WLD,
I half agree with what you are saying.
The only experience I have of your song-writing is in the pages of New City Songster - which impressed me as being a good song, and knowing Peggy as I do, would not have been included if it were not (though - not being able to read music, I have problems of fully judging a song without hearing it sung).
There were - and still are prime examples of tight-arsed attitudes to what should go in clubs - from ALL sides of the divide, ranging from the banning (at one time) of accompaniment, the singing of contemporary/political/non-British/American... whatever songs, through to claims I have heard that songs are 'too long' or that an evening of 'just folk songs' at a folk club is "boring" (a regular, and completely off-the-wall complaint on Mudcat as far as I'm concerned - what else would you expect at a folk club - Lieder?).
Every club is entitled to its own policy and to adhere to that policy to whatever degree they choose, just as everybody who is a potential audience member is entitled to express an opinion of what happens at that club, no matter what their level of involvement and understanding. For me, as long as what goes on at a club bears some resemblance to what it claims to be - no problem; in other words, as long as a 'folk' club puts on something which can be claimed to be 'folk' music (or folk-music based) I, or anybody has no reason to demand their money back or write to the ombudsman. It is when this doesn't happen that the problems arise.
Whether we like it or not, clubs that give themselves a designation are set up to promote "my kind of music", right or wrong does not come into it. I can see no justification in complaining that a folk club only puts on folk music, any more than I would in protesting that our local chamber orchestra doesn't include Dave Brubeck or Neil Simon compositions in their repertoire. Neither fit their job description (unless you are arguing that it is wrong to label music 'classical', 'jazz', 'folk', 'hip-hop', 'garage', whatever).
What has killed this music isn't that the clubs 'do what it says on the tin', but the opposite - all too often they don't and what they do present, is performed badly.
Your 'Molecatcher' guy was, as far as I'm concerned, wrong, not for singing Molecatcher, but for having to read it from a book - though there are others on this thread who might disagree with this.
Jim Carroll