Don, amen. I can't believe that any instrument was designed or evolved wih the purpose of being painful to listen to. In the right hands, even the gurdy can be worthwhile, and Liz, Mozart's clarinet quintet is a delight by way of what the instrumnent was actually designed for, but why for pity's sake can't folk realise that a) it's rather important to be able to play the thing you're sitting behind properly before inflicting it on others and b) no amount of enthusiasm can excuse rank bad manners.
If people would only get up to speed in the privacy of their own homes and amongst true and tolerant friends before going public, the world of folk music would be a better, more entertaining place. As for manners, a group of very talented young fiddlers made fools of themselves at a festival this summer by simply not knowing how to behave. The dilemma was that the grown ups were too polite to tell them...