A little bit more time after the Singaround to pick up on earlier points....

Tom - "Guest Club supporters being unable to accept that Singers considered bottom in their pecking order can be as good as their professional heroes".

Sadly I have picked up this attitude from several "Folk Scenes". I don't for a minute want to portray every Guest Club as suffering this but if I hinted at few clubs not far from here - many would know exactly which ones I meant*.

More widely, I've heard similar stories from an excellent singer in "Yorkshire" (not going to zoom in more than that) who has given up supporting any Guest Club in his area and is using his singing talents in nursing homes only. Their (the Folk Clubs) loss.

And Tom - Sorry! - you may not like this, but I heard the story of the guest who was "no better than most of us" from a another singer who I walked up with to Tuesday's singaround with (not a Mudcatter yet - but I'm trying to persuade her).

Interesting that you say singers nights are taking over from Guest nights. Like all change there will be casualties. The end result, though, should be to the benefit of Folk longterm as it will undermine the elites which I fervently maintain have stifled new talent since the 1970s and now getting their payback (a good parallel here is the former Soviet Union where the Old Guard clung to power and refused to allow younger generations access to power - so their dream died with them).

And where did I learn to write folk style songs? A very different arena to you!

As brief as I can be... I learnt to write songs in my first pop band as a teenager. Rewind a few years earlier I was another apprentice punter at school believing that music "Stars" were born - and from a different planet to the likes of us on the Council Estate; attending secondary school.

Then suddenly my next door neighbour's group released a record and reached number 4 in the UK pop charts. The mystique the powers-that-be peddled about looking up to your betters was smashed. Anyone can do it!

I joined a teenage Scout Hut group and met a brilliant Scots lad who could write an instant song from a newspaper headline. We started co-writing and before long I was writing whole songs myself.

Both these examples were simply a demystifying process - and what I'm doing in the folk scene right now is demystifying the dominant theme which is that only Guests, Residents and approved floor singers are good, anyone else is rubbish.

Oh yes - pop to folk. I didn't actually know about folk clubs for many years but found I was writing songs at work (about work) in a grotty factory - song of rhythms I knew were not suitable for my pop bands. When I lost my job I discovered the local folk club - and found people singing and playing in the rhythms I had been writing in! The rest is history... as they say.

And Banjiman - again not a complete answer (apols!) but - no I don't make CDs. But having recently retired I am working on getting as many of my songs as possible recorded and made available on CD or website.

On the middleman quote - Guest Club organisers are different things to different groups.

"people who put in the effort to organise clubs for others (guests or floor singers) to sing at?"

Dead right - in one context. Many (though not all by any means) are performing this function for the benefit of guest and floor singers. But for a singer / singer-songwriter whose face doesn't fit, these organisers' clubs are an inefficient route to travel along to get your singing or songs to a wider audience. I gave upon this route as long ago as 1980 (luckily!). What I said in the earlier posting hold firm *in this context*.

If you're not a jolly middleclass teacher type then you will see an endless stream of those who are breezing in, getting floorspots ahead of you, becoming resident and getting the junior guest spots ahead of you.

I saw through this bias early enough to realise its best to ignore these types and their pecking orders and make your own folk scene.

And Indrani - vanity singing is when you buy a floor spot? Excellent!

*wouldn't name any of these clubs of course - but will name a Guest club that's a shining example of how guest clubs should be run: Lewes Saturday Club.

Ian Fyvie