The Archive

    I was stationed in Mt. Gambier in 1986 and thus missed the Adelaide show due to a malign combination of sundry work commitments and the tyranny of distance, however, I did have the consolation of attending this unexpected show in the Mount .Mount Gambier is a city of some 20,000 bods, situated near the Victorian border . Its a pleasant spot , nestled amongst a number of extinct volcanos , quite picturesque in its own way -but the number of Fairport fans it containeth is minuscule. About 30 odd to be precise, at least if we are judging by the turnout at The Barn and most of these were teachers from the local schools , not locals by any means .

       Australia is NOT the best place to Mount a nation-wide tour. There are huge distances between the capital cities once one gets past Melbourne . Its 800 + ks to Adelaide, 1500 odd k's from Adelaide to Perth ,a couple of thousand k's to Darwin and so on . There are not very many people situated in between. At one time it was policy for some minor league bands to try to make good use of the lengthy travelling time between the major cities by performing gigs in the country towns which stud the countryside every 300 or 400 Ks. Unfortunately for Fairport, ( but very fortunately for me ) the band adopted this strategy in 86. As a result the very sparsely attended gigs in Mt. Gambier , Murray Bridge and a few other places.

    Fairport were heading a double bill with the Bushwhackers as support. The Bushwhackers are something of an Aussie folk legend, been around since the Ark it seems and I guess most of the audience was there to see them. They certainly got a better response than Fairport, due mainly to song familiarity on the part of what passed for the "crowd " . Within a few numbers a portion of the audience were doing bush dances, egged on by the band's front man, and the cavernous Barn was ringing with the sound of stomping feet. Since the Barn can easily seat 500 people the dancing  did help to fill up the hall a bit.

    The Bushwhackers played a good set which was well received . However, a number of people disappeared afterwards, so Fairport faced an even smaller crowd when they straggled on-stage .I gave them a good few whoops of encouragement, but by and large the audience was pretty cool. The lads would need to prove themselves to this lot. No partisan crowd here by any means. I did not take any notes of the set list , but since the Fairporters have not been noted for their  set list variation in their latter years its safe to say they played a very similar if not identical set to the Dom Polski set list displayed above. This was probably a mistake in some respects.....

    This was the first time I saw Martin Allcock and Ric Sanders in the line up. In fact I'd not seen Fairport since 1970 at the Bath Festival and to some extent I'd lost interest in their activities since Richard Thompson and the Swarb had left. Nevertheless, now the opportunity to see then had arrived, I was most interested in what they were up to , tonight was a very pleasant surprise.
 

    It was magic.

---

   I was captivated by the playing of Ric Sanders . Multi instrumentalist Martin Allcock proved to be a top quality player on all fronts, Peggy , Simon and Dave Mattacks were as usual , just as great a bunch of players and funny bastards on-stage as I ever remembered them way back in the paisley coloured passages of time. The interplay between the band was exquisite. Relaxed as a pair of well worn old boots on-stage , for Fairport, there was no attempt to upstage the Bushwhackers by pulling out all the jigs and uptempo numbers. Sure, they did a fair portion of these crowd pleasers, songs both old and new . For me it was great to hear the oldies such as Walk Awhile and Lark in the Morning live once more, but the highlights were really the slow numbers , for example - The Hiring Fair  . My first exposure to this number, - I was smitten,, the lads tackled it with such restraint and finesse, I was in tears by the end. And then they played SLOTH .
BUGGER ME , YES !

SLOTH !!!!!

    But you can read about this if you follow the links below. 

Fairport Convention in the Mother Country

• Fairport Convention photo gallery
• Fairport at the Bath Festival 1970.
• The 8th National Jazz and Blues Fest 1968.
• Glastonbury 1971.

• Fiddlestix: the fanzine of the Australian Friends Of Fairport
• Fairport Convention mailing list FAQs

Main Archive.