Captain Birdseye: session etiquette seems to be disappearing too,if someone starts at a speed ,please join in at that speed,do not speed them up ,and please listen to the musician who starts the tune .

Amen to that. There are some local (South Manchester / Cheshire) sessions I just don't bother with any more, because every tune ends up at 250bpm regardless of the original tempo set by the originator in the first few bars.

You only need one or two cretins with a modicum of ability and a superiority complex (or, even worse, an unshakeable conviction that they know better than me what speed I fancy playing a tune at), and it takes more of a determined effort to fight against them than I usually think is worth expending in what is supposed to be a sociable and collaborative activity. And sometimes if I'm feeling bloody minded and on one of my louder instruments, I just keep playing at the original tempo :)

Would that the speed-is-everything attitude was limited to Irish music sessions: I play very little Irish, partly for this very reason, and the same thing is leaking across into English-music sessions. I went to one in Yorkshire when I was away training for work and the tempos for a supposedly English session were just crazy, it was more like The Ramones than The Old Swan Band.

There's also the problem that many people seem to think that the speed they first heard a tune is the only speed it can possibly be played at; are sometimes genuinely shocked at a slightly slower tempo; and probably even think they're helping you out by winding it up to the speed it's played on the O'Turbo Band CD they have at home. And of course some people are just arrogant fools who do it deliberately to show how much 'better' they are than everyone else in the room.

The result is that it all becomes a frantic tedious characterless mismash, and I've got better things to do. And then there are the nights when everyone playing is of a like mind and the most wonderful impromptu music-making transpires, and it's those evening that keep me turning out. Don't get me wrong, I love playing fast tunes in the course of an evening, but I don't want every tune at the edge of degenerating into white noise the same way I don't want pizza for tea every single night ...