The Cheerful Insanity of Me

Whittlesey was fun with Tyler's yesterday. It was pretty much exactly the same levels of chaos as at the clock's tour in the autumn, but at a festival.

Luckily the council had conspired to make the festival just as chaotic by forgetting to shut the road.

It's just a shame the festival seems to have lost some of the magic it used to have when I first went, but then the whole atmosphere of the place has changed. Every other shop's now closed making it feel strangely skeletal.

The first time I visited the place would have been for my first dance out with Gogs in 2003 for St George's day, where we danced outside the George pub in the market square with a few other sides. Admittedly, every time I visited that pub, it was crap, but it was also the main focus of the market square and it's now been standing there boarded up for a few years. One of many desserted buildings in what should be one of the main focal points of the village. It's turned from a quaint village market square to utterly miserable desolation. Surely someone must be able to do something with those buildings, even if they're just turned into flats or something?

The festival itself also seems to be getting a bit too big for it's boots too, which is unfortunate. Rather than being this friendly little village festival, it seems to have become full of it's own self-importance. A number of people have mentioned to me about sides that have been banned from Whittlesey. What's all that about then? There was even one point during the day, where Red Leceister processed out of town saying they'd just been banned. No idea what they'd done.

All in all, it's still a good festival and it was fun to go there with Tylers', but it just seems the festival needs to just take itself a little less seriously again.

Highlights: (Tyler's are around 1 min in just after Gogs)

(Direct link)

(via Peel Productions)

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(Direct link)

Yay! I like it when random videos of us appear on youtube, especially when they're of dances that seem to have gone well :-)

It's always odd seeing yourself on film. I'd never noticed how similar my hat was to the ears of a spaniel before and those shoe laces really are scarily pink.

Gog Magog Molly - Bunkfest 200918
Originally uploaded by dr syntax

It was interesting returning to Wallingford this weekend with Gogs. Last time I was there was 2006, the year before it collapsed due to funding issues, but it's nice to see the organisers have managed to pull the festival back together out of nowhere.

There were less sides around then before which was a shame. They don't offer as much for performing sides anymore though. The ceilidhs used to be free for us, but now they're only half price (except if your doing the interval spot when they're free).

I know a number of people who object to being invited to perform at a festival and then having to pay to see the rest of the festival when we've given our time for free. I can see there point, especially with places like Chippenham when they work you really hard for 2 days and still charge you £30 or £40 for the priviledge or work you really hard for 3 days a leave you no time to see any of the rest of the festival. However, it seems somehow different with Wallingford, as given the funding issues, I'm guessing it's more an issue of charging or the festival wouldn't run.

I do wonder whether this could have been releaved more by having more collectors out with the dance sides or encourage the dance sides themselves to collect. Helen and I were discussing this on the way back to the campsite on Sunday afternoon and wondered whether a prize for the side that collects the most like Ely has would help.

In terms of our performances, they seemed to go well, we even got a scream for "more" at the end of our ceilidh spot, which was cool :-)

There's some good photos of us dancing on Sunday here (including the feet at the top of the post)

As for other sides, Beltane were impressive (probably helped quite a bit by the power of their music), I especially liked the way they used pauses within one of their dances with all the dancers and musicians stopping until one of the dancers resumed the beat by hitting the ground with their stick. I personally felt they repeated things a bit too much though and lost some of their impact as a result. The pausing for example was wow the first couple of times, but after that it wasn't as unexpected.

Wicket Brood had a lot of power and interesting dances. They'd been given the other ceilidh spot and certainly made a lot of impact. They lost audience attention between dances as the forming of the sets seemed a little disorganised, but as soon as they started dancing again they got it back.

I was also impressed with the performances from the Heneghan/James and O'Gara Schools of Irish Dance. It was the Sunday performance I saw, and given how young some of them were I was impressed with the amount of confidence they had. Given how showy the Irish stuff is, it can look fairly rubbish without that and most of the child sides I've seen doing it have always seemed incredibly nervous, so it was nice to see this for a change.

