The fella with a drum machine? In principle that's easy enough - remind him it's a live music session. If he turns it on stop playing, and get a drink.

With someone playing a real instrument it's a bit different. The people I play with have no problem telling me if I'm playing too loud or too fast, and I do the same for them. But then we know each other.

I know that when I'm in a strange session I try to move in tactfully, and I think it's fair enough to expect that other people should do the same. But being brash is the way some people deal with being shy, and you've got to let strangers feel they are welcome. And often the worst offenders aren't drunks who can't play,it's people who can play very well, but haven't learnt to listen to other people yet.

As for bodhrans not fitting in other types of music and so forth - I can't go with the idea that you look at an instrument, and decide that it doesn't fit in. As someone just said, where'd Irish music be if it kept out bouzoukis and banjos? I think bluegrass might be greatly improved sometimes by the occasional bodhran or bouzouki or pipes. (Well it sounds prettty good when Irish sessions start playing American tunes. And "Turkey in the Straw" is in Captain O'Neill's BOOK).

It's how you play it that matters. The drum we call the bodhran is the simplest and most widely spread one there is - North Africa, Native American, India... It can be played in all kinds of ways. Some of them people are only starting to learn. But the critial thing is that it goes under the music, not on top of it, and follows the rhthym, rather than leading it.