I was there, in the mid to late seventies, when the Wurzels displaced the entire punk movement and thereby forced people to recognise Scrumpy and Western music as a genre to be respected. If you weren't there, you just don't know.
Joking aside, for the purposes of the topic that is very true. It's one of the reasons I want to see about the Northern Soul thing. I'd expect a variety of opinion based of each correspondent's point of view during the various styles that came and went.