Diane - re the 80s: lots of Thackrays & Hardings and not-over-gifted singer-songwriters about indeed, to judge, not from attending, which I didn't do v much that decade, tho occasionally to Cambridge Crofters, a traditional club [& still don't much], But I was thruout the decade being sent records for review in the Guardian, TES, ED&S, Times, &c, for all or which I was regularly reviewing at the time. I only ever bothered to review the traditional ones, tho, in papers where I could pick my own to fill a regular column, & the specialist journals soon learned only to send me traditional, knowing that was where my knowledge & tastes lay. The point is that I received lots - all traditional, enough to keep all those outlets going: & they, obviously, will have been made by performers who were simultaneously getting enough club gigs to make a living. Flicking thru my press cuttings file for the 1980s, I find reviews of Peter Bellamy, John Kirkpatrick, Boys of the Lough, Roy Harris, Dick Miles, Helen & Roger Watson, Martin Carthy, Watersons, Jez Lowe, Dave Burland, Arthur Knevett... & that was just a 2-minute flip. All these must have been finding folk clubs where the traditional was welcome to be able to keep going at all. So why couldn't you?