Sidmouth Festival Diary (Thursday)

 It turns out that there is Another Shop, which sell Everything Except Tent Pegs.

I do, however, refuse to spend £10 on a water bottle, particularly considering what I propose to use it for.

Also need a Travel pillow. I yield to no one in my admiration of Ewan McColl, but last night my ruck sack was literally my pillow and in the morning I had a stiff neck.

Whoah! There is a Festival App. [You can filter "all concerts" or "all events featuring men named Martin" and click "favourite" by the ones you want to go to.] That makes much more sense than scribbling in the programme book and circling things and crossing things out. 

(“Oh you remember the good old days when we scribbled in the programme book")

Boo! Young’Uns and Granny’s Attic clash!

Sitting by the beach, counting humans and seagulls. The humans are winning. 

I know I am at a festival because people whose names I can’t remember have already started saying "hello Andrew". We haven’t reached the stage of people who I have never consciously met before saying "hello Andrew". 

Louise told me that there is an old proverb that goes “more people know Tomfool and Tomfool knows”

The first official gig is the Bootleg Beatles. This is a presumably so people can argue in the pub about what folk music is. 

If anyone says that they ain’t never heard no horse sing no song I shall be forced to call the folk police.

The Bootleg Beatles are, obviously, great fun: the sold out Ham Tent all singing along to She Loves You and Here Comes the Sun. Someone like Andrew Hickey can probably tell us how accurate their performance is, but to my Beatle -loving ear it was about as a close to the recording as you could get (which is to say, rather closer than an actual Beatles concert would have been ).

I first started listening to Dylan because he was friends with the Beatles and first started listen to Woody Guthrie because he was Dylan’s last idol and first started listening to Martin Carthy because darnn it there must be some English folk music as well, so definitely the Beatles are okay to start a folk festival with. 

I did find the act odd, though, The first half they are in high collar suits and mop top wigs, giving me the sense that I was watching someone cos-playing the Beatles cartoon. In the second half, George was in his denims and John was in his white suit and Jesus beard: but he was still making acerbic “rattle your jewellery” type gags. Obviously, none of the later material was ever played live in front of an audience. “This is one we once played on roof” explain "John".  "Paul" does his “just the boys …. Now just the girls” thing in Hey Jude. The singer [possibly Miles Frizzell] has McCartney's mannerisms and stage-presence down pat. I was particularly impressed at the way he channelled Younger Paul in the first half and Slightly Older Paul in the second. 

I suppose we were watching a recreation of a reunion that never happened. There is almost nothing better than the ‘aaahh….aaaahh….aaah” in Twist and Shout. 

Caught the end of the Middle Bar Singer having a sing-around at the Anchor. I sang a song about a dead horse. Several people sang silly songs I ought to learn for myself; particularly the one about the cucumber and the one about the ice cream van.