
Irish Folk, Trad & Blues: A Secret History by Colin Harper & Trevor Hodgett

She hooked up with Johnny Moynihan of the legendary Sweeney's Men, who was a kindred spirit.
They spend a summer of love not sure what year in the late 60's wandering and gigging around Ireland.

Sweeney's men are a legend, who included at various stages:

Andy Irwin - who went on to found Planxty.
Terry Woods - who founded Steeleye Span and afterwards a member of the Pogues.
Henry McCullough who performed at Woodstock with Joe Cockers Grease Band.
And the aforesaid Johnny Moynihan who had brief stints with Planxty and De Dannan and rumour has it gigs occasionally round Dublin.

As I said Johnny and Anne were kindred free spirits.

Forgive the self-linking, but any interested Wordsters can read my 2007 interview with Anne Briggs, which includes contributions from Richard Thompson (talking about Beeswing) and 'Laughing' Bert Jansch, on my blog at the link below.

http://ishotamaninrenobook.blogspot.com/2009/10/anne-briggs-at-65.html

...who wrote the Mojo thing (and the Irish book someone referred to above, and a biography of another musician which Anne contributed to, and three AB CD notes...) - and I still am, though I can't listen to folk music these days. But I admire Anne enormously: she cares not a jot for publicity or success in the way that almost every musician desires and yet she will, and probably literally, outlive the music industry. I threw out my near complete collection of Mojos recently - having contributed to most issues during its first 10 years. Destroying your past life can be cleansing. But I kept the Anne Briggs one.

That line gets me every time. As a Swansea man, the Gower Peninsular is literally on my doorstep and it is somewhere me and my friends would spend camping down in my youth. Brings back fond, fond memories for old friends and lost lovers. I was actually "down the Gower" in Langland last Sunday, drinking Guiness and looking at a deserted beach where dog owners were enjoying the beach to themselves. Lovely part of the country and lovely song.

very fine book about ""Laughing" Bert" Jansch (thanks for that Graeme T!) really is worth hunting down for a terrific overview of that whole scene which gave us Anne (and some other fine artists still out there, Archie Fisher being just one).

Colin - I'm sorry you can no longer listen to the music, and I suspect I know why - but I would like to thank you for writing so eloquently about it for so long and being a champion for some artists who possibly failed to appreciate you enough.

I for one certainly do.

...Thomson!

Is the clip (which I first found linked in a Word email, as I recall) the only video footage of Anne Briggs?

... that the music which stands the test of time will almost always be that which was produced mainly for reasons other than the desire to make a few bob. It comes (to coin a phrase) from a 'deeper well'. There are some people (e.g. Richard Thompson) who are commercially successful but always manage to reveal a small part of their soul when writing a song. There are others (e.g. Garth Brooks) who seem to pen songs with the sound of cash registers ringing in their ears. I could, of course, be totally mistaken.

...he said, slightly embarrassed by Indian Summer of minor notoriety, but touched nonetheless!

I suppose I ought to update that website you mentioned Sheev - my pal, Uncle Spike, designs such things and mine was a sort of demonstration model for what he does. I don't think I've updated it for a couple of years. Not that I've done much worth noting there in that time, mind. Apart from involvement in a couple of Quintessence live albums out this month (which I thoroughly recommend, of course!).

but I forgot to mention - Graeme's idea on writing a book on Anne: yes, there is undoubtedly a book there, potentially a quite profound one. And there are one or two episodes that have never been published before, which add significantly to the intrigue/the myth (if Anne were to allow them in). But I made the mistake of appending my Mojo piece in 1997 with a line about my hope of writing such a book... which resulted in Anne never speaking to me again. Which I very much regret (though I was aware of something similar happening to a previous chronicler). I can only assume that there is a point a little way below the surface which, for the sake of her family or just her privacy in general, she doesn't wish to go. And we must respect that.

