Oh, nostalgia, nostalgia ! It isn't like it used to be ......
Having read all the names from the past; Roger Fleming, were you the third resident at the Cellar after Jack and Margaret King? I could remember Tony Rose, and Tony Deane and the Laymen, and was struggling for the third. And then there's all the other clubs - The Starting Gate in Wood Green was the first I went to in London, given directions from someone I met at the new Guernsey Folk Club in the summer of '65 ( suddenly I feel old...). This, of course, was back in the days when people talked in folk clubs, and if you sat at the back you could barely hear the performers, even someone as extrovert as Alex Campbell. The The Cellar, of course. Somewhere in my archives I have a cutting from a long-defunct Camden local newspaper "Artists, writers, poets, meet at the Cellar to hear performers like Tim Hart and Maddy Prior...." and in the photo there are empty seats everywhere and I think I can recognize Paul Stevens in the second row. Already well remembered the Enterprise, The Cut, BBC club, Islington, also there was an early reference on this discussion to Dave Lipson and Grotty Lottie's in Dalston Junction. I was there too. First time I ever heard anyone play a fiddle-tune on a guitar ( The Gants Hill-Billies ). Surely the club near Liverpool Street was The Peelers ? Jim Younger was one of the residents. Terrible amount of hand-rolled cigarettes around in those days, ruined a few performances, Sweeneys Men took ages to tune in their second set, too busy laughing, Amazing Blondel similarly rather incapacitated ( was it the hair ? ). Also anyone remember Free Folk ? Royal Free Hospital folk club down in the basement before the hospital moved to Hampstead in the late '60s' ? Ah, nostalgia. I played at the Royal Free Freshers Week with my barn-dance band a few years ago, and when I jumped off the stage to try to organise the dancing personally I was dwarfed by the 6-foot-plus eighteen-year-old women freshers !
Well, hullo Bonnie ( how's things in Cork ? ), Kevin, Dom -saw your niece at C Sharp last year, she's doing well.
Hullo to everyone !
The Cellar Upstairs still marches on, as does Islington.
Then there's the new clubs coming on, it seems like a revitalization is occurring, also a rise in informal acoustic sessions. The cycle turns with the seasons. All is not lost