"I have always believed that this garbage about what constitutes a folk song"
What caused the demise of the clubs, in my experience, is that people stopped going when they could no longer choose what they listened to when they set out for an evening at a folk club - it was certainly my case.
I attended a regular club and I helped to run another - no problem with either - it gave me exactly what it said on the label.
I made a point of visiting as many other clubs as I could to keep me in touch with what was happening.
Gradually, I stopped going to the latter when they began to be used as dumping grounds for singers who had nothing to do with folk song and just took advantage of the democracy of the folk scene to strut their stuff.
Night after night I left half way through the evening, not having heard a folk song.
I have no idea what kind of music you like or play Al, and quite honestly, I don't care too much - as your arrogant attitude towards the music I know to be folk from half a century of listening and working in the genre, suggests a total disinterest for and ignorance of that music and the people who follow it - it is exactly that attitude that emptied the clubs.
If my local greengrocer suddenly decided to sell frocks and call them vegetables, I'd look for another greengrocer - simple as that.
If I ever had any doubt about what constitutes folk song I could bull down any of the hundred or so collections from my bookshelf, or any of the few dozen researched studies of the subject.
We've a collection of a few hundred radio programmes we've horded going back fifty odd years by people who have bothered to get up off their arses and find out about folk music.
And most important - we have hours of recorded interviews of singers like Walter Pardon, Tom Lenihan, Mikeen McCarthy... and many others, talking about their songs and music and the importance it had in their lives and those of the generations before them.
Am I going to drop all this for someone who can't tell his folk arse from his elbow and can't even come up with a half decent definition other that "I'll call anything I wish folk music" - don't think so really Al - would you, in my position?
It seems that today's revival has changed from a group so enthusiasts who found a music and dedicated themselves to it, into a bunch of ego-tripping self-servers who have kicked their way onto the scene like a bunch of Punks kicking their way into a dance.
That is what your attitude exudes - not for me - I'll stick with what I know.
It is arrogance like yours that emptied the clubs, not folk music.
Jim Carroll