When it comes to the music, though, I think she has an admirable old fashioned notion of every so often doing her bit for those who wish to keep it on catalogue, even though she has no interest personally in the publicity. She did the Mojo interview with me in '97 purely as a gesture of support for David Suff at Fledgling Records, who had - somehow, amazingly - persuaded her to let him release for the first time her unreleased third album 'Sing A Song For You' (recorded with full electric band in 1973 for her manager Jo Lustig, ostensibly for release by license on Columbia... until she said no and disappeared from sight at that point). Nevertheless I'm aware that she turned down several interview requests from broadsheet newspapers at that time.

Then, two or three years ago Sony/Columbia contacted me to try and get an address for her - they had a few decades worth of unpaid royalties to try and get to her (which hopefully has now been sorted out) - and out of that her 1971 Columbia LP 'The Time Has Come' was re-reissued (also remastered) on CD, having previously appeared on CD a few years earlier and already selling second hand for ridiculous sums. On that occasion - the period when Graeme would have done his interview with her - she made herself available for a while for PR as a gesture to Sony (although as I recall most of her interviews seemed to take the line that as far as she could recall the LP wasn't up to much! In her opinion, of course...)

Truly, a one-off.

I am also a great admirer of Beeswing and believe that RT really excels at the 'story' song when you consider other examples such as 1952 Vincent black lightning, Al Bowllys in heaven and Galway to Graceland. The lyrics confirm his status as one of our better songwriters - literate and economical. Strange thing is I recall when Mirror Blue was released that it was reviewed by Clive Gregson for Mojo and I remember that he was critical of this version of the song. He apparently said it didnt match the electricity of the live version and that RT had recorded a perfunctory version of the song. Would be interesting to know if he still holds that opinion but given his position as a live backing member of the RT band he is in a better position to judge than most.

as THE jounalist for folk in Britain for 30 or more years, you're copping out at just the time when folk, real folk, is at its highest ebb since, what, the mid-60s. Your compendious knowledge will be sadly missed but let's respect your decision not to involve yourself with this any more. Too bad though..

...I'm not a big RT fan as such (I don't, for instance, own any of his records) but those story songs you mentioned are incredible pieces of work, and his ability to hold a vast room - like Belfast's Wat3erfront Hall - with those songs and just his acoustic guitar and 'idiosyncratic' voice is a rare gift. Funnily enough, the only other guitar/vocal solo performer I've ever seen do the same thing (with the possible exception of Kelly Joe Phelps, who's a whole story in himself) - ie. electrify a room with the sheer command of his art and in-the-moment brinkmanship of his performance - is Paul Brady. I saw him do solo guest spots at other people's shows on two occasions and each time he was incredible. And the thing is, I can't stand his music - definitely not on record, and I'd have no interest in going to see him (or indeed RT) with a band. Whatever it is they have, it would just be diluted...

is the most atrocius, badly researched ego-centric pillock that I have ever read. His writing, for me, is monstrous in the extreme, in terms of lack of objectivity, and abhorent in his perpetual self regarding abject point scoring vanity... He's utterly incapable of delivering a cogent, inspired commentary without slipping into a bitter personalised rant. I cannot begin to comment on his dreadfull outpourings. Pick up your guitar, Mr. Heylin, but before you do, get you facts right.( am I allowed to call him an asshole ? )

Might as well try and be completist now we're 60-odd posts in:

'Tidewave' on Robin Dransfield's 1980 LP of that name (recently reissued/expanded - with a live version of the same track - as 'A Lighter touch')

'Living By The Water' on Stan Ellison & Lea Nicholson's 1973 LP'God Bless The Unemployed (not available on CD)

Go Your Way My Love on Tikkawinda's sole early 70s LP (Clive Gregson's first band, I believe) - on CD

Railroad Bill as a B side on a Janet Holmes CD single (in rockabilly style, arranged by, er, me) a few years ago

Railroad Bill by Gillian Welch, after the AB version, I believe - though I haven't heard this one

Finbar Furey's son and daughter did a version of, I think, Living By The Water too on CD a few years back.

