Michaelr, I have said my piece, but I will just say that what a lot of us had a problem with was your guns a blazing approach with your initial post, and I'm not even talking about the cursing! Like others, my initial thought was gulp, oh Frankie, how could you do that. You wrote- "It does, however, amaze me that folks can be so blithely able to separate their musical endeavors from the world's ugly realities." Well a number of us gave possible reasons for why Frankie Gavin might play for Bush, all of them perfectly plausible. Not being able to separate the music from the world's ugly realities is your own interpretation. Even if this administration was wonderful, as Johnny Cash said, "there's things that will never be right I know", meaning as President of the US, or PM of Britain, etc, someone's always going to have a beef about something. Which also means, like my Martin Carthy example, you yourself as an artist make the decison about what you should do in the end. Simple as that. By the way, let's use your own example-you say you wouldn't have played for this Bush and Clinton, but would you have possibly played if invited? Using past President's, who would you have played for? Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon? Everyone had a beef with each of them about something, be it domestic, foreign, education, environment, etc. Not so easy to choose when there's always something you have against them, so is it play or don't play for any of them? Your blood on the hands doesn't have to apply only to foreign policy btw.