That is not the Wiki you first put up Dave
The one you diod was full of electric music and superstars
Of course the numbers are relevant - the clubs are our music's public communal face - what you get on the internet is individuals doing it for themselves and by and large it is pretty poor stuff, in my opinion
'See "Rock with the shepherd" for a prime example
The club scene seems to have imploded - a pale shadow of its former self
It's not too long ago that there were mor clubs in the London area than there now are nationally
You can even reduce that by another quarter - our clubs were weekly
We were talking about it last night - four weekly clubs catering for real folk music on Upper Steet, Islington alone - The Fox, The Empress of Russia, The Kings Head (and another we couldn't remember) - four nights of folk music well performed by residents in one week
THat is what the scen has lost
Electronic peformances on the net are an anathema to that

I don't say I don't care for fold clubs - I don't care for what they have become is what I meant
The clubs are the veins through which our music should be transmitted to the wider world - the better the muis is performed the healthier it will be
You have a disturbing habit of taking what I say out of context - real all of it
And perhaps we can lay off the sneaky, behind the hand stuff please !

You've (all of you) have given me a great deal to think about here - one of the outcomes has been for me to step up my passing on what we have to those I hope will use it - and it's working a charm - so far, mainly in Ireland
When I was involved fully in the scene, it was communal - not people reaching for the high ground but groups co-operating to help each other and clubs regurly communicating
That seems to have gone now
When MacColl set up the Critics group, smaller ones sprang up in places over Britain
When I set up one in Manchester Peggy sent me a list of over a dozen names of people and groups that could help (I still have it somewhere)
A week after I moved into my bed sit, Dick Snell came knocking on my front door asking if he could bring me up to speed with Group work
No doubt E and P put him up to it, but we bacame friends and jaysus - did it help my singing
We set up a smell archive for London Singers Workshop and appealed for material - it came flooding in from England, Scotland and Ireland
We now probably have the largest privately held archive of folk music in Britain - and nobody wants to use it there
That's an indication of how "healthy" the scene is as far as I'm concerned

When the Willie Clancy Summer School and the Irish Traditional Music Archive was set up, teaching became the thing here
The early pupils became teachers and their pupils in their turn are now doing the same - passing it on is spreading like an infection
Ieland has now guaranteed that traditional music will be a feature of community life for several generations
When you can say you are even considering moving in that direction, you can claim that you might have a future in the forseeable future (if it's not too late)
You can stick your superstars - what's happening in the real world and is there enough of it to make a difference is what counts
Jim