Well, interesting that this should appear today...

I'm in the process, right now, of helping community college students set up for their first coffeehouse. This is an event that dates back to at least the mid-eighties, and it's popularity has waxed and waned through the years. However, it's the venue where I first performed in front of an audience at age 39, and where we've seen performers as young as ten and certainly older than 50. What they had in common was that their music was at all stages of development, but they were all relative "beginners" at performance in front of an audience, and what they needed was a friendly, open, small venue in which to take their first public steps.

Providing that kind of venue is one thing we can do to develop new talent--the odds of going directly from the living room to winning American Idol are just too slim. Talent needs a venue to develop its confidence in front of an audience.

Just my $0.02, fwiw.

V