Borderline (the brightly coloured ones rather than this lot who I've not seen yet) seem fun. I'd seen them a Chepstow, where they'd seen a bit of fun, but they seemed to have more energy here which meant they made more of an impact. Very different from most border, but it seems that when they're on form they're very dramatic. Probably worth keeping an eye out for them to see how they develop.

As for the ceilidhs, I didn't get to much of Climax Ceilidh Band on Friday night due to rehersing the interval spot and running off to see Warblefly, but they're normally good and the last dance was good. Toothless Mary on Saturday were excellent with endless supplies of energy, there were a few issues with people not being able to hear the caller over them, but people seemed to generally be having fun, so not a major problem. All in all, the ceilidhs were less well attended then the used to be (but then they used to be free to the Morris sides and their used to be more sides there, so perhaps that's only to be expected). Friday's seemed particularly empty, whereas Saturday's was probably a reasonable number of people given the space (it used to be overcrowded).

Didn't see many of the concerts, although Baka Beyond on Sunday evening were good. They had an interesting blend of celtic and african folk. However, the real highlight of the festival were Warblefly who, if anything, were even better than at Broadstairs. I got a copy of their latest CD, so they're be more about them soon, but for the curious have a link to their myspace profile.

All in all Wallingford is still one of the best of the smaller festivals and lot less tiring when you only dance with one side there.

Turns out I seem to have been missing a really good festival by having never been to Broadstairs before. It's got a lot more character to it than somewhere like Sidmouth or Towersey, which although lovely do seem to have a "mass produced" feel about them. They also don't have 10 hobby horses running around the town causing complete chaos, which Broadstairs does! :-)

Went up Friday evening and after getting the tent up headed over to the Friday evening ceilidh. I've never walked into a ceilidh to find all the sets back-to-front before (men on the womens side, women on the mens side), but it was consistent. Generally the Friday ceilidh was a very weak start to the weekend, not many people there and generally lacking in energy. I've not heard the Knifegrinders before, they didn't have a lot of drive to them, but that could be down to the audience. I think part of the problem was that 7.30-9.30 does seem very early for a ceilidh, the late night one on Saturday worked a lot better, as did all the late night spots.

On Friday the late night performance was by Mamienco, a French group mixing rock, jazz and gypsy music. They had a lot of energy and the pavilion was a lot more packed with much younger people than the ceilidh earlier in the evening, which gave it a much better buzz too.

On Saturday we were performing most of the afternoon at various places along the seafront. It was a nice laid back arrangement of dance between these times, here's a suggested starting spot, but we'll leave it up to use your judgement to move around spots. The one criticism I would have of that system is that they didn't include any details of when different sides were dancing in the programme, so you had no idea when to look around for them.

There was a short procession along the seafront to the bandstand during the afternoon followed by a performance there, which generally went down well, but not as well as the evening.

It was the torchlit procession that was one of the major highlights of the weekend. We'd been asked to lead it, so we were right at the front and the streets were absolutely packed with people. As it was dark we had the lights in our masks on and apparently as soon as the procession reached the bottom of the hill and turned onto the seafront, you could see our glowing red eyes bobbing up and down from the bandstand as we headed down that way.

As soon as we reached the bandstand, we found they'd changed the running order for the sides that they'd changed the running order for the sides which had been asked to do a dance at the end of the procession and we'd been moved from first to last. We got a good cheer at the end of that.

The performance nicely finished in time to get to the Glorystrokes ceilidh, who were good, but not as good as I've heard them play before. They only had one of their melodeon players (they've had 2 every other time I've seen them) and although it's the heavy metal electric guitar sounds that make them different they don't work quite so well without both melodeons cutting through it at the top. 2 hours did seem very short for a ceilidh and I could have happily danced a couple more hours afterwards.

Our second busking spot was on the Sunday morning and our dancing was generally a lot better than I've seen it in years. I was still buzzing from the Saturday evening and as it was our last day there was no need to save anything for later, so I was just going for it and I think a lot of the others in the side were doing the same. There was certainly plenty of energy flying around.

Loitered around for the Sunday evening, which was well worth it as the late night concert on Sunday had to be the highlight of the whole weekend. I'd never heard Warblefly before, but they had this amazing grungy folk rock sound. Was pleased to see they will also be playing at Wallingford, only to discover that they're concert is at exactly the same time as our ceilidh spot on the Friday evening, bother! I'm sure festival organisers shift through my brain to figure out the things I'd like so they can make them deliberately clash with spots.

