Should our folk club be non smoking?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 08:50 PM

Not gonna happen MGoH... too much $$ to be made of selling tobacco for smoking

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: JennieG
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 10:16 PM

Would it be possible to have the occasional night where smoking isn't allowed? Then people could decide if they wanted that more frequently. I know there are some artists who will only perform in non-smoking venues.
Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 10:32 PM

Damn Micca,

haven't looked at this thread before - was going to do a song - now you've already done it!

It goes into my "carry around" song book!

Robin

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 21 Jan 04 - 11:20 PM

"Would it be possible to have the occasional night where smoking isn't allowed?"

Why not just make 'em ALL non-smoking nights? Let US smokers go the hell outside where we belong!

(I'm VERY serious here)

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 06:44 AM

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 06:56 AM

Speaking as a smoker, and a well respected musician. What concerns me the most is the quality of some floor singers in our clubs. I find it incredible the number of people who really should be listening and learning instead of playing and singing. It is no wonder some clubs are so poorly attended.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Oaklet
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 07:19 AM

Ah ha! But I respect you most of all, luminary guset, for your smoking skills and humility. Let's start a pressure group to keep substandard performances and inexperienced performers away from our folk clubs.

Three cheers for guset!!!

Hip Hip...

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 08:53 AM

I was very obviously not talking about folk clubs

Sorry Greg. I didn't realise that. Perhaps the thread title "Should our folk club be non smoking?" got in the way of the real issue, "the Jolly Potters on Hartshill"...

I think one of us has lost the plot somewhere;-)

On a more serious note. While I agree, and always have, that smokers do need to go somewhere I would dispute that "it's not fair for non-smokers to go into places where people do go to smoke". With that attitude we would still have men only and whites only clubs. It is only by the efforts of the people who have been 'unfair' that we have dragged some institutions out of the Victorian era! But, hey, lets not hijack the thread which is about smoking in folk clubs after all.

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Hugh Jampton
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 09:11 AM

"Well respected musician guest"
                              What in heavan`s name has your point got to do with cigarette smoking in folk clubs? Beats me!!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 09:39 AM

I smoke after sex if I have had a good time but I dont always look!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: breezy
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 09:40 AM

it could cause this thread to start smoking!!!

its keeping out of the public gaze that bothers me as general public are not going to be sold
'folk' when they hear em in sessions, court or otherwise

there is no quality control.

Grade 5 at least

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Oaklet
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 09:51 AM

Guset,

I amongst others, belong to the Global Alliance of Barely Audible Scratchy Violinists. As we speak, our executive is meeting with the director of the English Society of Unaccompanable Singers and The Barton-Without-Hyphens-based, String Players Against Intonation.

The idea is to jointly promote slightly-below-par music with mistakes in it, for the benefit and amusement of all except those who describe themselves as well-respected musicians and smokers.

Guset, You can thank your lucky stars that we have irreconcilable differences with both the Piss Poor Piping Federation and the Guild of Hestitant Instrumentalists, or we'd have have a mighty movement on our hands. (Note: must buy toilet paper).

Now go away.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 10:00 AM

I agree with Mc Grath's comment about smoke from cigarettes just left to burn. I once moved an ashtray with a smouldering cigarette away from me to a place downwind of the smoker. He went spare - "I don't want all that smoke going into my eyes and face" he shouted. When I suggested that he might extinguish it (after all he'd only had about two puffs) his reaction made me find another table (I had been there first) for my own safety.

On a lighter note, I recently heard a northerner say "When I were a lad, we didn't have any of this passive smoking - yer 'ad to buy yer own fags".

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Jim Knowledge
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 10:35 AM

I `ad that well respected musician in my cab the other night. `e said is this a smoking cab? I said nah, I done the valves last Fursday!!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Oaklet
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 11:43 AM

There's just one thing that's been bothering me.....

The thread title doesn't half fit the opening line of the song "The Circle".

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Catherine Jayne
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 11:51 AM

Oaklet....have you seen Micca's post with the song he wrote??? Its to the tune "will the circle be unbroken"...here it is just incase you didn't see it!

Should our Folk club Be non Smoking?

