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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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FESTIVAL SPECIAL: FAIRPORT'S CROPREDY CONVENTION
Cropredy, Oxfordshire, UK, August 10th-12th 2006
Part One
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| Well
try as we might we just couldn’t resist the
lure of the bucolic folk-filled time warp deep in
the heart of rural North Oxfordshire’s wonderful
green and pleasant countryside. And as true slaves
to our art this year we’ve come for the full
three days of beer-filled capers, frolics and festivities.
|
 |
| And
thanks to Serge and the limitless Whiskyfun review
budget we’re here on the Festival site amongst
‘Nuts
in May’ campers and cash strapped caravaners
in what I can only describe as the biggest fuck-off
recreational vehicle I’ve ever seen –
a sort of Sheraton
suite on wheels, with ample accommodation for
both Reviewer and Photographer, and Jozzer who’s
here as assistant chef and critic, and his moll
Trizzer, who’s here purely for the fun. |
| A
pity then that the Festival started (“Hello
Cropredy”) with P
J Wright, a distinguished member of the West
Midlands musical mafia that also features Dave Pegg,
Steve Gibbons et. al. |
Ric Saunders with Little Johnny England |
Wright
was supported by “squeezer” Gareth Turner
(accordion) and “scraper” Guy Fletcher
(fiddle) both members of Little Johnny England (the
name says it all) the local folk rock band for which
he sings and plays lead guitar, and by ‘friends’
fiddler Ric Saunders and songwriter Peter
Scrowther (who, if you ask me, has a lot to
answer for). |
| Time
was when a good old folk song was about the nasty
brutish and short universe of the noble factory
worker or his match selling fair laydee. Now it
seems it’s a sort of Daily Mail dirge decrying
the fact that “everything’s made in
China now” (even the songs if you ask me,
because they certainly all seem to sound the same)
and that some wicked evil-hearted men have taken
all our factories, honest and true – why even
our pension funds aren’t what they used to
be. Add to that some simply awful Ralph Mctell style
[Editor’s note: steady on Nick, you can’t
start on Ralph this early] faux historical ballads
(“It was back in the winter of 1637 that I
sailed on the East Kilbride steam packet”)
and you can understand why I retired for an early
aperitif, to the pleasing sounds of Feast
Of Fiddles opening their set with that traditional
scraper’s ditty, Led Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir’.
We enjoyed them with a Tanqueray and tonic as their
breezy tunes were blown across the field to our
moorings. |
|
Steeleye
Span's Maddy Prior and with Peter Knight (right) |
| We
returned replete (excellent choucroute garnie Serge,
with some of your lovely Alsace wines and Munster
cheese) for Steeleye
Span, who for some reason I had anticipated
being a frightful disaster, this poppy face of electric
folk having been totally off my musical radar (apart
from that dreadful Christmas song of course) since
I last saw them in 1970 something. How wrong could
I have been? I confess they did play a few real
stinkers, like the unconvincing Gracelandesque ‘Seagull’,
‘London’ (a dire follow up to the hit
single ‘All around my hat' – which needless
to say was the final encore) and a bizarre ‘The
troubles of old England’ played in twelve-bar
boogie style (very fitting). But these were exceptions
in a well structured, well played and well sung
set. Peter
Knight was outstanding on fiddle, particularly
in his duet with Maddy
Prior on ‘Betsy Bell and Mary Gray’
and I was particularly impressed with drummer Liam
Genockey who injected a real sense of pace and energy
as they worked their way through tunes like ‘Van
Diemen’s Land’, Tam Lin’, Long
Lankin’ and ‘Cam ye ‘oer frae
France’ But it was the handsomely proportioned
hip swinging Prior who stole the show as she shimmied
and gyrated around the stage, her exotic hand movements
driving Jozzer into a perspiration soaked fantasy
fuelled frenzy. And she sang very well too. |
| We
enjoyed, or should I say endured Friday’s
opener (“Good morning Cropredy”) Shameless
Quo from the comfort of our mobile condominium over
some wonderful chocolate tasting Galapagos coffee
and ‘citronnier’ cake. ‘Rocking
all over the world’ and ‘Sweet Caroline’
was more than enough, so we went shopping in the
once-pretty market town of Banbury instead, marginally
less depressing than listening to a tribute band
to a band that has long since been a tribute band
to itself. Scholars may be interested to know that
Banbury was accurately described in the nineteenth
century by the following verse: “Poor town,
dirty people, built a church without a steeple”.
