We ourselves have had past experience of running Folk Clubs. It's not easy, but generally, we did our very best to run them democratically,regardless of our opinions of material or performance. As we saw it, our club was a shop window: a vehicle. Not a personal medium for expanding our own egos and massaging those of a few others who frankly, did not need the kudos. I think our attendance figures reflected that. We gave stage space to ALL those who turned up on time (or pre-booked) or who asked in advance for a spot to play. We had no time at all for those self-styled Prima Donnas who turned up late, unnannounced, and then swagggered in expecting to be feted and fawned over. We did not give them a priority spot at short notice and at the expense of other good, solid, regular Club performers. We felt that if we did do this, we risked strangling the very source of organic,acoustic music.
In some circles, this stupid and prehistoric attitude still persists. If these same self-styled "Stars" were actually any good-wouldn't they be living in Laurel Canyon by now? Or re-issuing their back catalogue? Or recording their latest televised concert? Rather than just grubbing around in rustic backwoods venues late at night like the rest of us? Yeah, I think so.
It wont be the stylised, ironically Pork Pie-wearing Mid Atlantic groups of Kiddie Folkers who finally kill off the genre forever. With their cynical and nasally american interpretations of cynically-packaged machine-assembled PopFolk. Nor the gigantic manufactured ensembles of a dozen or so jobbing musicians grinding out abominations of traditional tunes for Radio 1 and 2 consumption. No. It wil be the few M.C's who, with their prejudices and favouritism finally spell out the end. There's only about a million times of mumbling the same tired old traditional dirge into oblivion, before the lights come up one last time and the doors close forever.
