Last week, I twice arrived in a local pub carrying a cd that had been returned to me from a loan. The pub was quiet on both occasions but had a different bar peson and different customers in but on both occasions, I was asked what the cd I had was and could they listen to it.

One the first occasion, my cd was the Eric Bogle Song Book and I suggested listening to the Band Played Waltzing Matilda. This was given about 1 minute before the demands to turn that rubbish off came. On the second occasion, mc cd was Pauline Cato and Tom McConville and I suggested the set of tunes that started with the Acrobat, this got about 30 seconds before it was rejected.

A few years ago, during a Conwy Festival, I went into a pub in the afternoon and went to the empty lounge bar (there were a few customers in the other bar) and asked if was alright to play a few tunes. I am not that much of a musicain but I played quietly. The people with me were Margaret (a fomer Irish champion whiltle player) and Des (a very eperienced and accomplished fiddler) and the music that the played was in my opinion better than anything that I heard the paid acts produce that year but after 15 minutes, the Juke box was turned on. That is about how accessible and or acceptable the music is to so many people.

Folk club wise in my area, overall I would say that the situation is improving slowly and we do get the new face that decides to come again and even have a couple of people who do travel quite a distance to get there but the majority of people do not come back. The biggest area of improvement within 10 miles of Llandudno has been the number of session players and even the Conwy Folk Club starts with a small session and has another one during the half hour beer break.

On Monday night in the Conwy Folk Club, we had a young couple from Seattle turn up (Conwy was one of the the places they wanted to visit before going to Ireland). I spoke to them and told them that Pete Coe was on and that I thought that it would be worth them going downstairs to have a visit. They came back to me at the end of the night and told me that it had been the highlight of the holiday so far!

Unfortunately this often seems to be the way round here, people on holiday (who addmitedly often have some interst in folk music) are often delighted with what we have to offer (even though there are no "star" players amongst us) but the majority of the local people simply do not want to know folk.

Jon