Well, I don't know if you've been following the PEL threads at all, wilco, but they are relevant to the questions you raise.

Back in 1964 the government brought in new laws tightening up on music venues. What they did was make it illegal to have public performances without a licence being in place. I imagine they had it in mind to reduce the danger of things happening like those two recent disasters in the USA, in Chicago and Rhode Island - but of course they overdid it.

However they introduced an exemption which made it legal for up to two people to perform in any pub. The exemption didn't extend to coffee bars and so forth. This means that if people wanted to get together to have a bit of live music, pubs have been the place to go, bending the law a lot of the time. Well pub have always been the place, and there are a lot more of them scattered all over the place anyway. But the law did put the lid in effect on any kind of coffee house folk scene.

Now the new licensing law is aiming to get rid of the exemption, and make it illegal having making music in public in pubs as well, unless there is a licence covering it, with the two-in-a-bar exemption being abolished.

In East Tennessee maybe going to places where they sell beer may be a bit deviant and suspect. It isn't in the UK for sure. Or indeed in most places in Europe. Having a drink goes along well with music, the same way it goes along with most types of social discourse. But it would be nice to be able to have a bit of live music sometimes in a coffee bar or whatever.

But I'd much sooner we didn't have tobacco smoke in pubs, and I think so would most people. There was a thread recently about the possibility that because of a recent court case, pubs in Ireland are going to have to become non-smoking. I think most smokers still don't quite appreciate th fact that they really do literally get up the nose of the rest of us, but we're too polite to make a fuss about it.