All in all an excellent festival. I'm very tempted to try and go along for the whole week next year.

By the sounds of things we went down very well, so hopefully won't be too long before the Hunt get invited back again.

Looking at the Broadstairs programme, just spotted this

Torchlight Procession @ High Street

22:00 to 00:00

A hi-energy flaming spectacle of whirling dancers and music processing through the town

tbc

Weather Permitting of course!


Ceilidh @ Pavilion

23:00 to 01:00

Glorystrokes with caller Gordon Potts

Tickets £10

From barn dance to mosh pit...

Oh no! :-(

Although I don't actually know our dance programme for the weekend, presumably the procession involves all the sides there.

While a torchlight procession with the Hunt would be monumentally cool, it still can't compete with the Glorystrokes, so lots of rain on the 8th please.

Wonder if I can persuade the Hunt to do Thor's Hammer repeatedly until he gets the message (I may not actually believe in Norse gods, but it certainly seems to have the desired effect).

Having just got back from Ely, I should probably write up about Chepstow.

As small festivals go, I was really impressed. As festivals go it was wonderfully laid back, but still had some brilliant ideas in terms of the way it was organised.

I was particularly impressed by the way they allocated camping space for each of the performing sides (something I've never seen at any other festival), so you didn't have to worry about sending someone up in advanced to bag the space. You could just turn up find your area and pitch your tent as you arrived.

The general layout of the festival seemed to work quite nicely too. The daytime morris performances were all in town while the evening entertainment was all up near the campsite at the racecourse. This meant you didn't get the situation like you do somewhere like Sidmouth where your not sure whether to stay in town for the concerts or wonder up to the Bulverton for the ceilidh and yet you don't spend the whole weekend stuck on the campsite like you do with Towersey.

The procession was really well thought out as well. Rather than having the traditional long procession through the town, which ends up tiring out everyone who takes part and because sides generally keep stopping to do figures for the audience tend to bottleneck, they had a really short one on the bridge over the River Wye so that you processed from England into Wales and they spaced you out, so the team in front had nearly finished before the next one started.

Because I was out with Thrales, I missed the Friday night acts, so I'm not sure what they were like, but from what people were saying the highlight were 3 Daft Monkeys.

On the Saturday, I spent most of the evening in the Moondance ceilidh. I'd never heard them before, but was very impressed by the energy they had and how original they were. I'm not generally a funk fan, but when you put traditional folk tunes on top of it, it just seems to just work somehow and also given that a lot of ceilidh bands I've seen seem to either stick with the traditional folk or go down a more rock based path, it was quite nice to have something different for a change. Also, as the funk gives the rhythm a greater focus it really suited Roger Watson's calling style in the same way Boka Halat do. Will definitely be keeping an eye out for them in the future.

Wild Hunt aren't as into Ceilidh's as Gogs, so I failed to drag any of them along (although a few of them did turn up later), which in some ways also made a nice change as if I go with a large group of people I know I tend to dance with them most of the time (admittedly that's because I like dancing with them), but this was a wonderful opportunity to dance with complete strangers all evening. Admittedly, there were lots of familiar faces from IVFDF there as there was a large contingent of Exeter Folksoc (although I don't really know any of them) and at one point I was apparently even face to face with ladyofastolat and kingpellinor, although the internet being what it is, I had no idea it was them.

After the ceilidh finished I wondered over to see Seth Lakeman. Although he seems to be a fairly household name, I'd never heard him. He's certainly very talented and has immense amounts of stage presence, but it just felt like he was trying to hard to be mainstream pop and as such he didn't sound as original as he probably could. That said, although I wouldn't actively go and seek him out, but if I was at a festival where he was playing and there wasn't anything else that caught my eye I would be quite happy to listen to him again.

Stayed over on Sunday evening too, although the festival had finished so there was no more entertainment, but it did give an opportunity to wonder around the castle, which is well worth a look, as although it's in ruins you can still go up some of the towers and along parts of the walls.

To top it all off, even though we were in Wales, it didn't rain until we'd finished dancing.