Any others out there I should know about?

Maybe I should try and get 'An Anne Briggs Miscellany' together as a commercial CD project after all. It'd be hell to license in normal circs, but maybe Sony, Universal, EMI et all will be generous in these whimpering end times of the record industry...

...an email is making its way to Gillian Welch's management and a phone message to Hux Records all-round-good-guy Brian O'Reilly is awaiting reply. (If Brian isn't up for it, then neither am. The karma has to right in these things...)

Just in case there's any lingering confusion I am neither Colin Irwin nor Clifford Harper (nor, indeed, am I Clifford Irwin or Irwin Clifford).

... and I'm always impressed when someone can manage to type using all those arcane squiggles and suchlike. I mean, I've no idea where you'd even find them on a keyboard, let alone know any Sanskrit (or Ogham or Linear B or whatever else) to use them with! Clearly, I type (rudimentarily) amidst a company of giants!

Indeed!

The inestimable Brian O'Reilly at Hux is enthused by the idea of an AB covers collection and is approaching Universal as we speak. If the material they own (see list above) can be secured, it's the backbone of a potentially terrific CD.

Please, do keep suggesting artists we might approach for commissioned covers.

Thanks for all the discussion and enthusiasm so far!

If, as I fervently hope, this project comes to fruition I shall look back on this thread with a warm glow.

...and when it DOES come off you can all lobby enthusiastically for the team at Word to review it and let that tiny part of the world that might like such an artefact know it exists. I don't think anything I've been involved with has ever been reviewed in Word, the only magazine I subscribe to/read at all these days - except maybe a box set by a shower of b*****ds I once knew and hope only to forget - so it would be nice to trump that mild sense of disappointment. (That said, I completely respect the Wordies' right to choose not to review Vince Crane, Robin Dransfield, Quintessence, whoever else. Their magazine, their mix of ingredients, their generosity/enlightened-self-interest that allows us to enjoy this forum.) When it exists it will exist only as a result of this thread.

Colin, more power to your arm with this excellent idea of an "Annie Briggs Tribute Album". I sort of heard of Anne in the Sixties (probably in the local paper and because of her work with Centre 42, but had no idea that she lived up the road from me in Toton! WHY didn't I go and see her in the News House etc in Nottingham?

I'm very sorry that "Dazzling Stranger" has caused you so much grief. I thought it was a splendid book and an important one (and I bought it!) Must have reread it about 4 times so far. I loved the parts about dodgy Edinburgh dives and people. Talking of dodgy Edinburgh people, I came across Roy Guest around 1973 in one of his later incarnations (the N. London Howff - this was where he managed to get Sandy Denny to do her best gig ever, for the benefit of junior readers).

Really nice to find this thread and congratulate you - nil carborundum eh!

...only some of the people in it!

If anyone else is interested, we're at the stage of talking to Gillian Welch's people and seeing if the Universal owned tracks are viably licenseable. It would be the easiest thing in the world to pull a great 'mix tape' together on the above theme, in which neither Lily Allen nor Anne Briggs get any revenues, but it will really come down to a question of licensing fees vis a vis no doubt modest sales for a legitimately licensed and manufactured product. Not impossible - hopefully...

...for the Unthanks tip... and thank you Vulp for the ringing endorsement. After more than a year of doing virtually nothing with music - with the exception of the Quintessence CDs referred to ad infintum elsewhere - I seem to be coming out of hibernation with a number of people wanting me to be involved in various ways with CD projects: Brian Houston (Belfast Americana troubadour), Ralph McTell (vintage BBC material), the Mad Actsmen (zany Christian comedy) and Jude Shiels (son of Irish prog-rock legend Brush, of Skid Row). And then there's all this ghost of folkieness past stuff on this thread.