Well Banbury certainly isn’t poor today; with
the arrival of a motorway connection to London and
Birmingham in the 1980s it’s become a prosperous
dormitory town. But it is a shocking victim of the
British urban disease of shopping centre blight,
with charity-shop and building society dominated
streets, and a semi-derelict 1980s precinct leading
in to its dismal twenty-first century successor. |
| Our
return was greeted by Then Came the Wheel, a highly
accomplished group of session musicians who sounded
like a highly accomplished group of session musicians.
They were followed by ‘The Guv’nor’,
Ashley
Hutchings and his latest band, Rainbow Chaser,
which we had all looked forward to as a potential
high-point of the day. Sadly it turned out to be
a low. Over long-introductions, painfully over-written
songs with tortuously contrived and naive lyrics,
perfectly sung and performed but oh dear me, that
song about Nick Drake (‘Given time’)
nearly had me reaching for the RV keys. Luckily
things perked up with the arrival of The Deborah
Bonham Band. She’s the baby sister of the
late John, and manages to sound like a cross between
Janis Joplin and her brother’s former colleague
Robert Plant. Her band, joined by pedal steel ace
P J Cole, are tight, rough and rocking (her drummer
is Humble Pie veteran Jerry Shirley) – and
the only weak moment was when she sang Led Zeppelin’s
‘The battle of Evermore’, which famously
featured a duet between Plant and Sandy Denny, which
just doesn’t work. She’s at her best
singing songs like ‘Devil’s in New Orleans’,
‘Black coffee’, ‘Jack past eight’
(yes Serge she’s a whiskey girl) and her encore
‘Rock and Roll’. If her CDs sound anywhere
near as good as this then you should go out and
buy one. |
Ashley Hutchings and Deborah Bonham |
|
Frank
Skinner in the shade of the WF RV (left) - John
Martyn (right) |
| Unfortunately
a delicious lamb tagine kept us from Flook, winners
in the ‘Best Group’ category of the
BBC Radio Folk award. And before them we missed
Frank Skinner introducing Fairport Convention, to
receive a Gold Disc for Liege and Lief, which was
also named as the 'Most Influential Folk Album of
All Time' at the recent BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards
(Frank, by the way, had chosen to eschew the luxuries
of the VIP area and camp with ‘the people’,
pitching his tent, with some difficulty, in the
shadow of the Whiskyfun RV). Which meant that we
resumed our seats at about 8.15 for John
Martyn. Readers may wish to refer to my earlier
review of Martyn at the Shepherds Bush Empire
in May before going any further. Regrettably I don’t
have a great deal to add. Barely coherent, playing
well within his former abilities, one paced and
formulaic, with nothing to detain the audience who
started to drift away at about 9.30. If there was
a high point it was probably Ben Harper’s
‘Mister mister’ (which you can hear
on The Church with No Bell), but in a weekend crammed
with glorious nostalgia this was but a sad reflection
on a distinguished past. |
| Fortunately
enough people stayed on to give Graham Goldman’s
10CC
a decent hand. I still cherish this band’s
first couple of albums. They gave a new definition
to ‘painfully overwritten and tortuously contrived
lyrics’, full of in-jokes, knowing references
and musical wit. “Bollocks pop music written
by advertising men, sneered Jozzer, sedate in his
fishing chair as he sipped discerningly at his seventh
pint of ‘after dinner’ cider. The ‘ad
men’, Lol Crème and Kevin Godley, have
long since departed, whilst Eric Stewart no longer
performs live. So this 10CC is Gouldman plus some
long time Strawberry Studios collaborators and superb
vocalist Mick Wilson. Do you remember how many great
songs they wrote? The band were like a hit machine
and we were played the best of them, ‘The
Dean and I’, ‘Donna’, ‘Wall
Street shuffle’, ‘Art for art’s
sake’ ‘Silly Love’, and the huge
hit that I always felt marked their nadir, ‘I’m
not in love’. And Gouldman also reminded us
of his pre-10CC work by running through compositions
such as ‘Bus stop’ and ‘Look through
any window’ (recorded by the Hollies), ‘No
milk today’ (Herman’s Hermits) and ‘For
your love’ (the Yardbirds). But in the absence
of the heart and soul of the band neither pedigree
nor almost perfect performance could really lift
what seemed to an almost soulless affair, and as
we left to the final bars of encore ‘Rubber
bullets’ (“We all got balls and brains,
but some’s got balls and chains”) I
couldn’t help thinking back to a fantastic
night watching them perform ‘Une nuit a Paris’
way back in the … well you know when. - Nick
Morgan (Photographs by Nick and Kate. Frank Skinner
photograph by Jozzer.) |
FESTIVAL SPECIAL: FAIRPORT'S CROPREDY CONVENTION
Cropredy, Oxfordshire, UK, August 10th-12th 2006
Part Two
|
| Saturday
mornings are always a good time for mature and sober
reflection (“Good morning Cropredy”
– “Why don’t you just fuck off?”
