do you remember your first festival?

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 02:26 PM

My first festival was Cambridge 1976. I had never camped before so took pot noodles. My 'friends' laughed so I didn't eat them with the result that I got so drunk that I spent a lot of the festival asleep in the market area! I didn't go to another festival until 1993 when we went to Whitby for a couple of days during folk week.

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: PercyBysshe
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 02:34 PM

The festival formerly known at Fairport Convention's Annual Reunion in 1984, and the t-shirt still fits (just).

Fab festival - I was 19 and didn't drive. A friend's parents dropped us in the camping field on the Friday (yes there was just one) and collected us on the Sunday.

My main reason for going was Steeleye Span, but also there were the Oysterband, Pyewackett, Richard Digance (!) ....it was wonderful, and the sun shone (unlike this year!)

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 02:50 PM

GUEST,Sminky - thanks for the Weeley link, it cleared up one mystery for me. I have often thought that I saw Pink Floyd doing a full orchestral Atom Heart Mother at Weeley, but I now realise it was Barclay James Harvest I was remembering. (Atom Heart Mother was at Doncaster Top Rank that same year, I think)

But weekend tickets £1.50! And yes, I really did have to save up for mine.

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 03:20 PM

Thinkin about it , first Folk Weekend wsnt really a festival but was a EFDSS weekend at Pontins , Weston Super Mare Spring of 1965 when I was getting into Blues Whistle but hadnt really started singing Folk - Didnt stop one of the locals putting my name down at the Singaround WITHOUT telling me ! Talk about a Baptism of Fire !!
Made a complete Pigs Ear of 'The Coal Owner and the Pitmans's Wife' and never looked back !

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 04:57 PM

Cropredy (Fairport Convention) 1989.

It was OKish and Steeleye Span on the Friday sounded good to my young ears (Would probably hate what they played now!)

Glastonbury the next summer was something else! Think that I was lucky that I managed to be at the last 'hippie' (traveller) festival there.

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 07:55 PM

Met my husband-to-be, a Sidmouthian in 1972, so gradually got into Sidmouth Festival after that. They only knew about "the dancing" and we'd walk up the Knowle Drive and peep between the trees and bushes for a free view, while my very much younger sisters-in-law-to be went to the Hobby Horse Club in the Blackmore Gardens. I rooted out the other music myself, and we went to concerts in the Beach Store and the Drill Hall.
My first whole weekend camping Festival would have been Killin Festival by Loch Tay in one of the most beautiful parts of Scotland in about 1999: I went every year until sadly it ceased to be a few years later.

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: Joybell
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 08:21 PM

I love these threads, too. Thank you I-dont-know.
Nariel Creek, Victoria, Australia. Late 1960s. We slept in a beetle Volkswagon beside the creek. I remember driving along the highway thinking that every hitch-hiker must have been heading there. They weren't. It was a small festival then. The dance in the local hall was a high point. Fairy lights in the dark bush and the old wooden hall shaking with the dancing of a hundered feet. The Nariel Creek Band with their button acordians, drum kit with South Sea Island sunset, and a piano.
Cheers, Joy

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 08:43 PM

G'day Joybell,

Round about then (1966/7) I was working on Murray 2 Dam in the Snowy Mts Scheme ... living at Khancoban ... just over the border from Corryong and Nariel Creek. I was aware of the Nariel Ck Festival ... but working 6 days a week and long shifts. I did get down to Corryong on Saturday nights for Con Klippel's bands (really ...) Old-time dances in the Corryong Hall ... but I never managed to get to the Nariel Creek Festival!

I had heard of planning for what became Australia's National Folk Festival ... during stopovers in Melbourne, between dam construction jobs in Tasmania, ACT and the Snowy ... but I didn't get to a National FF until Adelaide (South Australia) in 1971. That was far more low-key than all folk festivals have become since ...

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: Bugsy
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 12:58 AM

Stevenage 1965, A one day, one off, festival. And get the lineup!
The few I remember were;

Bill Monroe & the Bluegrass Boys
Bill Clifton & the Echo Mountain Boys
Tom Paxton
Derek Brimstone
Rick Norcross
I think there was a group from up north. The Tannahill Weavers springs to mind.
and some old dude in a cowboy suit who played Country on guitar and one of those miniature harmonicas that you hold inside your mouth!

That day changed my whole outlook on music!

