General Chatter

[Andy]

Dave, honestly, we get the message.

[hendo (Dave)]

Dave, honestly, we get the message.

Sorry Andy, I genuinely forget I have said things before these days. Mea Culpa. My short term thingy is genuinely starting to worry me......I have obviously voiced this opinion somewhere before.......😱
Apologies again..

[Lubiloo (Lorna)]

Dave, honestly, we get the message.

Sorry Andy, I genuinely forget I have said things before these days. Mea Culpa. My short term thingy is genuinely starting to worry me......I have obviously voiced this opinion somewhere before.......😱
Apologies again..

I don’t think he meant it like that...sorry for interpreting another, but I just thought Andy meant that we do get it, how we may only meet some others a long way down that road even though we all love Cropredy.

This is a safe forum for us to share our thoughts and feelings so I think no apology is needed.

[iandiddams]

Have to say one disappointment for me this year was the state of the field at the end of the night. I'm sure a lot of people on that field would be the first to tut at pictures of the mess at Reading and Glastonbury. Litter everywhere and lots of glass bottles left dangerously around. No excuses, plenty of bins around the site that were never over flowing.

up at the top of the field is was really clean - as usual - I noticed.  was this further down the field?

merely intrigued because that "glasto rubbish stren site" image went through my head as I left Sat evening after FC and I was thinking how clean it all was up the top end

[StephenB]

 I beg to differ. Certainly the downfield was disgusting imo. I'll have a proper rant and post some pics later.😡🙄

[GubGub (Al)]

 I beg to differ. Certainly the downfield was disgusting imo. I'll have a proper rant and post some pics later.����

Reported on Radio Oxford that the Scouts had swept (literally?) the field within an hour of the end of the show on Saturday night and cleared all of the litter and debris.

I think they said 150 Scouts (but I may be misremembering that) in a line "sweeping" the field from top to bottom. Quite a sight apparently.

[hendo (Dave)]

Dave, honestly, we get the message.

Sorry Andy, I genuinely forget I have said things before these days. Mea Culpa. My short term thingy is genuinely starting to worry me......I have obviously voiced this opinion somewhere before.......😱
Apologies again..

I don’t think he meant it like that...sorry for interpreting another, but I just thought Andy meant that we do get it, how we may only meet some others a long way down that road even though we all love Cropredy.

This is a safe forum for us to share our thoughts and feelings so I think no apology is needed.

Thanks but I think he meant ‘shut the f... up!😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[abby (tank girl)]

Dave, honestly, we get the message.

Sorry Andy, I genuinely forget I have said things before these days. Mea Culpa. My short term thingy is genuinely starting to worry me......I have obviously voiced this opinion somewhere before.......😱
Apologies again..

I don’t think he meant it like that...sorry for interpreting another, but I just thought Andy meant that we do get it, how we may only meet some others a long way down that road even though we all love Cropredy.

This is a safe forum for us to share our thoughts and feelings so I think no apology is needed.

Thanks but I think he meant ‘shut the f... up!😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

 

[Andy]

Dave, honestly, we get the message.

Sorry Andy, I genuinely forget I have said things before these days. Mea Culpa. My short term thingy is genuinely starting to worry me......I have obviously voiced this opinion somewhere before.......😱
Apologies again..

I don’t think he meant it like that...sorry for interpreting another, but I just thought Andy meant that we do get it, how we may only meet some others a long way down that road even though we all love Cropredy.

This is a safe forum for us to share our thoughts and feelings so I think no apology is needed.

Thanks but I think he meant ‘shut the f... up!😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

If the cap fits...

[GubGub (Al)]

Whatever happened to "It's nice to be nice"? Thought that was a forum rule.

C'mon Andy, you are better than that.

[Amethyst (Jenny)]

Finally back from returning our hired titchy little van... phew!

Despite a few awkward moments a couple of weeks ago when we thought we might miss our 30th Cropredy, we got there, we survived the (at times pretty rough) weather and we got home safely.

