This is one of those problems for which there is probably no solution, but it invites 'catters to comment endlessly, which is what we do best.

Greg had a point, when he opened this thread, even if he did bash librarians. (Hey, pal, you wanna step outside??)

I wish librarians did write more of the stuff I have to sit through at the monthly open mike I attend. 24 time slots and on a good night, six performers that I really enjoy, admire, and/or learn from.

I know the drill. The dude with the pork pie hat and the gold chains gets up and says, "Here's a folk song I wrote last week." All too often, we are then screamed at, rather than sung to; treated to four repetitions of the chorus; and/or drawn into some Gothically dark "slice of life" thing you expect to find on L&O/Criminal Intent rather than in folk music. Yeah, yeah--Tom Dooley had a dark side; but it didn't come with the eff word and it didn't describe every perversion in detail. My schtick is, "Here's a folk song somebody way better than me at composition wrote 200 years ago, so refrain from ordering espresso for three minutes and maybe you can hear it."

I have to say this about the "unplugged" thing though. I have put pickups in or on all of the six or eight kinds of folk instruments I own. Am I unfaithful to tradition? Maybe, but it's a matter of self defense. The O.M. I attend most often draws a very, very polite audience and most of the time you can hear a pin drop in the place during performances, but the cold fact is that you can't hear nylon stringed guitars or lap dulcimers or what-have-you from the most distant seats in this modest-sized hall, so watchagonnado?

As to the vanity of trying to discuss what "folk" is, picture this: A group of us were doing a historic gig at one of the Missions--for you UK folks, I'm talking about the Spanish churches that were built around 1800. We were in period dress and doing the best we could to confine ourselves to early 1800s material. John Q. Public with the gold chains, bottle tan and open-necked shirt swishes up to us and wants to hear "Girl from Ipanema." Yeah, right; you really get the point of all this.

As I said to begin with, I see no solution, but it's nice to be able to vent among like-minded venters, even if Doug C. did use the words "culture" and "accordion" in the same paragraph.

Now I'd better leave before I'm asked to step outside. :)

Chicken Charlie