If you bought tickets to see a play, and the actors were simply standing on stage reading the lines off a script, with no attempt to act - no attempt to persuade you to suspend your disbelief and accept that what you were seeing on stage was real, you'd feel cheated. You'd feel that the 'actors' had no respect for you, the play or the playwright, and you'd want yout money back. I might not be the best singer in the world, or the best musician, but I try to find songs that I can believe in, and that I think I can do justice to. These songs are often about real people, and real lives. They are about murders, tragic deaths, rape, incest, loss, heart-rending love affairs, wars and rebellions, yearnings and aspirations, work, real poverty, disappointments, heroes and villains, and also about happy endings, fun and games, romps in the hay, drink, sport and home sweet home. Anything and everything in people's lives. I am telling these people's stories, and if I didn't think I was givimg honest and respectful renditions, I would be being disrespectful to them, to the writers of the songs, and to the audience. If people think that their urge to sing outweighs the right of the paying public to such consideraations, they would be better singing in private gatherings, which might as well be in each other's houses. Club organisers would do well to remember that if they advertise and charge addmission, then it's a public event, and the paying public are going to have certain expectations.
John Kelly.