That's the crux of the problem.

I used to attend a company party regularly, and after several years of bands that didn't show, or showed but didn't live up to various elements of the contract ("Hey Bob, it says bring our own amps!""Dude, it always says that. They'll have some"), or showed but were absolutely horrible - after dealing with that for a while, the party eventually switched over to DJ music. As was explained, this meant the music could go longer, would be consistently good (in a "if you consider top 40 good" kind of way), and the money saved could be routed into other areas of the party.

Unfortunately, the parties with the DJ DID tend to be better.

However, from a Mudcat point of view... I just can't see the same being true for a large party with folk music. Of course, at a large folk party, half the crowd would break out guitars and drown out the DJ strumming along to whichever song they thought they heard...

M