Are you telling me that second rate singers and musicians are good enough for you to sit through but not your friends? Maybe you are selling your friends short? Why do you go? Is there not something that draws you? Makes it worth your while? How do you know it wouldn't be the same for friends?
Good point!
I suppose because I've got more than 30 years' exposure to such things, so it doesn't come as a shock to me, and because there still burns a small ember of hope in my breast that, on the rare occasions when I do go to a club now, it will confound my expectations. It's not something I'd inflict on friends.
Interestingly, my wife was bowled over the first time she experienced a rousing session in full swing at Chippenham, and again at Sidmouth, where the youth and energy of the Late Night Extras made her thing that folk was fantastic. Sadly she then encountered the club scene, and has now become wholly disenchanted with it - seeing traditional music as, intrinsically, a good thing, but practised by odd people. From being something we did together, it became a solitary vice.
And now, by and large, I just don't go to clubs at all.
When I lived in London I was fortunate enough to have a couple of excellent clubs that I hugely enjoyed, and the same in Buckinghamshire. They were rare oases, however, and experience has taught me that it probably isn't worth a 50-mile round trip from where I live these days to bring home to me how bad things are.