I loved most of the music, with just a couple of exceptions, I loved the different types of food that kept me going, I loved our position on the field this time, and most of all I loved meeting so many of our Cropredy friends.

40 years of Cropredy... long may it continue.

Oh yes and the tribute Jan worked so hard on for Maart...  I thought she did such a great job of it, well done Jan Lane!

[davidmjs]

Oh yes and the tribute Jan worked so hard on for Maart...  I thought she did such a great job of it, well done Jan Lane!

For those of us not there, what was this please?  

[Amethyst (Jenny)]

There’s a piece in the programme by Jan and she was on stage during Fairport’s set
With a wonderful photographic tribute to Maart along with some of his music.

Hopefully it might appear on YouTube or somewhere soon...  hope so.

The field went quiet listening (apart from peeps behind us talking through it grrrrrrr!), but it was truly
Heartfelt.

[Bridgwit (Bridget)]

There’s a piece in the programme by Jan and she was on stage during Fairport’s set
With a wonderful photographic tribute to Maart along with some of his music.

Hopefully it might appear on YouTube or somewhere soon...  hope so.

The field went quiet listening (apart from peeps behind us talking through it grrrrrrr!), but it was truly
Heartfelt.

I heard it on the radio and thought it was wonderful. Jan spoke very well (I couldn't do that to a field of thousands!!) and it was a lovely tribute to Maart. I hope the film is available to view somewhere.

[davidmjs]

Excellent - thanks  

[StephenB]

Some selfish b*****s came and stood right in front of me and some others in the seated sectio during her speech. When my politer-than-me chair neighbour asked them nicely to move they said they wanted to hear what she was saying.  At the expense of four or five others neither seeing nor hearing it grrrrrr

[abby (tank girl)]

this is going to be a quite long and possibly contraversial post, it is based on my experience of spending most of cropredy with a group of people in their early 20s and comparing things to many other festivals, so buckle up.
this was our n17th cropredy, and sadly my youngest daughter Daze chose not to come this year.  Georgie would not miss it for the world.
so we left Norfolk at 06:15 on Thursday with a playlist on in the car.......Cara Dillon, Blair Dunlop, The Levs, Bellowhead, Abba, FC, RT, Ed Sheeran, Pearce Brothers, Sam Sweeney............a playlist put together by my 23 yr old daughter.  we had already cried when MotL played before 9am.
we arrived somewhere around 10am i think and both remarked on the lack of traffic and ease of entry to the site.

tents up on backpackers and car parked in the williamscott car park we took on the wasps at the pav and met with, sadly, a lot fewer old friends than usual.
we then did what has become a bit of a habit for us and stayed at the tents playing silly buggers (this year it was cards against humanity) until the evening.

we walked on to the arena field in the middle of Tors.

*this post is important as it illustrates the differences and the similarities of what the people half my age want from Cropredy compared to us old farts.*

G absolutely loved Tors.  

then came the GB experience, a first time for G.  she was blown away, i mean really.  you could see the excitement and the energy in her rise and she was just so entranced by them.  she then proceeded to have a friendly banter with Slippy (who is not so keen on GB) about what FC should be booking to keep the festival alive.........twas an amusing conversation with a lot of laughing (Slippy has known my kids many years).

the evening became more sedate as we moved toward the front and danced arm in arm to the Waterboys - my kids have been listening to the Waterboys through me their whole lives.

F8 beckoned and we caught the end of a band called.....Mountain Face? maybe? i don't recall but they were young, high energy proper folk and G and Ed (by this point we had picked up Ed) loved it.

day 1 completed with no casualties (except my touch of heatstroke and getting drowned on the way home) but there were many laughs and smiles and grest music.

day 2, G and i were up and at it surprisingly early and in a good state of mind, me having got over the heatstroke.  we had had breakfast, lost Ed to his family and were on the field at about 11.30, so found ourselves in the unusual position of seeing the first band up.......we were not disappointed.  i was surprised that a girl G's age was so taken by The 4 of us.  sadly Will Pound and Eddy Jay didn't have the same effect on e ither of us so once again we wombled back to the tent to chill out a bit, and didn't see Wildwood Kin.  we did hear very well from our camping spot but i don't think i would have benefitted from being there.

