Bryan,
"But you DO have a problem accepting that there is anything going on that you would call folk music."
No I don't - I know there are still some clubs; my point is that there are not enough nationally for its survival as a performing art. My point about the Beatles evening (2 years ago - and things haven't changed there) is that if a folk club can move that far away from folk music then the term has lost its meaning.
Nor are there enough even to argue for facilities for its survival in archived form.
There is nothing resembling a comprehensive archive in the UK.
EFDSS and the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library are on a permanent hand-to-mouth existence and constantly under threat of closure.
The nearest thing to a national archive in the UK is part of The National Sound Archive at the British Library, which several of us worked to develop some years ago with some limited success with their 'Bright Golden Store' project, but this seems now to have dried up.
"Things might have changed."
My information is not thirty years old - it is pretty well up to date.
Please tell me it is wrong and that the clubs are thriving - what I am getting is an increased hostility to folk music - finger-in-ear, boring, "twenty verse dirges", irrelevant......
"You are using your own ignorance as evidence."
OK - tell me of publications matching the two I mentioned - I may have missed them.
It may well be that I am being over-pessimistic - I sincerely hope that is the case.
On the other hand, it might be that you are being complacent because your own club is doing well.
Jim Carroll