Review: Fairport Convention

14th February, 7.30 at The Corn Exchange.

Looking over today’s Daily Mail (which I glimpsed as my homosexual immigrant lover used it to smear shit all over my kitchen and lower the house’s value), it appears that this ‘Broken Britain’ of ours suffers from an age-based division, separating the wheaty old folk from the chaffy (and chavvy) ‘yoof’. That may be the case, and I’m certainly not a qualified sociologist (then again, it seems nobody at the Daily Mail is either), but I do honestly think that an evening with Fairport Convention could strengthen the bonds between young and old.

For those not in the know, Fairport Convention are a loose folk group whose line-up has changed perpetually over the years, now consisting of a Richard Griffiths look-a-like guitarist, a man playing what appears to be a medieval banjo, a drummer who seems to have died months ago, functioning only by being zapped repeatedly with a cattle prod, and a fiddle-player who was fired as a Timmy Mallett impersonator for over-enthusiasm. My favourite was the bassist, who performed the most cringe-inducing Hendrix impression since that time Amanda Holden writhed around on the floor during the Britain’s Got Talent heats, whilst sporting a plectrum inexplicably secured to his head with blu-tac.

The average audience member was over fifty (the amount of people needing toilet breaks mid-song confirmed this) and over 90% of them appeared to be personal friends of the band. This meant that this wasn’t so much a concert as something more approaching the ITV series “An Audience With….”, except that I don’t recall Victoria Wood dedicating love songs to recently deceased “Archers” characters. In conclusion, this wasn’t a place that any self-respecting young person (except some Junior Mastermind contestants) would be seen dead.

But I loved it. The music was utterly bizarre, ranging from selections off their prog rock-inspired concept album Babbacombe Lee about a Victorian mass murderer whose execution failed due to poorly constructed gallows (including a synthesised fiddle improvisation) to a jolly number about a Shetlander who was hit in the face with a hammer. Fortunately, that turned out all right, because the vicious and unprovoked assault inspired him to write a wonderful fiddle tune. We were also treated to an eight minute long history of the ukulele, accompanied (of course) by five ukuleles and a man playing a washboard, and featuring two whole verses about George Formby and one about the success of the National Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (“Ukulele, you can have a ukulele, ukulele you can go far”). At this point I had to disagree with Bill Bryson’s judgement that “only the Brits understand skiffle” and conclude that anybody capable of understanding it can never have encountered rational thought.

That’s why it was great. The musicians know they’re not cool or arty (the fact that they selected Rammstein to represent the type of cool band they aren’t may highlight quite how uncool they are), but they were utterly, joyously, transcendentally fun. They’re fantastic at the music they do, and their fans love them for it. A few more young people in the audience and we could have been living in a utopian vision (the band claim to inhabit ‘a world without divorce lawyers’, which sounds pretty happy to me). So, next time they’re in town, cast off all notions of cool and catch one of the few bands left who think that the legend of the Holy Grail is appropriate songwriting material. Plus, this being a folk gig, you can always buy cheap and potent weed during the interval to ease you into the second half, and you’ll probably look and feel more normal than you would anywhere else.