So how did YOU get into Fairport?

[Ollie]

Sorry, I've lost track of what year we are in! I meant 2005. 2004 was indeed great and very emotional as I recall.

Topic drift...

Methinks that was the year that the problems with "oiks" started to get a little more serious.  Also wasn't that the time of the major changes to the structure of the festival?

I did not get any sleep on the thursday night due to a bunch of arse holes who had no interest in the music. they just got pissed and obnoxious

I heard so one say last year on Thursday that "Folk music is (I can't repeat the word) and I don't know why we came" Those people should be thrown of the festival site and not get their money back

[davidmjs]

I heard so one say last year on Thursday that "Folk music is (I can't repeat the word) and I don't know why we came" Those people should be thrown of the festival site and not get their money back

I'm not entirely convinced that not liking something is reason enough for such action! Virtually all the bad behaviour I've witnessed at Cropredy (and I'm only talking about 3 or 4 'scenes' over 23 years!) has been alcohol-related.  But then if I'd been dragged along to Glyndbourne (like the pleb I am) I'd have probably resorted to the champagne bar and might have got myself a bit squiffy and created a scene, or I might have done when I still drank anyway...  

[Ollie]

I heard so one say last year on Thursday that "Folk music is (I can't repeat the word) and I don't know why we came" Those people should be thrown of the festival site and not get their money back

I'm not entirely convinced that not liking something is reason enough for such action! Virtually all the bad behaviour I've witnessed at Cropredy (and I'm only talking about 3 or 4 'scenes' over 23 years!) has been alcohol-related.  But then if I'd been dragged along to Glyndbourne (like the pleb I am) I'd have probably resorted to the champagne bar and might have got myself a bit squiffy and created a scene, or I might have done when I still drank anyway...  

These were two fairly young teenagers and the called folk music "w**ked"

[davidmjs]

]

These were two fairly young teenagers and the called folk music w**ked

Yep - you see...Folk Music Worked....I knew it all along  

[Bridgwit (Bridget)]

These were two fairly young teenagers and the called folk music "w**ked"

What - wicked? that means good, doesn't it - in youthspeaK?  

[Ollie]

I'll add another letter "wa*ked"  

[Amethyst (Jenny)]

Oh you mean WALKED then...

[Polly Oxford (Andie)]

That must be why I'm so slow to take offence: I don't realise when I'm being insulted!

[peterwales]

I could feel the "vibe", for want of a better word, the first time I walked into the main field at Cropredy. It just felt nice and safe.
 

Same here, though I think that "vibe" has been less apparent more recently. 2004 especially. Or perhaps I am just getting old and my cynicism gene has kicked in?

Well, I still remember wandering across from, I think field 4, the very first night I was ever in Cropredy, after "setting up camp" in 1994, and hearing Roy Harper's (almost forgotten) voice from the 60's/70's; (anybody remember his album "Valentine" from that time); and feeling I had been transported back to some magical time of a wasted but idealogical youth. Moon coming up over the Eastern end of the Cotswolds on a hot summer's evening and all that...yes, maybe it is a good time to write a thesis about what makes up the magic of Cropredy- can I volunteer to be a research assistant?

[davidmjs]

and hearing Roy Harper's (almost forgotten) voice from the 60's/70's;

Do you think....? He's still got a pretty strong group of devotees I'd say....

[Malcolm]

I had their albums in the 1970's but never saw them live. I didn't do gigs in those days; don't know why, I just did other things.

I think it must have been 1985 and 1986 that we went to the Cropredy warmup, then held at the Half Moon and first went to Cropredy 1987, then only for the Saturday. First camped in 1989 and remember the next year turning up on the Thursday (it was only a two day festival then) - no Health'n'Safety, searchlights, generators - we just set up camp in one of the fields, already opened in readiness. Quite a few others did the same and enjoyed the village and the pubs. The water bowser turned up some time later - no mains taps. I remember a couple of years later Peggy writing in the flyer "please no camping before Thursday" - I met a bloke who said he had been sleeping in a cornfield at Williamscote since the Monday!

I remember in the first couple of years having a feeling of unease that such a happy, relaxed thing couldn't last but, after a few years realised that the cosmic force of Cropredy is more powerful than any negative forces which might come along.

Have never missed since 1989 and couldn't imagine the circs in which I might.

Now I live three miles from The Angel - small world isn't it?

 

[Nic O]

A backdoor route I guess for a Brit..... heavily into Dylan as a teenager and through that to Unhalfbricking and What We Did and other Dylan covers ... but guess only really discovered the joy of Fairport in the mid 70s as a long haired student.
Personally I am still amazed how many artists I found through Dylan... aside from the obvious ones like Joni Mitchell and Phil Ochs, also Edie Brickell, Al Stewart, Mary Lee Kortes, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Shawn Colvin, Steve Gibbons, Tiny Tin Lady