The Cheerful Insanity of Me

As I've just got back from Ely, it seems an ideal opportunity to post a photo that's not at all related Molly, so here's a photo of me and some of the other members of Blackheath holding 2 sticks on our heads and going "moo", as is traditional in the cotswold village of Iddington.


Blackheath Morris, Boxing Day 2009
Originally uploaded by quitekate


You obviously don't get the moo, because it's a photograph and they're not that clever.

(via bagrec)

and the honour goes to...

*carefully opens large golden envelope*

...Tyler's Men strangely enough.

We'll be at Whittlesea Straw Bear on Saturday at the following spots

10.45 - 11.45 at the War Memorial with Red Leceister and New Rose
12.15 - 12.45 at the Market Place with Northampton Morris and some side called Gog Magog whoever they are
1.45 - 2.45 at the Crown with White Rose and the Kings Morris
3.00 - 3.30 on Station Road with Peterborough Morris, Old Glory, Rutland and Stone Monkey

So, Morris a Life with Bells on finally found its way inside the M25 and so I finally saw it with a big group of Blackheath/Dacre/Greenwich people after doing a few dances outside the cinema.

One of the best things about Morris Dancing is how open it is to ridicule. There's something very special about the "OMG! Morris Dancers" reaction you can get from an unsuspecting crowd. The film plays on this to hilarious ends.

The plot centres around Derecq Twist, a Dorset tractor mechanic who's life revolves around Morris Dancing and his run ins with the Morris Circle for going against the traditions.

As with all comedy, it wouldn't be anywhere near as funny if there wasn't an ounce of truth in it. Although, there are a lot of open-minded welcoming individuals within the morris world, there is also a lot of pretentiousness as you get with anything "traditional", and this just makes a complete mockery of it and traditional social organisations as a whole. There was something very masonic about the portrayal of morris dancing in the film, which just went to emphasise this.

To top it all off, they even had a Cambridge professor of folk dancing analysing the goings on in very academic way at various points in the film. The fact she reminded me of one of the tutors I met while I was there, just made it all the more funny.

It was good to see Wild Hunt's cameo, even if the fame does appear to have gone to their heads a bit recently.

However, the highlight of the film has to be the performance by Orange County Morris, which is a brilliantly funny combination of traditional and modern dance.

Overall, it's somewhat like Spinal Tap, but with sticks and hankies. Well worth seeing.

This Saturday is Halloween, which means it's traditional for trickMorris dance or treating.

Wild Hunt will therefore be dancing around the Borough and South Bank area, starting at around 2pm at the George Inn, Borough High Street.

This weekend it's Dance Around the World at Cecil Sharp House in Camden.

Wild Hunt are there on the Saturday running a workshop 1pm - 2pm and then doing a performance at 4.30 pm

Will probably head up there for the whole day and take in a few of the other workshops.

In January 2003, I fell into the folk world by discovering Gogs (that's a long story in itself). These things seem to work, that you take up one folk thing and people keep suggesting you go to others until your diary has no room for any more. Being a student, one of the first things to be suggested to me was IVFDF and inspite of being fairly adamant I didn't have time to go, I ended up at my first IVFDF in Sheffield that year and got my first taste of Border in one of the workshops (no idea which team ran it now). It was in that workshop that I first heard about Freaks in the Peaks.

On getting back to Cambridge, I promptly joined their mailing list eager to give it a go and that's about as far as I got.

...until this year when all the Gogs got enthused at about it by Daisy and it suddenly occured to me that I should do something about the fact that I've been lurking on their mailing list for 6 years intending to go at some indetermined point in the future. The upshot of which was I finally went to one last weekend.

In some ways it's got a lot of the social side of IVFDF without the hecticness (although it was probably as tiring if not more so). On the Friday evening we met in a local pub and there was a bit of a session, but it was more just sitting around socialising and then we headed back to the village hall for indoor camping.

The Saturday started with a bit of a walk around the area with some of Stone the Crows whilst everyone else was asleep before returning to the village hall for breakfast. The morning then was run as a workshop teaching most of the dances to be performed over the weekend. The dances are fun with enough room to play around with them a bit when your dancing, but not too complicated so you can pick them up from the run throughs in the morning.

At some point during this I discovered what happens when you write this much about folk on here, when bessiebell correctly identified me purely from the mention of 2 sides I dance with. Presumably one of which must have been Thrales, but I don't remember. I was more taken aback by the "I dance with x, y...", "You must be Owen" of the conversation. Definitely seems to be the year for randomly bumping into LJ folkies.

After lunch we went and danced them all out at a couple of pubs in the village before heading back to the hall for a communal vegetarian (mainly vegan) meal for anyone who wanted followed by an informal session/dancing/sitting around/doing whatever took people's fancy until the early hours of the morning.

The weekend was rounded off with a walk around the peaks on Sunday with a pub/lunch/dance spot part way around.

Which nicely left me in an exhausted daze for the trip up to Penrith. I'd managed to hitch a lift up the M6 with bessiebell who was heading that way, but I can't have been the most riveting of company as I'd seemed to have completely forgotten how to speak English by that point.

All in all an amazing weekend, can't wait for January. If anyone else fancies coming along it's likely to be near Holmfirth on 29-31 January. After that they're off down to Cambridge (Granchester in fact) on 16-18 April. Details here or go here to sign up for their mailing list.

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This is clearly what I'm missing by not having a TV.

No idea which side it is on there though. It was apparently Moulton Morris (and if I'd actually paid attention to the link I followed to find it, I would have known that, oops)

Sorry, no, I lied, it's more morris dancing...

Blackheath are dancing out on Thursday evening in Ladywell starting 8pm at The Ladywell Tavern moving on to the Jolly Farmers at around 8.30.

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.

As I've said previously, I tend to buy quite a few second hand CDs. I had this idea that I'd start posting reviews here, the upshot of which is that rather than ending up writing lots of reviews and boring you all, I end up with CDs slowly piling up next to the computer, so it's probably time to start rectifying this again.

That said I didn't buy the CD currently on the top of the pile and second one isn't second-hand, so that first sentance is complete rubbish and I probably should throw it out the window and start again, but we'll carry on and see where this goes instead.

Anyway, top of the pile is a copy of "Silkie" by Frock which I picked up from bagrec at the first Blackheath practice I went to. Hands up who's heard of them then? No-one? Oh well, there's a surprise. I hadn't either.

Frock were a psychedelic folk-rock group in the late 70s presumably based somewhere around SE London given the last track. The album does have a similar feel to it to some of the work of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span and is generally well executed throughout. Instrumentally the album is dominated by traditional instruments (particularly fiddle) mixed with electric piano, which works really well as a combination giving it the whole folk with a contemporary edge feel.

They also benefit from a really strong vocalist and on many of the tracks (not the instrumental ones obviously) they're able to let her just take the center of attention.

In short, this is an album composed of 9 excellent folk-rock tracks. Apparently, it's so good it's worth £137 (at least that's what someone recently paid for it on ebay), but I'm not sure I'd go that far.

And if your not satisfied with the first 9 tracks, they round the album off with something a little different. Namely this:

The Blackheath Morris Stick Throwing Dance (mp3) (via bagrec)

As the name implies, it's an audio recording of morris dancing, namely Blackheath performing their own special version of "Young Collins" to a backing of Frock.

It's utterly excellent! The world clearly needs more audio recordings of morris dancing...