replied Jozzer, head stuck in the oven as he tried
to light it for lunch) particularly. You know, three
days of this finger-in-the-ear over earnest yet
ale-addled holier than-thou-folk malarkey might
just be a bit too much. But damn it, we’re
here for the duration, and unlike the poor sods
who don’t yet know that it’s going to
pour from about midnight ‘till the time they
bundle their dripping tents and soaking sleeping
bags into their cars on Sunday morning, we’re
at least living in luxury. So we sat back to watch
Jozzer and Trizzer create an impossibly complex
(and most delicious) tapas lunch, and waited for
our guests to join us as the sounds of Cockney comedian
Richard Digance drifted past us in the wind. |
| A
few hours later, following an amusing territorial
spat with a social worker called Brian from Matlock
(after a good lunch and a bottle of sherry it really
isn’t worthwhile coming the Gerrard Winstanley
with Jozzer) we pitch our chairs and settle in for
the duration. Same crowd, same faces. Our friends
in the Pork Pie club are just behind us, eating,
errr…pork pies. Tankard Man has his spot to
our left – he’s been spending his time
doing some watercolours – and of course tankards
are de rigueur decoration for the field –
as are stupid hats a-plenty. |
| Did
I mention the burly man in the frilly skirt? Add
to this piratical dogs, the occasional cat, and
the Kitchen Krew, who in addition to their children
and pets have their sink, cooker, freezer and even
a burglar alarm, and you’ll get the picture
that everyone seems pretty much at home. Even us.
Hang on! We’re sitting in exactly the same
spot as last year too, and the more I look the more
I recognise the people around us. Have we become
institutionalised too, trapped in this rustic backwoodsman’s
retreat, a safe-house from the harsh realties of
the twenty-first century, with its hose-pipe bans,
hospital waiting lists and humourless traffic wardens? |
|
King
Pleasure and the Biscuit Boy |
| Anyway,
due to our extended lunch we’ve missed Dave
Swarbrick’s Lazarus (Dave almost missed
it too, having got stuck in Denmark due to that
other little harsh reality that was going on at
our airports), but I can report that they sounded
rather nice from a field away, and went down very
well with the sherry. By the time we arrive Birmingham’s
own King
Pleasure and the Biscuit Boys are half way through
a rip-roaring high energy take on 1940s and 1950s
jazz, blues and swing. Great for a party but actually
a little wearing, a little too bellicose and certainly
a little too long. The King was followed by Dervish
– a seven-piece traditional outfit largely
from County Sligo, fronted by singer, bodhran and
bones player Cathy Jordon (who is “out of
Roscommon”), who have apparently “been
waiting seventeen years to play at Cropredy”.
They are certainly a very talented group of musicians,
with several ‘All Irish Champions’ amongst
them (apparently this is very good) and a host of
awards and plaudits for their performances and recordings.
Well – l’d better get this over quickly.
This simply didn’t work for me – despite
my affection (as regular readers will know) for
Irish folk music. I found Ms Jordon’s ‘kooky’
pixie like mannerisms both contrived and irritating
in the extreme, and the woops “come ons”
and yells unconvincing and superfluous. The ‘sets’
or tunes were good enough but hardly out of the
ordinary, some suggesting a desire to capture some
of Clannad’s faux Irish commercial success
(I note that Dervish’s website talks about
“opening the door to the Far Eastern market
…” – see what I mean?). And I
won’t mention the Cher song. |
| Former
Squeeze front man (and co-writer with Chris Difford)
Glenn
Tilbrook got the tough pre-Fairport spot and
pulls off what can only de described as a blinder
(he later returns to play three songs with Fairport,
and in ‘Tempted’ produces one of the
high spots of the whole weekend). What’s more,
he’s quite evidently enjoying himself just
as much as his audience, if not more. And as the
occasion deserves he gives us a real crowd-pleasing
set, with a big injection of songs from the Squeeze
back catalogue and a nice selection of his own solo
material from his two albums The Incomplete Glen
Tilbrook and 2004’s Transatlantic Ping Pong.
