There are, of course, several differences between a guest night at a folk club and a full-scale concert in, say, a theatre or arts centre or whatever. There are all sorts of administrative and organisational differences, quite apart from the scale.

However - the basic principle of customers paying in good faith for a musical performance by a paid guest or artist is the same. It is down to the organiser of the event to do their best to ensure that the people who have paid get a decent "do" for their cash. So - Faye was quite right to feel pissed off when she and her friends got a bad deal.

The issue at hand is not whether she ought to have put up with it because it was a folk club (which she shouldn't), but whether "Folk clubs are dying" because of this. The fact is that clubs such as these, which don't have good standards of performance, often don't die - they might, perversely, be thriving. There's a club 30 minutes away from me where - apart from nights when they have a paid guest - the standard of support from the members/residents/floorsingers is utter crap, but the club is packed to the gills every week. The reason for this is that the club is friendly, welcoming, a little community in itself, tolerant, uncritical, slightly smug. It's that factor that makes the folk club world different from any other milieu in which I've played. I don't know of many other milieus, apart from pub open mic events, in which novice performers can cut their teeth - though it's sad that some of them can't or won't improve. Let's be thankful that this kind of platform exists and do our best as individual and experienced performers to try and make it better.