Woody

Woody Guthrie, July 14 1912-October 3 1967

I'd planned to write something about this today when I heard Billy Bragg on Today earlier in the week, but in the end was writing it while listening to a wonderful Archive on 4 broadcast tonight.  If they're going to make it available, it'll be at this link.

It seems strange to be celebrating the "100th birthday" of a man who was robbed of so much of a century of life (including a number of the years he was actually alive), due to  Huntington's. and had so many hideous tragedies along the way, but it's certainly worth commemorating.

As a small child I remember my Dad playing "Take you riding in my car car" and "Hard Travelin'" on the banjo, and when I started listening to Dylan in my teens, of course, there was Woody.

Later on, I listened to music which was completely different, I thought - Billy Bragg, bard of the Thatcher era, evolved into thoughtful social commentator, and Bruce Springsteen, bellowing about the same period of Reaganomics and continually moving and learning....  But then, of course, Billy becomes the curator of the Woody Guthrie archive; and, of course, Springsteen stands with Pete Seeger and Seeger's grandson Tao Rodriguez to salute Obama (please, I pray you, don't click on the offered links; but do enjoy President-Elect Obama singing along at 3:18 or so) by singing This Land is Your Land.

I've no idea what Woody would think about all the Establishment recognition, given that he was once rejected from membership of the US Communist Party.  But he wrote the stories of poor people having a hard time, and he passed that on to other songwriters who influenced my generation, and then influenced the next generation, via the magnificent Indigo Girls, if P¡nk's Dear Mr President is anything to go by (join in at 1:44 or so if you're not up to people you don't know congratulating each other)...

RIP Woody. Thanks for the songs and the fury.

Folk festival funnies

A day at the folk festival yesterday - fabulous music, much better weather than I'd been fearing, bumped into some old friends and ex-colleagues... and found a completely new band, Genticorum.

The festival is usually good for a laugh too...

Here's the quite wonderful sculpture commission for this year - the devil playing the best tunes... People included for scale...

This year they'd also commissioned someone to do some retro-style cartoons on folkie themes... The world's least likely Superman

and a fab advert for the EFDSS...

May the Morris be with you.

It's also a great time for T-shirts. These two were probably joint runners up:


Yes, that's a heroically bad photo - it seemed so clear in the little window in the camera. The full text says "Give Blood. Play Rugby."

My favourite was one I didn't like to photograph (the text was on the front), but for those without delicate tolerance for swearing, it's here.

Lady Chapel

It's going to be a month for seeing sights and meeting and re-meeting people - part of the reason I thought this NaBloPoMo thing was a good idea... So, last night, Anna, Chris and Suzanne and I went over to Ely to see Show of Hands perform.

Yes, I know I've bored anyone who might be reading this about Mr Knightley and Mr Beer (and Ms Sykes) before; but I'm bending you gently to my will here (and that's a Phil Beer anecdote and a half...). And if you have seen them, you'll know why I go on about them...

They were at the Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral as part of their Spires and Beams tour.

If you haven't been to the Lady Chapel, it's pretty spectacular. It was also one of those buildings that Cromwell (Richard, not Oliver) knocked about a lot - all the friezes around the edge have figures with no heads, and none of the statues in the niches survive now - and I understand that it was the most vandalised/whatever-they-thought-they-were-doing of any chapel in England, because of the sheer numbers of 'idolatrous' statues in it. There's been some controversy about the new Lady statue (who does, in all fairness, look as if she's about to jump...); but I like her, and it's a beautiful space and I was very curious about what SoH would do with it...

As ever, my pictures of the event are a bit awful. I have a history of bad SoH pictures and this was never going to be any different (I don't like this camera much and didn't manage with success with the previous two!). I spent a lot of time trying to take a picture of Phil Beer who was looking even more than usually like Rosso Fiorentino's Angelo Musicante but it didn't work... So here are two pictures of what happened during the set with the lighting during The Dive

and during Roots

They'd tailored the set to the space, and there were some wonderful moments - Down in Yon Forest was one, the new Steve Knightley song Poppy Day another (drawing parallels between Flanders field, the poppy fields of Afghanistan and small-town heroin-dealing in the West Country in a way that only he could, really). Steve's slightly scary version of Widdecombe Fair (sung from from the back of the chapel) was another, but one I'd seen done acoustically before. But Phil Beer did a solo acoustic combination of an Irish tune blended with a cover of Bruce Springsteen's Factory, from the centre of the chapel, which was wonderful; and everyone had a good singalong to Roots, Cousin Jack and Country Life - all seemed a little subdued because, slightly, we were in church...

The only combination I don't like of SoH's (in the last god-knows-how-many-years), which starts with The Train and improves rapidly thereafter, appeared before the interval, so there was a small 'Oh thank goodness we've got that over with...' factor for me ... I'd have loved to hear The Setting/Mary from Dungloe in that space... But we got The Crow on the Cradle, and blimey, they were good.