this is really where it gets interesting for me, so i will stop the blow by blow account of our weekend and cut to what made me think.

i almost had to drag G in to see W&W, she was like, mum i don't even know who *Rick* Wakeman is, but i said no, please come with, i have high expectations.............and lo and behold, she totally fell in love with tem, as did i.  she didn't realise but one of the songs on her playlist was by them so she knew all the words!  another unexpected find for the kids.

i went back to the tent to change and spent some time watching Caravan separately from the kids but we met up at F8 to watch a young band called Green Diesel who some of you may be familiar with from Acorn Fayre, they were as good if not better than any Cropredy band on that main stage, i really think they deserve a turn up there one Friday or Saturday afternoon.

we returned, actually we legged it, back to the field for RT where again i parted company with the kids, i did message G to see what she was up to - they were right at the front loving it!
then possibly the oddest thing of the weekend for me.....i got really into Frank Turner and was in there with a friend dancing away in the rain, again i messaged G to see where she was and meet her for a dance because i thought they would be loving it too.....they didn't get him and went home to bed!  i did not expect that one!

Saturday is always the day we have a mooch about the village until Digance has finished but i think this year we saw more on the main stage than usual. we were respectful of but not taken by Daphne's Flight. the kids were impressed with the rapping in pearls.

Sin' Dogs divided us but we saw the good in it and had a right laugh about it, that genre is not on G's playlist but she has been dragged up around folkies, bikers and metalheads and has had the Download experience so it was not so much of a shock for her as it was a choice.  fair play, i thought their booking was a stroke of genius.


it was then we really parted company, physically, as i was about to take Martin Barre very seriously......i needed to be alone and experience it. Tull are one of my all time favourite bands, top 3 i think.  i left the main stage after that and left my daughter to carry on the legacy at the toast.

the point of this tedious post?
i don't know how many times 'the kids', of which G and Ed were alongside me the most but there is a good group of them who have grown up doing Cropredy together who wandered in and out of the radar, said how *they* wanted the festival to move forward because they all, bar none, want to keep going, but they all know it has to evolve.
they want to see more upbeat energetic bands build up the energy as the afternoons progress.  they are all appreciative of acoustic and trad but they want a more lively feel as they move into the evening..........

many of these 'kids' are used to going to much bigger festivals with multiple stages and would like to see more of it at Cropredy, F8, the Fringe and the Edge are moving it in that direction.

i feel like there is not much to see at Cropredy.  it's not much of an attack on the senses.  not much effort is made with the site at all.  
that said we love it, but why?  a lot of it is nostalgia, because we always go, we have a lot of memories, and occasionally they will pull a corking line up out of the bag like for me, this year, but listening to the kids tlk this year, and reading all of the comments on here, i feel like it has to lmove forward. GB and Sin' Dogs is going in the right direction.

if you stuck with that, well done!

[hendo (Dave)]

 

Dave, honestly, we get the message.

Sorry Andy, I genuinely forget I have said things before these days. Mea Culpa. My short term thingy is genuinely starting to worry me......I have obviously voiced this opinion somewhere before.......😱
Apologies again..

I don’t think he meant it like that...sorry for interpreting another, but I just thought Andy meant that we do get it, how we may only meet some others a long way down that road even though we all love Cropredy.

This is a safe forum for us to share our thoughts and feelings so I think no apology is needed.

Thanks but I think he meant ‘shut the f... up!😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

If the cap fits...

  .

[hendo (Dave)]

Whatever happened to "It's nice to be nice"? Thought that was a forum rule.

C'mon Andy, you are better than that.

Al, don’t take it too seriously. I know Andy. The humour is dry. I hope his tongue is firmly in his cheek....

[Sue & Chris]

Abby - I read to the end! But I don't see how your story proves your point. You seem to be saying that your young folk found something to like about a lot of the performers, and therefore the festival needs to change. I don't understand how the first point leads to the second?