Just been catching up on some good posts here; I haven't time to write much now, and I'll be out dancing all day tomrrow (Abram). So I'll pick up on a few points on Sunday. However, I'll just respond on Bryan's last comment: Lowden was responding to a question I posed a couple of posts back. There are quite a few clubs whose guest list is simply a rotation of the same 15 or so names - not necessarily all top names, but all established artists. I've heard the comment from people connected with some of these clubs, that "you don't need to know who's on - you just need to know the dates". Not just clubs either; the festival scene has been bedevilled by the same phenomenon for a long time. A lady punter I was talking to at Chester folk festival around 1980 made the comment: "we get fed up seeing the same half dozen big names all the time". When the punters get bored with it, the are likely to vote with their feet.
John Kelly.