Ian

I'm not sure I'm achieving anything useful in continuing this but perhaps i should just say I'm glad that you promote a 'live and let live' approach, it's just unfortunate that you then immediately undermine it by seeming again to attack the whole guest ethos - when most of the rest of us would recognise that, wherever our particular interests and enthusiasms lie, the UK folk scene is founded on a symbiotic yin/yang relationship between working and non-working musicians, and both elements need the other if they are to survive in the wondrous form into which the scene has evolved.

You did not start the thread with any sniping at working musicians, organisers or listeners, but a resentment towards them pervades most of your posts on Mudcat, and frequently breaks through, as it has again just now.

To suggest that there is some kind of plot to shut amateur artists out leaves you open to allegations of sour grapes, as I'm sure you realise. Guest artists are booked because the organisers and their audiences think they are good, and they have every right so to do. Full stop.

This phrase "many of us don't actually go to Folk Clubs to support a guest or please a media hype indoctrinated audience" is an insult to the folk community. Paying audiences are usually very discerning, and resistance to hype - of which there is very very little in the folk world - (unless you count a short CD review in a local A5 folk magazine as 'hype' in which case there really is no hope for you)!

What you are failing to accept is that the guest/singer system exists because people wanted, and still want it to. It was created democratically, not by some Machiavellian plot - and it's the backbone of the whole UK folk scene. Club organisers book guests because their members want them to. They appreciate what a visiting artist can bring in terms of material, arrangement ideas and just a darn good evening's entertainment.

So I say again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you preferring not to patronise guest nights, and choosing to champion free events and amateur expertise - because it's very important that people always do.

But there is a LOT wrong with you larding you argument with snide snipes at working musicians very-hard-working organisers, and innocent audiences who happen to like to sit and listen to a bit of quality music and are prepared to pay for it (heck they 'd appreciate listening to your songs if you gave yourself a chance by working with the system instead of railing against it).

As for people objecting to you calling your gathering a 'club' - well I'm surprised, but the truth is that the number of gatherings which use that word to describe some sort of guest/singer arrangement outnumbers those who use it for 'singers only' or 'guests only' arrangements by two to one. So again, that's democracy for you.

It would, as I've said many times, be MUCH better for the folk scene if we had three definitive words to describe each of our three basic types of event: Singers only, Guest/singers, and Concerts only. It would avoid a massive amount of confusion disappointment and resentment, but that's not going to happen any time soon. Meanwhile, we should all try to grope towards a consensus on language.

The other point that you may need to consider is, (and I'm not defending this), that established guest clubs near you may object to you 'parking your tanks on their lawn' and further confusing the 'folk offer' by seeming to promote guests (which is what their understanding of the word 'Club' means - as it does to a vast majority in the UK), when you are actually running a small participatory Session. They are wrong, of course - club can and does mean just a small session. but if you are as outspoken in your contempt for them in real life as you are here on Mudcat I could understand why there might be a certain amount of resentment and even door-closing in your general direction.

Tom