I don't think it's the best Show of Hands gig I've ever been to - I think that will have been at a festival. I think that sometimes their respect for the place, and what had happened there, almost overwhelmed their musicianship; although the music was always superb.

It did whet my appetite for their gig at the Junction on November 26; but I'll be at this at the time; and it was a really interesting experience, watching three superb musicians exploring a space; it was certainly everything I'd hoped for from the evening... And I also came out with a copy of Phil Beer's wonderfully titled solo album Rhythm Methodist, which I'm intending to play today...

Morris, Molly and the Mummers

I have knitting to blog. Quite a lot of knitting, in fact. But yesterday I went to Ely Folk Festival with friends, and there were colourful things... From the colour of the sky on these photos you can tell the weather was... changeable. But it's a small festival, so when the heavens opened, as they did twice fairly spectacularly for about 10 minutes' each, there's enough tent space to cower under.

First the Morris - women's morris, in fact. There was a display by one side of men's morris while we were watching, but I was chatting to a friend while that was going on. Here are some women and girls from the Young Miscellany Folk Dance Group.

Then the Gog Magog Molly - I've blogged them before (although possibly not explained that the Gogs are the names for the nearest things to hills we have around Cambridge, and are related to Wandlebury Hill Fort); a mixed side entirely in mad colours.

And which traditional East Anglian song were they dancing to with their squeezebox and violin, you might ask? Erm... The Lion Sleeps Tonight (and if you follow that link, you'll be reminded that they don't make videos like they used to. Thank God.)

Some of the Morris sides are seriously scary. Here's one of the Witchmen (who advertise Morris from the Daarkside) with his regalia. The top hats with pheasant feathers, painted faces and great big sticks are quite threatening. (The sunglasses and umbrella somewhat less so.) Didn't see them dance this time - but saw them in Ely market place a couple of years ago, and they were impressive.

After the morris, there were the Bradshaw Mummers, performing a hilarious version of Robin Hood. This guy was the Crusader who was vanquished by Robin Hood, and did a cod Monty-Python French-type-person accent...

I'm not sure who the guy with the camera was, but he was interviewing Phil Beer a bit later - am hoping the festival will have something on their site if it was more than the local news...

OK, on to the music. Highlight of the afternoon was Martin Simpson; who turned up onto the stage immediately after the previous act, strummed a couple of chords and was ready to go about 90 seconds later...

Great stuff - blistering guitar and great singing and a combination of traditional English folk, bluegrass, bayou and anything in between...

Second up in the evening were Mawkin:Causley, presumably slightly affected by Jim Causley having had a "blonde moment" (after acquiring a new hairdo and bleach-job in the morning, he'd then left his accordian at home by mistake; although he did inform us he had a full array of haircare products with him instead)... not that you'd tell by their performance. Brilliant high-energy stuff, and I'll be back at Ely in October when they're on at the folk club. Two full-length tracks available at the above link...

And then the highlight of the evening, and probably the reason the festival sold out in advance for the first time in its history. I have something of a tradition on this blog of including execrably out-of-focus photos of Show of Hands, and now that they're headliners and performing after dark at these things, this streak seems doomed to continue - Phil, Steve and Miranda in blurry glory.

Hardly needs saying that they were fantastic. They always are. One new song, one solo song from Miranda, and a mix of old and new which will probably have converted the three and a half people who didn't turn up for them in the first place as well as making their usual following very happy...

Until it got dark I did do a bit of knitting - here's a Firestarter sock, in this time's Rocking Sock Club colour The Incredible Shrinking Violet. The club pattern was also by Yarnissima, but after I'd knitted a bit, it didn't appeal, so I reverted to one of her earlier patterns...

I was wearing one pair of my knitted socks under hiking boots yesterday; and then in the middle of the night was so cold that I got up and found a blanket and another pair of socks to wear in bed. On July 12th. Summer??? The weather's better today - let's hope all that dancing has done some good...

Pottering around...

It's been a strangely busy week or two. I thought I'd be a lot less busy at the end of July this year - the Cambridge Folk Festival has gone by without me this year, due to Kevin and Kate's imminent new addition to the family; and there was this book I wanted to read last weekend - three dribble-cloths and a baby bib's worth, as it turned out.

No spoilers - I know Nic for one hasn't finished it yet - but I enjoyed it immensely.



This weekend I'm knitting up samples for the course I'm teaching next week - it was extremely good fun last year. (There are still places, so if you're at a loose end Wednesday-Friday next week, do follow the link and sign up!)

Have also been finishing the latest Unbloggable Project and contemplating what to do for the next one...



And as a random but pretty image, I was given a phalaenopsis as a present from friends, in honour of something else I can't blog about yet... Looking it up, it turns out to be a Moth Orchid! Nice. I love moths, apart from the tiny minority of UK moths which enjoy yarn as much as I do... one of these appeared on the window on a very rare pleasant evening a couple of weeks ago, and I saw one of these fluttering around near work last Wednesday evening...

And now I need to go and proofread Mrs R.'s written directions for Chart F of MS3...