Interval, and outside for a cigarette and a drink of rum and to listen to people complaining about one thing and another. Is it possible that there are people who are even more dreary and boring than me? But this is where the story really starts ...  
  
     Fairport Convention did not explode on to the stage, nor did they ignore the audience. None of that superstar hype about this lot .No power trips, no demonic-possession or I'm-just-so-fucking-evil that-im-gonna-hammer-youse into-the ground-like-a-nail fantasies. They just said hello in the friendliest possible way and started in on The Hexhamshire Lass.  
        Perhaps nobody who has not been interested in folk music for some time really understands what is involved in playing traditional songs on electric instru ments, because they are unlikely to know what these songs sounded like before they were electrified. We're all used to it by now but by God it was a shock at first .Arguments are still simmering or about whether or not it ought to be allowed, for those who want to use folk music as a hobby like stamp-collecting, or as a personality prop, have fairly well lost the game by now. The music will go on growing no matter how many admonitary hands are raised.  
       Dave Swarbricks antic posturing, his struts and swaggers, combine with his magnificent fiddling to produce the most delightful and unselfconscious stage presence I've ever seen. Swarbrick is the most effusive of the group on stage, balanced by the dignity of Trevor Lucas and Dave Pegg. Dave Mattacks has a fine chimpanzee act that I remember from last year, but this year I couldnt see him for cymbals. And Jerry Donahue just sort of stands there most of the time.  
       The first three pieces were all traditional: The Hexhamshire Lass, the fiddle tunes The Hen's March Through The Midden and The Fourposter Bed, and the harrowing broadside ballad Polly On The Shore, which contains some of the most moving lines in English traditional song: 
 

And many's the thousand times I've wished meself at home,  
'All alone with me Polly on the shore.  
She's a tall and a slender girl,  
With a dark and a roving eye;  
And here am I lie a-bleeding on the deck  
And for her sweet sake I must die.  

      Trevor Lucas' restrained and sensitive singing in this song was perfectly complemented by the onomatopoeic violence of the instruments.  

       Probably the most immediately impressive of Fairport's achievements is their precision in playing traditional tunes. Difficult changes of time are negotiated with offensive ease. Their unison phying is a remarkable accomplishment; Dave Pegg is the only bass player I've heard who can play fiddle tunes on his instrument. His face occasionally contorted into the involuntary grimaces that some musicians show when they have to play with particular speed and precision, but Jerry Donahue and Dave Swarbrick just grinned and capered all the way through it, the heartless unfeeling bastards.  
      The American tunes Brilliancy medley and Cherokee Shuffle had the interesting additions of Dave Pegg on mandolin and Dave Mattacks playing bass with his hands and bass/drum and hi-hat with his feet. The Brilliancy medley featured a few wrinkles that even Eck Robertson never thought of.  

It came as a surprise to many people in the audience when Trevor Lucas introduced his wife, Sandy Denny. Last tour she was advertised, her name in fact writ larger than Fairport's, and she didn't show up.This time the promoters modestly did not advertise her appearance at all. Nicer that way, I think. I knew she was coming myself, so somebody must have been spreading the word.

       She started off with the grim and fearful ballad of Matty Groves, which drew appreciative opening applause from the surprisingly 1arge number of people who recognised the first few bars.  
     Sandy Denny's voice is a notable instrumental addition to the band as well as a vocal lead. She has power, control and considerable expressiveness. A recent visitor to this country (I nearly wrote our shores) was billed as simply the best female singer in the world. Well, Sandy Denny is not that simple. 
   
       The most impressive single piece in the concert was the stunning 20-minute Thompson -Swarbrick composition Sloth. The words of the song are strong in a way not often found in contemporary songwriting - a virtue that seems to be Richard Thompson's particular glory; that is, they are both reticent and dramatically dense. There is a tremendous story in the song that is told only in brief flashes of frozen action, like isolated stills from a film .Movement occurrs through the instrumental solos, which are nothing short of hair-raising.  
      This band has the rare ability to build up an instrumental tissue slowly, layer by layer, playing with total absorption and relaxation, as if the song had to be slowly discovered as it was played, as if it would only reveal itself if one waited patiently for it to loom up out of the mist. I cannot think of another band that could carry off a completely unaccompanied bass solo lasting about four to five minutes without losing either the song or the audience in the process.  
       It was a little annoying that many of the audience, perhaps thinkng they were at a jazz or a bluegrass concert, insisted on applauding each instrumental solo as if it were a circus act .They meant well, but the song tends to suffer if the solos are regarded as breaks or displays of virtuosity.  
        Sloth is a brilliantly conceived and contolled piece of music, and I think I have never heard anything so totally absorbing as this concert performance of it. 
 
       Fairport Convention played for about two and a half hours. At the end of it all, Dave Swarbrick very politely asked everybody to stand up. This was a very clever move because people will not stand up in a concert hall if they can help it. Ask them to dance and only a few exhibitionists will do so, because it's necessary to stand up before you can start dancing. But if everybody is already standing up, the battle (for hearts and minds) is already won.  
       Naturally, everybody stood up, and Fairport started on a medley of dance tunes. And the crowd went wild, folks!  

       Hot sweaty steaming bodies undulating beneath the tropic moon. It was marvellous to see the young people enjoying themselves so much. Everybody seemed to be smiling or laughing, clapping their hands or jumping up and down. A few drugcrazed hippies removed articles of clothing, probably transported in the throes of their fevered visions to Sunbury or other scenes of abandon. It could never have happened in the Dallas Brooks.  

      For an encore they played a couple of old rock songs, eg.  That'll be tbe day, which kept the excitement and the dancing going nicely. But all too soon it was time to go and we all had to go home tired, but happy.  

     Fairport Convention is a rare group indeed. There's nobody like them.