Betsy's first post is very true but I also agree with what Vic Smith sais some way back. Although the home-made music and choruses were very much a part of what turned me on to this stuff, it was also a huge thrill to able to watch really top-notch singers and musicians performing jut a few feet away, in a room maybe just twice the size of my living room. And, although people have moaned for years about 'library-like atmosphere' and so on, those small acoustic spaces were and are probably the best place to put over a ballad and get rapt attention from an audience.