My penchant is for traditional Irish music, mainly not song, but for a number of years I hardly missed a single Friday night at our folk club until, sadly, it closed in 1996. So I enjoyed many of the great and the good (and a few of the bad) of the folk music of these islands and my harmonica playing had to be endured by attendees almost every time. We kept the fire aflame in the form of weekly pub sessions for twenty years after that. I had to stop several years ago as my hearing declined. Anyway, I think I'm qualified to read these threads and occasionally stick my oar in. Joe Offer, it's fine to try to firmly set the parameters for discussion but you should be doing that in a positive and constructive - and friendly - manner. I for one would applaud that. But, as I've said several times before, it's not fine to do it whilst failing (again) to resist the urge to eyeball those who you pejoratively call "usual suspects." I could name at least three "usual suspects" of the very worst kind from down the years who didn't even think they were (or, in one case is) "usual suspects." As they say, it's about outcomes, dear boy, outcomes...

As for the topic, as long as folk show up to sing songs without crib sheets, some old, some new, get us to join in the choruses now and then, and do it without plugging into complex sound systems and who don't put themselves on pedestals, or who try to "see a career in it," and who are respectful of the long tradition of folk song without necessarily shackling themselves to it a hundred percent of the time, let's enjoy it and see where it goes. And anyone can sing...

(Back to the cave, then, Stevieboy...)