Chris Timson

Couldn't you take both and then tell us which works better? Chris

There's a superb book called Carols of the Westcountry (out of print but still available from a few places, try searching Amazon) that we took a couple of carols from for the Bradford on Avon sings. There are also a couple of carols from Wiltshire that we found. It was important to us that we should have some local songs and it proved easier to achieve than we expected. Chris

Stephen, you should have popped round and said hallo! It takes me all of 20 minutes to drive to Corsham, and now the snow's gone ... Chris

Havwn't sen this yet but that puts me right off. This stuff isn't meant to be sung this way. It was one that we sung last Sunday - that's how it's supposed to sound! Chris

Don't worry. My downfall was complete and irretrievable years ago! Chris Edit to add: I see the starting price for the Dipper is now 5000 pounds. I've played on a couple of Dipper bass anglos over the years (and of course I own a Dipper baritone) and I can't think of praise high enough for these wonder machines. But £5000 and up is too much for me. It'll have to go to someone with seriously deep pockets. I only hope they'll play it. At that price you'd start to worry about whether to take it to the local session. Ho hum.

Have to say, I lust after that Dipper ... Chris

IMHO any instrument that can have more than one note played at once should have more than one note played at once at least occasionally. After all, if fiddlers can do it so can we. All the concertina systems lend themselves to chords, anglo and duet possibly slightly more easily than English because of the left-right split, but chords on an English is still pretty straightforward as plenty of players can demonstrate. In other words - go for it! Chris

We had our own village carols do in a Bradford on Avon pub on Sunday and an absolute gas it was too, including a dozen local musicians with a couple of concertinas among them. Authentically crowded, we sang some of the Sheffield carols but also some from our own area we'd researched. A particularly nice touch was when a regular in the Sheffield sings who (unbeknownst to us) was visiting the area, offerred to lead Stannington and sang it beautifully. It felt a bit like passing on the torch We're doing it all over again this coming Sunday. Anyone interested look here! Chris

Closer to 20% with this auction house, plus they charge the seller as well as the buyer. Rather puts ebay fees in perspective. Chris

Sadly I didn't get there due to the first dollop of snow arriving in these parts just at the wrong time. Well, your theory ought to work but doesn't because the current going price of top concertinas is always more than you think it is, C/G anglos in particular being heavily marked up due to the silly prices people in Ireland were willing to pay (that may be changing now, of course). It'll be interesting to look in on the Gardiner Houlgate site in a month or so when they put the final prices up. Chris

I've just added the site to the Concertina FAQ, hope that's OK. The site looks to have a lot of potential. Cheers, Chris

Hmmm. The auction room is only 10 minutes drive from my office. I might pop in during my lunch hour on Thursday when they're on display and have a shufty. I've been to auctions at Gardner Houlgate before when decent concertinas have been up for sale. The auction almost always become a duel between Chris Algar (bidding on the phone) and his Irish bête noire (bidding via the auctioneer as proxy). Chris

Buy it anyway and then sell it again once you get back from your time away. You won't lose much and might even gain financially, and you're much less likely to be disappointed with this than a cheaper one. It's a pity Wim Wakker has so far resisted all suggestions for selling a G/D Rochelle. Chris

Right-oh. I'll take it out of the FAQ. To anyone who's not heard it - you missed a great CD. Cheers, Chris

Indeed so. Excellent! Chris

Has anyone else noticed that when composing a message you have all the usual tools that generate BB code (for bold and quotes and that sort of thing) but when you receive a message none of the BB code is interpreted, it just sits there being displayed in its square brackets. This makes the message more difficult to read rather than less. Bug? Or a configuration setting I've missed? Chris

And I wouldn't be one of them ... Chris

Never had the pleasure of meeting him, though I knew his playing from the bands he played in. Back in the '70s there was a folk scandal sheet published in London under the name Scandabroad by (if memory serves me correctly) Sheila Miller. People's names were lightly disguised in a hopefully funny way (so for instance I was Hiss Timid - I did say hopefully). Your dad seemed to crop up a lot under the name Mel O'Deon ... Chris

I find it useful when looking at strange anglos in auction houses. Best bit is it's free and doesn't even come covered in ads. Works fine on my Dell Streak. Chris

Gosh! Saying "You're welcome" seems inadequate. I can say I feel well rewarded for doing the FAQ in terms of the friendships I've made and even some doors it has opened for us (I would imagine Paul feels similarly about this site). I guess I'll just fall back on the traditional British all-purpose word and say: Cheers

Not surprised. However he will always be Air-vin to me and Anne Chris

Someone sent me the following pm and I thought others might be interested so I'm replying here:- What happens is that the British Library invites suggestions for sites, reviews them and if they consider them appropriate issue an invitation to the site owner to allow them to archive the site. c.net would not receive an invitation because it is Canadian. I had to sign a licence guaranteeing that there are no copyright issues with my site (which there aren't, apart from credited quotes which are governed by fair usage provisions everything there is mine). The British Library won't go beyond the confines of the concertina.info domain. The reason I'm really chuffed about this, apart from being recognised as a British site of documentary merit (along with thousands of other sites, so I'm not getting too carried away ) it means that whatever happens to me and my site in future it will continue to exist and be accessible and properly curated within the British Library's archive for generations to come. Cheers, Chris PS there's a printed copy of the origninal email version of the FAQ in the Library of Congress Folk Life Center too! PPS perhaps someone should suggest the ICA site. If the British Library think it appropriate they would issue an invitation and it would then be for the ICA to consider the matter of copyright material on their site.

Ah, it's been far too long since I last heard Erwin's wonderful laugh. For those of you who haven't met him, he's just like that in person. One of my favourite people. Thanks Jim, many thanks. Chris

Yesterday I got an email which started Well, I've completed the requisite licence form. I'm a bit chuffed about this, as you might imagine. Chris

Um ... no, I don't think so ...