In short, if I get invited back to Chepstow with any side, I'll probably be there like a shot.

This year seems to have a theme of dancing in the traditional regions, having already danced in Northumberia (rapper at DERT) and the Cotswolds (although admittedly that was rapper too rather than Cotswold).

This weekend sees me in the Welsh Border, actually being unoriginal and doing border this time with Wild Hunt at The Two Rivers Folk Festival in Chepstow.

We have a programme for the weekend, which basically just says we'll be dancing somewhere around here *waves hand unhelpfully over the full map* on Saturday afternoon and then doing some more on Sunday.

Which means that I'll spending Friday evening touring the borough with Thrales and then need to be at Paddington at 7.45 on Saturday morning *gulp*. Must get the bad idea alarm in my head fixed at some point, either that or invent a few extra hours in which to do that sleeping lark.

On Saturday Molly are off to sunny St Albans to dance as part of the festival there (link to details of the more folk related things).

In a rather uncharacteristic form of organisation I even know where we're going to be dancing (mainly because Helen sent out the details to all of us ages ago rather than because I did anything to make myself organised).

The day looks to be somewhat as follows:

• 10.15 am Procession from Bricket Rd car park to the High St via Hatfield Rd & St Peters St & Chequers St


• 11.15 am - 12.45 pm Mass display in the high street (we're 9th out of 13 in the running order)


• 1.00 pm - 1.30 pm Dancing by the Clock Tower


• 2.45 pm - 3.15 pm Dancing in Christopher Place


• 3.30 pm - 4.00 pm Dancing by the West Door of the Abbey


• 4.15 pm - 5.00 pm Dancing at the Fighting Cocks

For the first three afternoon spots we will be going around with Bedfordshire Lace and St Albans Morris Men (while the other sides distribute off around the town) and then we're with all the other sides again for the last spot.

Then we get to round the whole day off by going to the Stomp ceilidh in the evening (just to ceilidh, not to perform).

So, having just got back from DERT, 2 week's later, it's probably about time I finished posting about IVFDF

Saturday Workshops

( cajun, appellachian and dancing in wheelchairs )

Saturday Evening

( Fiddlegang and the Committee Band (briefly) )

Sunday

( Salsa, survivors ceilidh and aimless wondering around Exeter )

Overall Summary

It was generally a good festival this year.

If I was going to make one criticism, I would just say it was a shame Richard Mason was chairing again (his 5th time). Although, I'm sure his input must have been very valuable given his experience, it would have somehow been nicer if he'd taken a more backseat advisory role and let someone else have a go. I think one of the best things about IVFDF is how it offers the chance for anyone to gain experience of running it if they're part of a student folk group able to take it on.

Admittedly this will have happened anyway, as there will have been a number of other people on the committee and helping the committee who wouldn't even have been around last time it was in Exeter in 2004 (let alone the other 3 times he's chaired it), but given the size of Exeter FolkSoc, I can't help but feel that there must have been someone else both capable and willing to take on the overall driving seat. Then again, I've really no idea what went on and for all I know they could have twisted Richard Mason's arm into doing it.

Firstly, the big news: thethirdvoice has been offered a job, which she is probably going to accept. She's got another interview on Tuesday, which she is going to go to in case it is the greatest job in the world, but the chances are she'll be accepting this offer mid-week.

On Friday, we're off to Sidmouth for a week with Molly and then will be heading up to Mum's for the following weekend to see her before she head's back up to Penrith (she's been renting a house in north Devon for the past 6 months).

When we get back, I'll be moving offices at work. An obvious corollary of not being a librarian is not needing to work in the library any more. We had a handover meeting for the library on Friday and it's going to switch to being open and unmanned while I'm on holiday.

Also moving house hopefully at the end of August. thethirdvoice's new job is in Langley, Slough, so we are going to try to move there a soon as we can (quite lucky I didn't end up working in Cambridge really). Went to look at houses there yesterday and found a couple of potentials and we're going to try to claim one of them tomorrow morning.

I need to give a month's notice from a rent date for my current flat, which is at the beginning of the month, so if we get the Langley house sorted this week we should be able to move towards the end of the month.