Somebody up there seems to be suggesting I just accept my lot in life as someone who potters about with not-very-commercial music. There's no money in it, but money doesn't seem that important any more. As long as you have enough to live. I found myself writing a 3000 word note to Jude's (fabulous, Chet Baker-esque) debut album this afternoon, when recent tradition would have suggested I should be out for a cycle or drinking coffee and bemoaning the state of the world with a stream of puns round at Uncle Spike's.

So... thanks everyone. You're very kind! :-)

Colin - nice to hear of the progress made. Please do keep us posted here - we're rooting (good word in the context) for you - and this project to happen.

Like VV - I am reading Dazzling Stranger - though a little less advanced - just finished on the early days (Anne B has already made a fleeting appearance) and am enjoying it enormously.

Not wishing to blow smoke up your fundament Col! - it's very elegantly written with warmth, insight and wry humour. Such a different world to that of now - and one that you illuminate wonderfully well.

I guess we are all strangers to each other on this thread - in the sense that we are not acquainted on the personal level - but I sense a true community of spirit.

We've become friends rather than strangers. I can't think of another site that would have made this possible.

Quite dazzling really.

And, in fact, I really hope the AB project happens as much to give a hearty thumbs up to the kind hearted contributors to this forum as anything else (though musically, having heard most of the known covers, I KNOW it will hang together really well and be justified on merit; the only practical question is can it be justified on licensing costs and, if not, will a scaled down version of the full wish-list be acceptable...).

Meantime, it's a case of getting some notes together for a forthcoming first time on CD expanded reissue of Phil 'Shiva' Jones' even more obscure post-Quintessence band Kala's sole LP, and cheerleading my old pal Brian 'the Belfast Elvis' Houston into making the power trio album we all knew he could, before he goes off to Chicago for a year. So much for the self-imposed retirement from this sort of thing!

Here's what I thought of it, as I related to Twangothan elsewhere:

I finished the Jansch one last Sunday, and I have to say it's probably the best music book I've read for a long long time. Authoritative without leaving the impression that the author is trying to make a point - he's just done the bloody research in depth and knows what he's talking about. Utterly superb. I read the whole thing with one finger stuffed in the notes section so that I could read every footnote as I came across it in the text - the book could have been twice as big if every footnote had been expanded upon. I know Colin had to cut corners to avoid going into lifelong debt with Bloomsbury, but he did a fantastic job keeping as much of the stuff in as he did. I was hugely impressed and long to read more books of the same depth and the with the same objective degree of perspective.

I strongly urge you to buy and read this book if you have any interest in this thread; it is superb.

...you know, it's hard to say this kind of thing on a public forum, but - as my long-suffering Word-ette pal Carol From Luton knows only too well (and many other friends closer to home with no connection to the Word/the Massive/ et al) - I think it's letting enough light in on the subject to say that I'm only in recent weeks emerging from a rather low period that's spanned most of the past 18 months (albeit leavened by the odd burst of Word blogging). And among several key factors that have very genuinely helped to shift a low mindset to a much brighter one is knowing that people on here have said such nice things about something I did during what seems like a previous life. even if it's not that distant, really (10 years). It's easy to say hateful things - God knows, there's enough people who make a living doing little else - but it's not always so easy to be kind, I think. So thank you Vulpes, thank you Twang, thank you one and all [getting very close to Tiny Tim at the end of A Christmas Carol here!]

No more latest news on the Anne Briggs covers project yet, but another pet project in a similar vein which I can - touch wood, hopefully not tempting fate - mention here as very, very likely in the new year: a fine concert recording of Davy Graham live in Kent 1973, during his 'wilderness period', which I inherited among many other similar items from the erstwhile organiser of that club, which will hopefully appear with the blessing of Davy's family along with the full content of the 1963 'Bob Monkhouse acetate' (5 tracks of prime DG funded by Bob, an early admirer of DG, with the intent of getting Davy a record contract - only one copy known to survive). Conveniently, I interviewed Bob about this before he died and before the acetate turned up again. I can sense another huge sleevenote coming on...

