> From: Lord Batman's Kitchener - PM

> Jack Campin is one of those people who simply has to have everything labelled, see,
> he get's confused otherwise.

I don't get confused, I get my time wasted.

I go to sessions to play (many instruments) or occasionally sing. I can adapt to a number of different styles, from Scottish and English instrumental and vocal trad to blues, bluegrass, classical Arabic, British music hall and French musette, but have zero interest in spending an evening playing nothing but Denver, Dylan and Prine. (I've been hearing that stuff for forty years and if it was ever going to do anything at all for me it would have done by now. I just want it out of my way). I have recently ended up in a pub for an evening with people whose interests and knowledge were that narrow. I got bored with their stuff very fast and they couldn't even accompany Soldier's Joy, let alone the range of trad tunes I'd have liked to do. Nothing in the email announcement suggested it'd be like that. Since the place was an hour's travel away in a one-pub village, I couldn't just walk round the corner and find something else, and since it went on with the same stuff all evening I couldn't just go for a pee and come back when they'd switched to something different. That was an evening out of my life I won't get back.

I have by now worked out case-by-case which sessions feature the range of stuff I like - the Hole in the Wall in Linlithgow is great, no session in Midlothian seems to be worth me bothering with any more - but a label would help. I would be happy with "roots" to describe the range of stuff I like playing, and I think the singer-songwriter crowd would generally be happy with "acoustic" for the narrowly exclusive events I'm trying to avoid. (Except presumably for people like you who think you can only get an audience by false advertising).