Not strictly true - even before the new act there was a ban on live musical performances without a licence om amu place freely open to tey p8blic in England except in church - or in pubs, if there were only two people playing. The new law has just changed the arrangements for getting a licence, and removed the two-in-a-bar exemption.

There was a case a couple of years ago when a big bookshop arranged to have a string quartet play some Mozart - the authorities intervened and they couldn't play. So everyone sat and listened to a record of the quartet, which was legal!

But all this is drift, and this isn't the thread to pusue the matter. (Put PEL in the search engine if you wan tto fiund oput more, and stand back...)

So far as this US episode is concerned, the issue surely isn't that the bookshop might have the legal right to say who plays on theri premises and who doesn't - it's that there is something pretty weird about anyone who thinks that "Mr Bush has skinny legs" is a significant insult.