So, you have a computer, a modem and a Web browser kindly provided by your Internet Service Provider, but most of the links provided by said ISP are to do with arranging life insurance or parting with your money in some other way. How do you find some folk-related – and southern rather than New England-based – sites?
One way is to visit a search engine – no resemblance at all to a day trip on the Bluebell Railway – such as Lycos or Yahoo. They are included in Microsoft's one-stop search site which allows you to use the best engines from one page. You will be presented with a variety of sites referring to the keyword you enter, such as 'folk', 'concertina' or 'incredible'.
Another way is to regularly patrol the folk newsgroups, where subscribers are often keen to have you visit their sites. More about newsgroups next issue, but a brief message on rec.music.folk and uk.music.folk to seek material for this column evoked more replies than I had time to cover, with only a few of them being totally irrelevant.
The responses I had can be broken down into three categories – enthusiasts, musicians and companies – and, with the addition of magazines such as Folk Roots, Living Tradition and Dirty Linen and their on-line versions, this is probably true of most of the material you will come across.
I will give pride of place to the enthusiasts, in which I include folk clubs and organisers of folk club listings.
Steve Upstone's Bucks session guide is – surprise, surprise – a guide to sessions in Bucks and the south Midlands, but stretches as far afield as a couple of clubs in Hampshire, and includes addresses, contact names and reliability ratings.
David Harley's site is actually devoted to Web security and viruses, but he includes the listings pages from Folk London and the Tykes News gig guide, which gives details of live folk in Yorkshire.
Peter Burnham publishes a simple but useful quarterly Leicestershire folk guide. There has been some discussion recently in the newsgroups as to whether publishing these listings on the Web will be the downfall of the little magazines. While it's right not to be complacent, it is invariably only the listings pages that are distributed freely, and electronic publishing doesn't seem to be doing Emap any harm.
Malc Gurnham is both enthusiast and musician so my categories go straight out the window. As song organiser of the Bedworth Folk Day, his site FolkFax is partly given over to its promotion – so I now know what I'll be doing on November 30. Malc's site also has pages devoted to his ceilidh band Glorishears.
Trevor Gilson runs a site devoted to the New Fo'c's'le music club, with listings, links and details of club policy – under-16s free, what a brilliant idea. No matter how daft all this superhighway nonsense sounds, if the club's anticipated move to the Pub in the Park goes ahead in October, the Net will be the quickest way of spreading the word. Printing takes time, and network television doesn't have much time for folk music.
Bands as diverse – or perhaps that should be as similar – as the Windy Mills Ceilidh Band and the Battlefield Band have sites in which they tout their wares. Both have sound files and pictures you can download as well as info about the bands.
Many record companies now have well-established sites on the web. Colin Jones at Rhiannon has details of the artists on his books such as Barry Dransfield, Martin Simpson and Steáfán Hannigan's Sin É, as well as some very useful links. The same goes for Gordon Jones' site for Harbourtown, which also has an on-line only offer on a brilliant Harbourtown sampler.
But one of the great pleasures of surfing the Internet is coming across something which is there not to promote or sell anything, but just to share information. Frequently answered questions such as 'What's open-D tuning?' and 'Whatever happened to Clive Palmer?' have a life of their own on the Net. They are rounded up and put into FAQs such as Chris Timson's excellent Concertina FAQ which has includes a history of the instrument, tips on buying, miking and repairing, and pointers to clubs and organisations.
There are quite a few sites around with collections of songs, tunes or even guitar tunings. Richard Robinson's tunebook is a compilation of the tunes Richard has collected mainly from north England and the odd trip to Scandinavia. It is well worth a look.
The weirdest site I came across researching for this article belongs to Esbat Music, who have put "the Paganism back into Folk music ... and Folk music back into Paganism". That's what they reckon, anyway, and if the site's anything to go by, I can't wait to hear their music.
One of the least weird messages I received was from Gordon Tyrrall, offering his e-mail address if anyone wanted to get in touch with him. It's gordon@brigo.demon.co.uk.
As I've already mentioned, I had quite a few suggestions for sites to visit which I didn't have time or room for here. One of the problems is that most sites have a file of links to other sites which are usually irresistible and before you know it it's 3 o'clock in the morning, your neck aches, your tea's cold and you haven't walked the dog yet.
Still – as Big Chief I-Spy used to say – odhu/ntinggo.
Here again are links to the sites I visited. Feel free to copy and paste this bit into your favourites file. If you find any broken links, please e-mail me and I'll delete or update them as appropriate. Surf's up!