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"Also, do give performers the credit of not having such desperately fragile egos that they are going to "burst into tears" if they happen upon a lone critical comment on a folk discussion board. It's terribly patronising. They're big grown-up people, not ickle kiddies."

Depends on the performer. For some it will roll off their backs; others find the endless samey barrage of sneering and abuse they receive on certain folk message boards dispiriting and upsetting. I know, because they've told me. It's not an intrinsically more informed or appropriate stance for you, Crowsister, to decide that these people ought to be able to take a bit of criticism and abuse because of the career they've chosen, than it is for others to defend them. Especially as, in the folk world, the boundaries between the artists and the paying public are not nearly so strongly delineated as they are in many genres. These people are not some remote "artists" shifting "product" - they are real people. We have a pint with them, we might put them up after a gig. They (and their families, and their partners, and their kids) might be our friends.

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