Never doubt the power of kindness :-)

Surely there's a largish Word piece to be written on DG, I know we had something a while back (if I remember correctly), but since then The Most Influential Acoustic Guitarist in British Folk (TM) has passed on leaving a number of fascinating HORAs in his wake. Sod the sleevenote, lets have a Word feature!

On the same topic, anyone else got the Afterhours recording from Hull Uni from the 60's? An astounding document of the man's diverse roots and technical abilities which seem to be muted on his more commercially available recordings. Thoroughly recommended for anyone interested in the rest of this thread.

Oh and Colin...try to get to bed a bit earlier you nightrake you!

...try to get to sleep a bit earlier! But my day job is generally 10.30-6.30, so it balances out. On the subject of Celtic rock (what Sweeney's Men point towards), I'm off to the Horslips reunion at an arena in Belfast. Not really my thing, arena shows, but I was very touched to be offered tickets a couple of days ago straight from the horse's mouth, as it were. My karma is changing - it really is!

as to a DG feature in Word, my days of chasing editors with ideas is over. Maybe Graeme Thomson might fancy it? I doubt if Mark or Heppo would - that's not a scathing comment, by the way, simply a recognition that 30 years of editorial instinct outweighs a bit of fan-ish enthusiasm from you or I. If the kids want Winehouse & Lily, so be it...

...where lots of folk with expiring Word subscriptions decide to resign rather than re-sign, after a Winehouse/smorgasbord cover too far?

Ah well, let's see if the issue that arrives in January restores faith, eh? I daresay if I was an editor of anything - God forbid, life's tough enough! - aspiring to be a popular publication I might wince at the idea of a Davy Graham feature, or a Quintessence one, or a Mahavishnu one, or an Anne Briggs one, or a Sweeney's Men one or... but then again if I was pumping out a magazine full of stuff I had no real interest in but thought others would, I'd probably be better off doing something else. So it's easy to criticise, or wish, I suppose, but it's still Heppo who has to put his hand in his pocket every month and push out something that walks the tightrope between 'labour of love' and 'commercially viable'. (I must say, though, that godawful as the current issue's cover is to me, I did find more than I expected of interest within the first 64 pages. But I wouldn't have looked twice at it were it on a newsagent's shelf...)

Graeme - I still think it's up to you to carry the mandate of the Massive (or this particular branch line of it) to the doorkeepers of the Word, if people really do want to see more vintage folky esoterica in there! I only once - at what I already knew inwardly was the very, very end of my time for writing even in a spare-time way for magazines - offered something to the Word. In fact, I actually wrote it - the first thing I ever, in 15 years, wrote without a commission - because the subject (the 50 year recorded sound copyright controversy) interested me. Jim Irvin very kindly gleaned a 2000 word version out of a 7000 word draft for me, but no luck. But I was glad I did it - to get the notion of ever writing again for magazines out of my system - and, while of course I'd rather it had appeared, I really don't mind that it didn't.

If I have to write anything at all - and I seem to be falling into that role again and feeling a bit revitalised about it (touch wood) - I'd rather write labour of love stuff, for which the CD sleevenote seems still to be the best medium. If it turns out to be 500 words or 10,000 words, one has the luxury (with an amenable record label ) to go with your own flow. The criteria and constrictions and possibilities are vastly different in doing, say, a Davy Graham CD note (in a CD which the interested punter has, of course, already bought, hence already has a rapt interest in the subject) or a Davy Graham magazine piece, where half the (tiny) space is spent trying to make him interesting to the casual browser.

They're just different things - and at this point in life I just prefer to, in my own small way, be someone who tries to write chunks of history on people who are fascinating but seem a bit neglected, for posterity as much as the immediate buyer of this or that CD in which a note will appear.

Put it like this (to highlight a recent example): there will NEVER be a magazine opportunity for anyone to pull an 18,000 word history of Quintessence together, but the twin vintage concert CDs that came out on Hux in October provided that rare opportunity. It was then or never, and I just decided - despite not being in the best of health - to give it a go, and I was glad I did. So hats off to Hux's Brian & Jo for taking a deep breath and okay-ing 36 page booklets!