Chorus
Should our Folk club Be non Smoking?
by and by Lord bye and bye
or should the blue smoke go on curling
to the sky, Lord, to the Sky

I was standing in the Folk club
Gazing into the thick fog
When I saw a smoker leaving
He was looking for the bog

And I heard the Singer mutter
"All this smoke is living hell
And performing has me coughing
And it makes my clothing smell"

So they put it to the members
Should no smoking be allowed
"Would we get few more singers
Would we pull a bigger crowd"

And the talked all round about it
Bans will frighten folks away
And without them it will fold up
And this club will've had its day

and some others said theres many
Who cant stand the awful smell
And are sick to death inhaling
your fags and Cigars as well

So our club is now no smoking
Theres no cigarettes at all
If you want to have a drag now
step outside behind the wall

© Micca Patterson

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,KB
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 12:31 PM

Great minds obviously think alike!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Hand-Pulled Boy
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 01:05 PM

I'm addicted to 'Fresh Air'. In fact I can't get enough of it although I know it will kill me in the end. I also love real ale and the best place to find it is in pubs but why do they have to play that bloody awful music?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 01:09 PM

I went to see Pete Seeger at Manchester's Free Trade Hall in 1964, and I was amazed to see "no-smoking" signs all over the place. Pete had the right idea.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 01:19 PM

"No spitting - no smoking"

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Sooz
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 02:18 PM

Mike and I are regular visitors to many non-smoking folkc clubs which are very successful. No Smoke Foke and Booit Straps in Chapeltown and our own in Gainsborough included. We don't go to any where smoking is allowed. What are we missing? A night of coughing and wheezing, stinking clothes, sore eyes....what a difficult decision to make.
Oh, and we keep our bad habits inside our home!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Oaklet
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 02:41 PM

Oops, just saw Micca's post down below. I am a bit slow tonight - its me hormones. Sorry about that.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Joybell
Date: 22 Jan 04 - 05:57 PM

After years of being bullied by smokers at last I've found friends. I've had smoke blown in my face - just for daring to open a window. I've had countless customers tell me that I was being paid to put up with their smoke. I've been repeatedly told by smokers that it wasn't smoke that was causing the uncontrollable coughing - and then the asthma. I have been unable to go out to for lunch or to birthday parties with friends. I lost my job as an entertainer. My True-love was punched and kicked (although he made a good account of himself in the end) for daring to politely ask a smoker to please not smoke in a non-smoking area. What a sorry tale! I'll stop now. The changes are coming too late for me - hopefully they are coming in time for others. Joy

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 04:18 AM

Kevin, thanks for reminding me ... anyone old enough to remeber when they used to have signs on buses saying "no spitting"? Hard to imagine a time when people didn't think that it was disgusting and horrible to (skip to the next sentence if you're sensitive!) spit phlegm on the floor of a crowded bus. But it was so once, and eventually folks were disuaded from this dirty habit and TB declined. In ten years time, we'll wonder how we could have put up with public smoking, even if we're (private) smokers. Meanwhile, say not the struggle naught availeth.

Steve

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 04:25 AM

blsar, blar., blar=if you make your flok club no smoking, how do yoo expect the somoking people to go then?
stupif!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 04:29 AM

anyway=too many moany people about nowadays, smoking is good for you, and puts hares on your chest.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 05:59 AM

Bonny black ones, or Creggan white ones, jOhn?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Micca
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 06:01 AM

actually, Steve, they are rabbits, its just from the distance they look like hares

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 06:04 AM

Or in jOhns case - Hamsters???

:D

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Crystal
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 06:21 AM

As a singer with small lungs I prefer non-smoking clubs!
I have on occasion had to get out of a club thick with smoke because I was literally suffocating. It happened at Towersy, and has happened at other clubs too.
Let me tell you it is a HORRIBLE feeling!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Skipjack K8
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 07:12 AM

Speaking as a musician, and a well respected former smoker. What concerns me the most is the quality of some floor smokers in our clubs. I find it incredible the number of people who really should be moaning and complaining instead of smoking and coughing. It is no wonder some clubs are so poorly attended. I wish folks would just smerk roll-ups. They smell nice, produce far less smoke, have no chemicals, put themselves out when left in ashtrays, and less are smoked because of time taken crafting them. And I think the virgins' thighs would be very popular. Yes, I am a former smoker, but still hang around smokers, as I associate the smell of fresh smoke with social ease and good times.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Catherine Jayne
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 07:22 AM

Virgins Thighs eh Skipjack!.....are there many of the around for them to become popular!!!???!!!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Strollin' Johnny
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 07:50 AM

You'd be hard-pressed to find any where I come from. Virgins I mean, there are plenty of thighs.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Jan 04 - 08:30 AM

You would have to be rolling Golden Virgin - ia...

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: MAG
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 04:53 PM

new verse:

I was standing -- by the doorway --

Trying to get a breath of (fresh) air

With the smokers -- all complaining --

Letting in that cold air wasn't fair.

