Bill: I've never used binaries. My current ISP doesn't support them. uk.music.folk was used for much the same stuff as here: questions, event notifications, radio/TV alerts, bickering... I expect rec.music.folk was the same, but I didn't read it.

In the UK many ISPs stopped providing usenet about 10 years ago - I had to use eternal september for a while. Do US ISPs still offer it?