If the Sidmouth admins can't figure out how to become a member of Mudcat it doesn't speak very well for their technical competence.

I would also expect anybody doing a job like that to have known about Mudcat and joined it ten years ago - it's always been the world's most active forum for the kind of music Sidmouth promotes.

This is rather like going along to your financial adviser with a clipping about your pension scheme from the Financial Times and finding the adviser has never read it.