M.A. who is probably going to brave the smoke tomorrow night to do the open mike.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: greg stephens
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 06:19 PM

Maybe, just maybe, one day it will become socially unacceptable to drive huge bits of metal round the country belching out carcinogenic fumes and running people over, purely for your own amusemnt(attending folk clubs, for example).. And McGrath of Harlow will suggest that people really ought to stop doing that kind of thing if they are asked politely not to. But I'm not holding my breath.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 08:45 PM

I've been to sessions where the music was great, but there was so much smoke in the air I simply couldn't bear to go back. I can tolerate a little bit of smoke (i.e. a few smokers -- if I'm not too near them), but otherwise -- for me -- it's simply not worth the unpleasantness of enduring more than a little smoke, no matter how good the music is.

FWIW, I have a still-vivid memory from more than 10 years ago:
The break room where I used to work had a couple of tables set aside for smokers; these tables had special vents overhead to suck up the smoke produced so nonsmokers didn't have to breathe it.

One day I happened to be in the break room while the fellow responsible for maintenace & such was cleaning these filters. I looked at them; the ventilation slits had a slimy greenish-greyish-yellowish coating. "What's that?" I asked him.

"That's the deposits from the cigarette smoke," he said. "Smokers have this stuff coating the insides of their lungs."

I've often thought that an anti-smoking commercial along these lines might be most effective...

Cheers,

YY

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 10:50 PM

Well said Sooz! I too can confine my bad habits to my own home. I can go anywhere that's non smoking, folk club, pub, concert,restaurant or even if non smoking friends call round. I certainly wont stand outside in sub zero temps just to have a smoke...if I'm going to have a fag I want to enjoy it!
I played and sang for 25 years in smokey venues. I dont have asthma ..or any other breathing difficulties. I'm with DM on this one. I eat healthily, I cycle or walk everywhere that I can, and avoid using the car if it's possible.
I dont wake up every morning with hacking cough wondering where did I leave my fags last night. First thing I want is brekfast!! You can control the desire for a cigarette!
Maybe I'll be one of the lucky ones and live into my 90's and wont end up in a hospital wing. If I do, maybe it wont be the cigs that I smoked..just the polluted air that I breathed while out on my bike. Whatever happens..non smokers are in the majority right now.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: dianavan
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 11:03 PM

In Vancouver, you can't smoke in any of the pubs, restaurants or just about any public place (including the work place).

I'd say compromise. Only ban tobacco.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 11:25 PM

Now there's a shock.. Vancouver being over-reactionary...

Like that's never happened before...

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: dianavan
Date: 26 Jan 04 - 11:46 PM

Please explain "over reactionary." At least give an example. No smoking in Van has been happening for about 10 years. It doesn't seem to have hurt business. In fact, more people are now going out and enjoying music.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: dagenham doc
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 12:09 AM

In New Zealand at the end of this year you will not be allowed to smoke in pubs clubs or work places. As for you people who want to smoke IN folk clubs............ get a life....... but not mine.

Doc

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 12:29 AM

Non-smoking? Definitely. People can smoke outside the door and get some "fresh air" while they do it.

"It's the only drug that kills someone who's standing next to you
Yet it does it by the smallest of degrees
So it's not that plain and obvious like a gun or a highway crash
But it's a worldwide cause of sickness and disease.
And there's poison in the package
And a dollar for the Man
And a young girl standing next to me
With a Rothmans in her hand."

(Lyric from a song I wrote called "Poison in the Package". I truly detest cigarettes and the huge companies who push them for profit. They're drug dealers and killers. I think anyone who wants to smoke has a right to do it...but not next to me in an enclosed public space where I am forced to breathe their smoke even if I don't want to.)

- LH

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,BOAB
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 02:22 AM

It's certainly true about Vancouver's pubs, and Victoria pubs too.I'm berthed not too far from either, and when the law was applied, had to listen to all the usual "it can't be enforced " cries. Oh yes it can!!
My own local tended to ignore the guys who continued to light up. One day a customer revealed himself as an "inspector", and issued a warning. Three weeks later, guess what; caught breaking the law again. Result, a $3000 fine---and a brand-new totally enclosed room off the bar, complete with heating, for the convenience of the smokers.Nothing wrong with that---and one helluva boon to the staff and the MAJORITY of the customers. I'm a bit uneasy though; the gangster crew now esconced in the parliament buildings in Victoria have had a hilarious time since they arrived, destroying all that is decent. Regression to the fug-infested bars is still a possibility!