Cheers

Bugsy

Oh, and Bill Monroe played a request for me (The Orange Blossom Special)

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: Ralphie
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 02:35 AM

First festival?
1974/5? Barnsley Eastertime.
James and I were invited by Dave Burland. Camped behind the pub (The Cut??)next to an Australian couple named Bruce and Sheila. I'm not joking!
It was bloody freezing! The landlord of the pub took pity on us poor campers, and we were allowed in at 10am into the bar! I seem to remember his daughter distributing drams of Drambuie!
Highlight of the weekend?
Doing a support spot for Martin Carthy, on the Monday afternoon.
Barnsley Civic Hall!

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: Wolfhound person
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 03:43 AM

1st Norwich FF - 1970. Stewarding, working with Alex Atterson. Guests - Nic Jones, Peter Bellamy, Sam Sherry (I think), Noel Murphy.....
Dancing in The Barn.....morris men with rhubarb stalks......

Earlier than that....being forbidden to go to Isle of Wight festival by parents 1968 or 9......

Paws

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 04:54 AM

GUEST,Gail - if you remember, BJH took FOREVER to set up (not surprising, I suppose, with a full orchestra behind them). They played ONE piece, which was fantastic, so they played it again.

I got a summer job that year to pay for the trip. If anyone ate or drank at Charnock Richard services on the M6 during the summer of '71 - CLEAN YOUR TEETH NOW!!!

I had my money stolen on the journey home. Luckily, my mate had some luncheon vouchers so we didn't starve.

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: GUEST,Morris-ey
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 05:02 AM

All Folk Around the Wrekin 1974

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: Fidjit
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 06:41 AM

Cambridge '72. Steeleye Span Sephan Grapelly Diz Disley. Bought my concertina from Neil Wayne

Chas

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: GUEST,Sean O'Shea.
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 08:17 AM

First Cornwall festival in Wadebridge 1973.
Brenda Wooton.Charlie Bate.Martin Wyndham-Read.Headington Quarry.Mervyn Vincent.
Fish and chips for lunch and tea.Paradise Found.

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: theleveller
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 08:44 AM

Whitby in, I think, 1965 with my friend, John Wardell, now sadly deceased. It was an amazing thrill as a young lad of 16 to be taken under the wing of such nice people including Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick. I couldn't go into the pubs in those days but joined in sessions on the pier and the beach.

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 15 Sep 10 - 09:31 AM

The last of the 'old' Liverpool Folk Festivals, I was on a ship in Birkenhead at the time [1970?]. Saw Bert Lloyd for the first and only time, but the highlight was Shirley & Dolly Collins. I fell in love then and there with Shirley [still am, not that she knows it].

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: GUEST,JennyBean
Date: 28 Apr 22 - 11:10 AM

National Jazz and Blues Festival, Windsor Racecourse 1966, moved from Richmond and run by Harold Pendleton of The Marquee. Had another one in 1967, but Eton Rural District Council had a lot of local complaints and the bands had to turn the music down, which didn't please some of them, or us, for that matter. Not much jazz about it though .... subsequently moved to Sunbury (just up the road), then Plumpton racecourse, finally, to what became Reading. Pretty much the same time, IOW (3), Stonehenge and The Windsor Free. Brilliant. Not much folky stuff, if that's the thread .... Sorry !!

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 28 Apr 22 - 11:54 AM

how did I miss this thread when it started?

A friend took over a folk club in 1995 & I went along - WOW, a whole new world! A couple of years later I went to my first festival in his spare tent, sleeping on a thin mattress, I only remember the discomfort of sleeping one inch off the ground. Our folk club was booked for a concert & my friend handed out his preferred version of Wild Mountain Thyme so everyone sang the same words.

I have fuller memories of the 2000 National Folk Festival, my little rent was almost overwhelmed on the 2nd & 3rd nights when latecomers put up their tents far too close - first one had a peg under my bed & he snored! I just realised I could have probably kicked him to shut him up. 2nd had a peg so close to my entrance I had trouble getting out. But this meant I met a famous performer who was camping nearby & breakfasted with him & his partner for the rest of the festival. We became friends & pics I later took of him are on wikipedia.

I was very impressed by a shanty singing friend who had left his program in his tent, so "glanced" at mine & when I later wanted to check what I was planning to see,recited everything I had marked! I was also impressed by the shanty concerts & singing sessions. It was also the first festival where I took my camera & I have since attended every NFF (apart from 2020 & 2021) plus 2 or 3 other smaller festivals each year (except for 20 & 21!) tho I gave up camping some years ago & new prefer on-site caravans or hotels.

I still spend most of my time at singing sessions & singing workshops, & only attended 3 concerts at this year's National, & I take lots of photos of dances & kid's workshops. I really enjoy watching young kids participating in tunes, songs & dances.

sandra

Subject: RE: do you remember your first festival?
From: Rasener
Date: 28 Apr 22 - 03:49 PM

Whitby Folk Festival UK