"To do otherwise [make food and drink what Conrad considers "affordable," i.e., free, perhaps?] is stimply to use music as the bait for profit taking and I dont think anyone would agree that to be appropriate."

Well, of course!! What else?

Why would Bob Clark hire folk singers to sing at his coffeehouse if he didn't think that they would attract more customers. Or John Timmons at Pamir House? Or Stan James at the Corroboree? Or Eric Bjornstadt at the Queequeg? Or why would Club 47 in Boston hire Joan Baez to sing there before her breakthrough at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959? Or why do you think San Francisco's Hungry i hired people like The Kingston Trio or The Limeliters?

And why, pray tell, is that "not appropriate?"

Why should anyone hire a theater or concert hall if they didn't expect, at the very least, to make back through ticket sales what it cost them to rent the hall in the first place?

And who wants to stand around among the cow pies and sing in an open field?

Conrad, you said up above that you are a conservative Republican. How do you reconcile your political position with the idea that people should not seek profits from their livelihoods? It seems to me that this "give it away for free" idea of yours is usually labeled (by conservatives and right-wingers) as "socialist" and therefore an abomination in the eyes of a vengeful God.

Don Firth