I like old blues and stuff with cool voices and sick guitar-playing but Seeger, Guthrie as well as Dylan, Baez and that whole strand is not my thing at all and outside of Neil Young and a few others, I don't like rock that follows that template either. Of course, I LOVE¤ the Byrds and their followers but it's a different thing I think even if they had strong folk-roots. It's the same reason I can never truly get into most country(bluegrass is obviously different); it's too much emphasis on lyrics and top-line melody for my tastes; the "backing" is not very happening to my ears.

I feel the same way about swedish folk:the Bellman tradition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Michael_Bellman) of balladeers who sit down and strum a lute and sing stories bores the shit out of me while I really dig the chord-progressions, melodies etc. in the instrumental stuff made for long walks, funerals, dances etc. even if I must confess that I prefer them in a jazz- or rock-context.


BTW, the thing about relating, I can not "relate" to at all; I grew up on metal that had practically nothing to do with the outside world-it was totally insular music that really said nothing to people about their lives (actually, that's a common critique against metal of the "true" variety:"It says nothing to me about my life") and I REALLY dig that approach to music; to create its own universe which you HAVE to enter on its own terms. Cecil Taylor and Miles Davis classic 60's quintet are other favourites that to my ears made music according to those principles and that's like the best music ever.

Anyway, that aspect of AFKAP's post is truly alien to my sensibilities but I agree about the lack of "sexiness" (or edge or whatever)-it's just not a very appealing subculture...