Fairport Convention
The Drill Hall, Lincoln
5th February 2014
The Drill Hall, Lincoln
5th February 2014
In the middle of a nu-folk boom it’s interesting to be reminded of the heritage of British electro-folk by a band of the continuing quality of Fairport Convention.
In case you haven’t noticed we’re in the middle of one of those periodic folk revivals. Guitar sales are up, every pub in town has an open mic night and each new day brings reams of e-copy about new and exciting young singers all promising to be ‘the next’. And of course for a few fleeting moments they are indeed ‘the next’ and they bask momentarily in their ‘nextness’ until it all comes crashing down and they wake up to find they’re just the previous.
They’re a mixed bag these nexts and it’s important to know which ones to favour. We’re careful to despise the Mumfords and Noahs and Johnny Flynns of this world while enthusiastically championing the John Lennon McCulloughs. Is this fair? Possibly not, but hey, a little bit of class war never hurt anyone. It gets a bit tricky sometimes though when Wikipedia doesn’t list any family or educational background. Do we despise these people or not? Inevitably we find that the guidelines have not been updated and in the absence of a clear editorial mandate it’s left to the good old rules of thumb that we’ve evolved over the years to suit encounters with strangers in all walks of life – such as “Do they talk posh?” “Do they eat hummus?” and “Are they called Rupert?”
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