Give the Devil his/her due. There is SOME justice in Diane's criticisms of folk clubs, and her endorsement of the criticisms implied by some of the Borfolk satire. And she HAS made a few humorous remarks in this very thread, giving the lie to accusations of a lack of humour. And she DID apologise for an unfortunate remark about the Guid Scots Tongue.

However -- given a choice between an informal singaround, with a range of performers good, bad and indifferent, and the output of "the music industry" or "musbiz" (to quote two terms from Diane's postings), I'll take the informal any day.

A modicum of "image and professionalism" is all to the good, but it can easily go to excess, giving the performance priority over the material. Although we're not peasants (nor the urban equivalent) in our local pub singing what we learnt from our families, we're closer to that than we are to commercial music.

BTW thanks for the prompt about the banjo. I was of course looking everywhere but the furniture at the top of the page.

Richard