The story about Dylan and van Ronk, which Mark Ross relates above, reminds me of a floor singer at one of my local clubs whose performances are usually interminable and, frankly, not very good (I'm trying to refrain from using the word 'appalling'). He can actually sing traditional songs reasonably well - if he puts his mind to it - or rather he's not the worst singer in the room if he sings trad. songs. But he tends to choose very long 'contemporary' songs which usually make me think to myself, "what the f**k made you go to all the effort of learning that?!"

Occasionally he has been known to write his own songs (I'll draw a veil over my opinion of these efforts!). One of these self-penned epics, which seemed to run to 100s of verses, was about floor singers who are not very good and go on and on and on without knowing when to stop! I can only conclude that some people have no self-awareness, or sense of the effect that they have on others, whatsoever!