Jim Carroll
I expect to here the songs I have been listening to for the last half century alongside new songs created using the forms used to create the songs I have become used to.
That isn't a hard definition, Jim. You can't expect every club in the country to have their own mini Jim Carroll sitting in the corner issuing his stamp of approval. I'm afraid that some of them have Musket or Big Al sitting in the corner. What gives your voice more authority than theirs?

I should be able to select the music I hear by what it sounds like, not by what somebody chooses to call it,
Perhaps you should, but you can't. As Howard has patiently pointed out to you "folk music" has had a far wider and less well defined meaning to the majority of people who use it than you would like. This has been true for a very long time, quite possibly since before 1954. I'm afraid you can't reshape the world to how you want it to be. The Singers Club and Court Sessions, despite not saying in their names what they did, lived on their reputations. ake a little time and find out the reputations of clubs you might visit. Sometimes you have to go beyond SOUP and read the list of ingredients on the tin and ask for other people's opinions.

My impression of what is happening today came from a quick thumb through was is on offer today - much reduced, very little tradition-based and including everything I wrote.
I would have given up bothering but this intrigues me. Are you actually saying that a venue in London that describes itself as a folk club is offering heavy metal as part of the mix? Could you give me a reference?

but never (in my hearing) in a folk club
So folk clubs (back then) weren't really reflecting what traditional singers did?

I doubt if you'll have the Mudcat stalker on your back for being insulting!
Arrogant little prat.

I've always believed your club to be worthy of respect - it's you own expressed attitude that has undermined that opinion
We'll just have to wait and see what affect that has on attendance figures. My only attitude expressed in this thread is that your contention that traditional and traditional form music has been largely driven out of UK folk clubs does not accord with my own experience and that, as someone deeply involved with folk music in the UK now (not 14 and more years ago) I am in a better position to know than you. Why that should make the Lewes Saturday Folk Club any less worthy of respect, I don't know.

In forty years,I have never, ever, not once, at all heard anyone sing an Elvis song in a folk club of any sort size or description. Ever.

Dammit! I really have got things to do.