Woodstock - and beyond

(from 2011)

My daughter grew up on folk music. She didn’t have a lot of choice – I drove her to and from school for years, and then to work after that, and on the car stereo cassette player were all my folk albums. She got top grades in classical guitar, but then had to do all grades anew in rock guitar, because that’s what her students want to learn! But normally she plays acoustic folk, and her living room wall is covered with 4 string, 6 string, 8 string and 12 string instruments. Question – how many instruments does a folk singer want?  Answer – one more...

But she and her husband suddenly suggested – why not join them at a folk festival? A folk festival? Er – you mean like us, your elderly creaky parents, join you? You mean like Woodstock? Hippies? Mud? Drugs? National Guard? State of emergency? Pictures of respectable father being carried off by police in tabloid newspaper? A piece of doggerel came to mind – For I’m a happy hippie, with paint instead of clothes. Unless the weather’s nippy – I tried it once, and froze!

But I was assured that their kind of folk festivals were the most respectable events you could possible attend. And so it was. Although in one sense it was almost like a throwback to 40-50 years ago – with the same people now more much sedate. Now the men were of portly build (a lifetime of real ale causing slipped chest syndrome) with bald heads and pony tails as a kind of compensation, and the women were earth mothers wearing what appeared to be tents resembling Joseph’s Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. And kids – lots of kids – doing face painting, circus skills, and joining in on the choruses.

So after a couple of biggies watching stars from the folk firmament in relative comfort, a couple of weeks ago we settled for a weekend in a field at a place you would never have heard of even if I did give the name away – for a Folk and Ale festival. And we camped. The kids (my daughter and son in law are in their thirties, but they are still kids to us) had something resembling a tepee for them and the dog. We had the latest in frame tents with numerous rooms, proper camp beds, cookers, kitchen sink – and mod cons like eReaders. All that was missing was the chandelier.

Putting up the tent was – interesting. I won’t try and describe the process, but there is a scene in Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat which give the flavor. But the biggest challenge was our latest acquisition – the toilet tent. The girls had drawn the line at tramping through a muddy field in the dead of night to the delights of the communal Portaloos, so our very own toilet tent was the height of luxury.

But getting the thing up in the wind, and stopping it blowing away over the fields when we had got it up, required all hands. And it looked so easy in the diagram.

Once installed and pegged down against the gale, two things came to mind. First, there was that scene in Jurassic Park...

And then, many years ago I had the responsibility of accommodating many thousands who came to an international event. It included a tent and trailer park, with several thousand on it. In the days before health and safety legislation killed off most things, we installed a series of toilet tents on the ridge of the hill complete with state of the art chemical loos, and rigged up a lighting system with power from the local farm. All was fine until night fell, and the power was switched on. And there, silhouetted against the sky line... but I digress...

The sleeping arrangements for us were actually very comfortable. The only problem after the first night ended way past our usual bed time, was the following morning’s dawn chorus. One little girl of about 10, who sang sweetly with her father the night before, decided to get up early – and our tent was just by the swings in the park ground. She had obviously seen the musical Oliver in very recent memory and was enamored with it. From about six in the morning she swung back and forth and trilled her way solo through the whole score. Well, at least she was happy.

It was a good weekend, and for us, the highlight was the sing around – where everyone had the opportunity to have a go.

What is it like to sing? As a teenager back in the Cretaceous age I used to sing a bit. Back in the 1960s, a dear friend had a serious accident and was hospitalized for about six months – so my working partner and I put together a tape with all sorts of double tracking effects to “cheer her up”. I have recently been warned that a tape of my impersonating Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps singing Baby Blue (as featured in the film Hot Rod Gang) is still out there, and what is it worth...?

But after several decades of quasi-musical silence, we attended a folk club with daughter and son in law and were gently encouraged to try. The first time was absolutely terrifying. In one life I was used to speaking to large crowds – as an Australian would say, no sweat! – but to face 30 folkies with my other half and try and croak our way through an old Welsh ballad – please can the floor open up and please can we disappear... But then I heard some of the others. And that gave me hope.

So it got better. My voice may still sound like bathwater escaping, but who cares! A certain recklessness comes with time. And our recent sing around at the Folk and Ale festival was a most enjoyable evening.

I was going to do my party piece – a song called Coyote written by a Native American Peter La Farge – but it is not exactly something you can sing along to. (My daughter keeps threatening to put me on YouTube as the yodelling pensioner). But that night, everyone wanted to sing, to join in, for it to be a truly communal event.

So I switched to the old Merle Travis’ number Dark as a Dungeon (one of the first records I ever bought was the Folkways recording of Bob de Cormier and Peter Seeger doing it) and it went down a storm – even if I say so myself. And then, second time around the old standard that is so well known no-one ever seems to sing it – We Shall Overcome. A nineteenth century hymn slowed down and turned into a twentieth century union song, and finally with a very slight tweak into a civil rights anthem – with Martin Luther King picking out the words, if not singing it. I could manage the chords – and the audience drowned out my inadequacies.

My other half wowed them with Delia Murphy’s Spinning Wheel (fresh from our 78 rpm collection), and got everyone going with the Mingulay Boat Song.

So – the times - are they a changin’? Can music change the world? Religious and patriotic music can certainly have a big effect on people and move them – for better and sometimes for worse. And some music just makes you stop and think. Perhaps Tom Lehrer summed it up in his parody, Folk Song Army. Great last verse:

So join in the folk song army,

Guitars are the weapons we bring

To the fight against poverty, war, and injustice

Ready!  Aim!  ....Sing...?

Whatever – it does make you feel good.

Even if a little bit hoarse!