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: HuwG
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 02:39 AM

I have my own gripe with smoking co-workers. I spent an unpleasant year at a company where the man using the desk next to mine was a smoker. He would turn up at nine o'clock, switch on his computer, and promptly go for a coffee and a smoke. At nine-thirty he would reappear, answer a couple of e-mails, open and discard his junk mail, and go for a smoke. At ten o'clock he would reappear, look at his list of tasks for the day, and go for a smoke. At ten-thirty he would reappear, send an e-mail to management suggesting his first task be reassigned to me or someone else, and go for a smoke. And so on.

I became very tired of having to open the emergency door, setting off all sorts of burglar alarms and annoying security, to tell him he was wanted urgently on the phone. I calculated that over the course of a working day of seven hours, he would smoke twenty cigarettes and do perhaps thirty-five or forty minutes of actual work. Meanwhile, I would do seven hours work, and find myself upbraided if I left my desk for the most urgent of personal reasons.

I am currently working odd shifts behind a bar, while unemployed, and have equal objections to other bar staff who assume that once they have lit a cigarette, they can ignore customers and all other duties until they regretfully grind out the stub in an ashtray. Non-smokers (such as myself) seem to be treated as an inferior class to the smokers, who appear to be entitled to time off to indulge their habit.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Mountain Tyme
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 03:00 AM

Attempting to understand those between the lines meanings of this subject question fashions dilemmas anew.
Music (hearing & vibration), smoke (taste & aroma), food & drink (taste, aroma & texture) among other such pleasure sense things are endemic to the human condition.
Aroma, be it a new mown field, fall leaves burning, a parlour fireplace, a charcoal grill, a horse barn, a good cigar or favorite cigarette blend, all are pleasures even beyond that of taste. If the cretins don't get it, so be it, research or clam up
Music without an accompanying aroma of good Turkish, Virginia, Cuban or other leaf does to me seem quite uncultivated. We're on the Moon, wake up! To ban "smoking" from odd off chosen places as this thread suggests would as such open risk of lingering truly dark ages obnoxious odors, to mention just two, methane and the perfume of the overweight. I see here no contest of comparison. When in an eatery, were I to observe an obese at an adjoining table consuming Brussel sprouts and corn, I would myself quickly request quietly of the management to be reseated at some greater distance, thus at the completion of my meal I would also expect to enjoy a smoke of my choosing in serenity.
Would I, could I, request banishment of the overweight from the pain to my eyes, (you must know they are being taxed now in thoughtful places) me thinks a more substantial subject discussion (non music threads) than a ban on smoking in pleasure palaces.
Smoking in itself, is not just a simple thoughtless multiple pleasure for the user, it is also a defense from those unconscious that permeate the aroma of surround.
Having rolled my own choice of learned gourmet leaf beginning circa 1945 to the tune of 40 to sixty per day, have become somewhat of a connoisseur as a result. Likewise of coffee if one would allow the comparison.
I play and sing a gig most every night. To tune my voice I smoke very heavily before performing otherwise I would sound like Kendall (remember how great he sang back in the old days when he smoked?:)... so thus would never consider contracting with a venue of non discerning no smoke cretins.
I also stand on the premise if you care to know, as Savarin suggests, in hunger being the best sauce. Listen to your body, "You are what you eat"/smoke/drink!
In closing this offering of just another opinion, I would like to suggest the possibility that if "folk clubs" for lack of a better term, continue to impose smoking bans, a more eclectic music might take its place and with the discerning, smoke will return.
Can we expect next that Starbucks and the other high end sugar & caffeinee shoppees will outlaw their health risk poisons? Nope I don't think so!
Can you picture the old fiddlers who kept the tunes alive for centuries until tech allowed us to record... without their clay pipes? I can not! LOL   Mountain Tyme

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 05:04 AM

In one of the pubs that "Travelling Folk" use (The Windmill at Weald), a previous landlord was an ardent non-smoker, he had a notice on the wall that was along the lines of:

The problem with people smoking is that their habit has a waste product which gets into my lungs, hair, and clothes even though I don't partake of it. I have a habit too - beer drinking. This also has a waste product which I release in more private surroundings. How would you smokers like it, if when I had a pint, I pissed all over your hair and clothes - let alone in your noses and throats !

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: Bobjack
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 05:09 AM

Should my smoking club be folk free?

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 08:43 AM

Well, Bobjack, what with all kinds of cancers, heart disease, stroke, etc., it's kind of inevitable.

Subject: RE: Should our folk club be non smoking?
From: GUEST,Traditionalist
Date: 27 Jan 04 - 11:57 AM

NO!" - not if you want it to Traditional.