I might be wrong but I think that's a kind of 'Word spirit' - even though the magazine itself needs, I guess, to major, in a hard commercial world, on Winehouse and Lily and various ephemerals (I STILL don't know who the McClure guy is that Robbo Fitz was so irked by - but I don't think I care to).

At risk of starting a row I think it's fair to say - without being perjorative about relative merits - that neither Winehouse nor Lily (nor McClure!) will ever have the influence on popular culture that, to continue this example, Davy Graham had - he single-handedly invented the steel-string solo guitar industry in Britain, he pretty much single-handedly invented 'world music' as a concept, he invented the tuning that gave the world 'Kashmir' and allowed a thousand Celtic guitarists to successfully adapt their instrument to Scots & Irish music... He was a beacon of light in a monochrome age - it doesn't matter that he never reaped the rewards, his influence within music has been incalculable. I just don't think - in this fast-cut, 24 hour, attention-span-deficit age - it is any longer possible for anyone to influence popular culture in such a way again. Davy Graham is part of history and died poor; Amy and Lily are part of 21st century celebrity culture different and will probably die wealthy. Such is life.

In a way, I think the printed magazine is probably becoming the 'acceptable and presentable daughter' of an eccentric old uncle (this forum) who lives in a rambling big house full of crazy old stuff behind the daughter's fashionably furnished rooms. Once you get used to seeing the daughter from time to time, you can begin to tolerate the mad uncle - but if you're the daughter you might be a bit scared that if new visitors met the cranky old buffer first they'd be scared off for good...

Now, if I had said all that in a pithy two liner I bet it would have appeared in Heppo's subscriber letter next month! But there is, as I was trying to say above, a great freedom in not needing to constantly think about "re-tooling" your text in case a goldfish might want to browse it.

Graeme: you're the man for this one! You've seen The Wild Bunch? Set your back to the wall and load up that Gatling gun. The modern publishing world has no place for the likes of us, but you can take a few broadsheet sub editors down before the b*****ds get you...

Bert's fabulous 'When The Circus Comes To Town' is playing, the first Old Speckled Hen has slipped down nicely, the stove is lit and warming the house and 'Gardener's World' followed by 'Have I Got News' hold promise for later this evening, somewhere around the middle of the bottle of Shiraz I picked up on the way home. Life is good.

May I wish you all a very pleasant weekend. Play some Bert.

...ditto, Vulpmeister. Me, I'm off to see a 'jazz odyssey' interpretation of Dickens' A Christmal Carol tonight at Bookshop Dave's place, No Alibis, in Belfast with the David Lyttle quartet and narration. It's crazy but it might just work... Or not.

increasingly sterile society where health and safety, political correctness, conformity and uniformity are the things that we are most proud of. It is for me a great privilege (and I am sure other Word types)to correspond with people of the intellect of you Colin. I do not say this in either a patronising or condescending way but you make some very interesting points and clearly understand through experience the constraints of what is and isnt of interest to the wider public. David H in an article in the current magazine alludes to the 'musical snobbery' of us record buyers. It is not musical snobbery on my part that, for example 'I cant understand why thousands of people in this country dont think Tom Russell is the most underrated songwriter on the planet. Or that Martin Stephenson isn't selling cd's in their thousands and eking out anything other than a meagre existence. These 2 examples highlight the difference between a muse and an ambition to be a star. In comparison Word Magazine started out with an impressive vibe - I am pretty sure it is damn near impossible to sustain that vibe without making any concessions. The alternative is to be a fanzine which I guess doesnt pay the mortgage. Personally I accept Word for what it is and for the marketplace in which it has to operate. Thankfully this site allows us individuals to be evangelical about our own personal passions and if we can through gentle persuasion recruit others to our passion then it is a bonus. It is what sets the magazine apart from rivals and the people that frequent this site are almost always of a kindred spirit.