A few years ago I was acting as talent scout for an American company looking for British talent. Everything I found them they rejected, either because they were not different enough from American music, or because they were too British. Lindisfarne, I should imagine, have much the same problem internationally. As an old folkie and one of Geordie lineage to boot, I suppose it�s natural that it�s the Lindisfarne of Fog On The Tyne that I long for, but though in that period they had a brief American success, in general it seems to have been decided that cosmopolitan audiences are not ready for songs full of references to Byker and Jesmond Dene.

Perhaps the contrary evidence of Alan Price is because thick DJs have never stopped to think what �Jarrow Song� is actually about. So this latest Lindisfarne album has been widely praised as marking their development from a band of purely local interest to something that could have an international impact. Though pleasing enough soft rock, to me it seems to have lost all the individuality it once had without having acquired any compensating universality in exchange.