What Seamus described is the way it was in Chicago forty years ago. An all accepting gathering of disparate musicians from multiple musical preferences and proclivities. There was no competition to speak of. For a while, anyway, there was pride in the fact that competition was looked down upon. We loved each others music, and the beat went on.

We musicians and the audiences dyed our hair gray, and, as Phil Cooper mentioned, we went to bed at a more reasonable hour. We aged---and then we began slowly shuffling off this mortal coil. It's progressively, more and more fascinating to me that I now know more dead people than live ones. (As Mark Graham said in his song, "Who'd a thunk it!?")

This is where the audiences have gone!!

Art Thieme