Tam, if you read as much as you typed, maybe you'd see there have been 120 posts answering your question. Or maybe 90 posts and another 30 posts from you saying "but why"... ;-)

Lest forgetting words or tunes be considered a crime, Eric Clapton arsed up the start of "Layla" on his Unplugged show. And then had the balls to release it as-is to the public without getting it "fixed" in editting. Someone on Mudcat (can't remember who) pointed that out as a wonderful example of the guy's confidence, that he wasn't scared to screw up occasionally and didn't mind people knowing. It wasn't something I'd noticed until it was pointed out, but when I read that it was a "YES!" moment.

Re the "rehearsed performance", I guess many people do it. Tom Paxton certainly does - having bought his songbook which includes some of his anecdotes, when I saw him in Cambridge I could pretty much quote word for word how it was going to go.

But I don't think the "learned patter" is necessarily bad. Yes, maybe you know some of them, but that's not always bad. The Secret Policeman's Ball version of the Dead Parrot Sketch was just as good as the original, and just as well appreciated in spite of everyone knowing it. If the patter is accepted as part of the performance (as TP's is), then it works. I guess what makes the difference is that even if you *have* rehearsed the patter, you can't rehearse a connection to the audience, and TP really feels like he cares about making the audience enjoy the show.

FWIW, my favourite performers are Show of Hands. Never mind the music, but although they clearly have some prepared lines, they don't let it get in the way. So one of them fluffs a word in a pre-prepared link, the other takes the piss, and it stays as a running joke to the end of the gig. You can't practise that, and my favourite musicians to see live are all in that vein. Whatever the music is like, it's got to be a good *show*, and I think the quality of character is something that you can't fake in folk music.

Graham.