Maybe I'm lucky with the places I frequent, but I don't have an issue with the quality of performer at a typical club night.

It is observable, though, that not many people bring cheap guitars - they have serious-money instruments (and a choice ...) which indicates that they do have a serious approach to music-making. Unless it's an extension of the designer label snobbery which leads to bullying in schools over the wrong kitbag or trainers. When you work behind a bar, as I do regularly, you get used to people testing and balancing and bouncing pool cues as if their lives depended on it, when you know that a decent player would beat them (not literally) with a broomstick. Without labouring the point (much) I feel that this choice of instrument may well be a manifestation of the pride/ego thing which leads to their attending the local club only when they are not going to be upstaged by someone of greater accomplishment.

That's a generalisation - I wouldn't apply it to our regulars, many of whom are semi-pro anyway, and good enough to utilise the extra edge their choice of instrument gives them. But as people become more conscious of their own performance, they may become less tolerant at one level and less willing to listen at another ...

I would hate to see the type 3 club go because to me, when it works, it serves the whole community of folk music better than any other model. I'd hate to think that society, and our aspirations, had changed so much that it no longer has a future.

I blame Thatcher

Henry