Frank, I'm glad your excellent post from the other thread (near the end) got refreshed, I had not seen it before. It is indeed sad that our whole song culture has become performer/audience ego trips instead of person-to-person song sharing.

Threadstarter, the reason Mudcat is great is because all those subjects you mention are fair game here. Unfortunately musicians do specialize in genres quite a bit, and a polka specialist may not care to come here and discuss other genres, for example--too busy driving to the next fesival or practicing a new tune.

I hope you find your universal forum, but meanwhile you will find a lot of good stuff here.