Some very good points made. On the subject of music stands I must defend them. Firstly any good music teacher will advise learners to use a stand, and many top pro's request or bring a music stand on guest nights. A music stand properly used should make mo difference to your enjoyment of an open mic night. But as a few people have pointed out plonking big folders on it and then searching for the right piece does take time and annoy people, including hosts like myself. Also much as I agree it's the onus of the performer to be well practised and have the right music, if needed, ready and be tuned up etc, but as a host we can 't know beforehand if someone hasn't had the sense to know all that. Personally we do try to advise people like that once we've seen it, to be better prepared.

But before you go blaming all this on 'newcomers' we have a few professional performers at our club, who variously do not have their guitar out of it's case, then spend valuable minutes tuning it, often retuning again between songs, one duo hardly ever have the right music ready and waste time again on that. And we really can't do mich about that without riskng offending some delicate egos! As I said to a visiting host from another Club recently "it really is like trying to keep a classroom of 5 year olds happy at times"

It's not the glamour and fun it might appear to be running a busy folk club, I do it because I love it but it is hard work. So on behalf of us who often get the blame, I appeal for performers to come as ready prepared as possible, an average two song spot really shouldn't take more than 8 minutes, you'd be surprised how many 'good' performers go way over that! Perhaps Folk Clubs need to become a bit more professional, but would that still be 'folk' ?