This thread keeps wandering off topic so people can score points on info that is barely relevant. Can I just remind posters that Joe started the thread with amateur performance on the 'folk scene' albeit, the American folk scene; although Joe didn't actually restrict his point just to cover the American folk scene. Most of the posters are from the other side of the pond, but most of the same principles, I would contend, still apply. Joe will soon put me right if I am wrong. Therefore I would ask that we refrain from adding in professionals and poets.

The 'folk scene', aka the second revival this side of the pond, takes very little other than the songs themselves from the oral tradition that existed before WWII. One thing it does take is that singers who perform in public learn their songs before they sing them. This idea of sitting there with a folder or something similar in front of them is relatively new on this 'folk scene'. We 'finger in the ear loners' (whatever they are) think in general this is a retrograde step and we do our best to discourage it. Maybe we are wrong. Convince us!