that was me above, by the way.

well Pip, it sounds to me you're essentially describing a regulars' singers night. I still think that's a valuable thing. OK, it wasn't what you were looking for, and it's unfortunate that that's the first place you found. But you'd presumably heard folk music before, right? The stuff that made you go looking in the first place? So it wasn't like some be-all-and-end-all-experience: you must have known/guessed even then that there were other folk gigs doing different things.

Especially now, with blogs, with websites (like this one) it's so easy to see that there's a lot of multifaceted folk clubs out there. I don't think anyone these days could possibly dismiss folk clubs outright on the basis of one bad night unless they were out to do so.