|
|
|
|
| So
from the Squeeze days we’re played ‘Annie
get your gun’, ‘Tough love’, ‘Pulling
mussels (from a shell)’, ‘Up the junction’,
‘When the hangover strikes’, ‘Slap
and tickle’, ‘Black coffee in bed’
and ‘Take me, I’m yours’, played
on an acoustic guitar with great gusto, and sung
with that wonderful soulful voice (“No, I
can’t sing ‘Cool for cats’, its
an octave too low, I tried it once and it was crap”
he tells the audience). And on ‘Black coffee’
he gets the audience to fill in the “doop
do do, do do do do’ bits, with remarkable
success. In fact he’s got them eating out
of his hand. He amuses with Cornell
Hurd’s ‘The genitalia of a fool’,
and his own homage to masturbation ‘Reinventing
the wheel’, and ‘Hot shaved Asian teens’
(which according to one review I read “paints
the dark portrait of a man who is trapped in a Daliesque
nightmare during the day while his nights are consumed
by dreams of hot shaved Asian teens” –
Hmmmm). He’s thoughtful with compositions
like ‘Hostage’ and ‘This is where
you ain’t’ which apparently harks back
to divorce and a painful separation from his children,
and he simply showboats his way through Hendrix’s
‘Voodoo Chile’, complete with an extended
guitar behind the head solo (no picture I’m
afraid Serge). It was simply a tour de force –
cometh the moment, cometh the man. |
| And
then of course cometh the three hours of Fairport
Convention that most people seem to have been waiting
for with bated breath for around twelve months.
And having reviewed them twice on Whiskyfun over
the past twelve months I’ll keep this short
and simple. The Photographer’s friend Chris
Leslie sang very well and some of the band’s
harmonies were so good that I thought they must
have been using tapes. Ace vocalist Chris
While joined and sang the Sandy Denny parts
on ‘Cajun Woman’, ‘The Deserter’,
and ‘Who knows where the time goes’.
She also stayed and added very soulful backing to
Glenn Tilbrook on ‘Tempted’ (I’ll
say it again – one of the highpoints of the
weekend – thanks Glenn), with Martin Allcock
on keyboards. And they played the very nice ‘Untouchable’
from Transatlantic Ping Pong. Ric Saunders is a
hugely accomplished fiddler who manages to inject
a few unexpected Soft Machine moments into his traditional
repertoire, and he excels on his big solo in Ralph
McTell’s ‘Hiring fair’ which merges
seamlessly into a Saunders/Nicol instrumental of
‘Summertime’. ‘Jewel in the crown’
(woops – I thought it was called ‘We
are a proud land’) is brought controversially
up to date with a mention of Iraq (phew –
hot controversy!). We’re spared too much of
the historical nonsense – I suppose it’s
almost mandatory for Fairport to perform McTelll’s
‘Red and gold’ that famously “ill-judged
and poorly researched slushy dirge about the Battle
of Cropredy Bridge in June 1644”, and I have
to confess to rather liking Chris Leslie’s
‘I’m already there’ about explorer
Admiral Sir George Back, whose Arctic adventures
are commemorated in a window in Banbury’s
ugly church. And before we knew it was Fairport’s
regular finale, a typically hysterical version of
‘Matty Groves’ (might be time to change
this one, boys) and that show-stealing encore, ‘Meet
on the ledge’, which we did. |
 |
 |
And
as we folded up our fishing chairs for another year
and carefully tidied away our rubbish (unlike those
who chose to leave much of the field looking like
a refuse dump – there’s simply no telling
with these middle classes is there?) the heavens
opened and the rain began to fall. Back in the dry
comfort of the luxurious mobile mansion “one
last nightcap” followed “one last nightcap”
to the accompaniment of that path breaking album
‘Liege and Lief’, Squeeze’s greatest
hits (well remembered Jozzer) and bags of Mumbai
Mix. |
|
Next year? Surely not? “Time to move on”
said Jozzer as he folded his soiled cooking whites
– probably not a phrase often found in the
Fairporter’s lexicon. - Nick Morgan (Photographs
by Nick and Kate) |
Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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There's nothing more down there... |
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