Glastonbury Fayre by Nick Roeg

[Des]

Roeg's film of the 1971 Glastonbury Festival is full of self-indulgent excess but is a fascinating contrast to today's corporate event. The second Glastonbury Fayre was very small and delightfully 'home-made', and this comes across in the film. OK there's the mystical mumbo-jumbo and naked hippy cavortings, but the music stands up (no pun intended) pretty well after all this time. There are tunes from Terry Reid (assisted by a spirited Linda Lewis), Quintessence, Fairport Concention, Arthur Brown, Traffic, Melanie and Family among others. The film conveys the idealism and the naivity of the early festival, making today's version rather predictable in comparison. Mercifully, David Bowie's set is not included in Roeg's documentary because the film crew were asleep when he played at sunrise! More to be regretted is the omission of songs by Edgar Broughton Band and Pink Fairies due to contractual issues - that would have been really interesting.

A strangely touching film, then, with images of considerable beauty and often unintended comedy, plus great atmospheric music. The DVD comes with a fascinating 'Making Of' documentary including interviews with Roeg, Arthur Brown, Linda Lewis and Melanie. Recommended.

[Adam Blake]

I know this film very well. I'm glad to see it's available again. Somehow, this one tends to get left out of the ol'Roeg Retrospectives. As a documentary it's fine but most of the music is extremely dated except for Traffic's "Gimme Some Lovin'" which could have been recorded at any time in the last 40 years and still have sounded just as powerful. For the rest, it's either your idea of hell or strangely comforting. For myself, the best moment of the film is Dave Swarbrick taking a big hit on a big spliff that someone has handed him, looking out into the audience with a look of steely determination and launching into a ferociously fast set of traditional jigs and reels. With Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Dave Pegg struggling to keep up with him, Swarb at that moment assumes the mantle of every fiddler who's ever played the music. He flies - and as he does, the camera pans out to view an English field in Somerset full of young people dressed as psychedelic ragamuffins leaping and cavorting in licentious abandon to a music that had been lying there under their noses all that time, just waiting to be danced to.

(amazingly, there's a little snippet of that performance in the trailer which is on YouTube, here at 1:08-1:28, although unfortunately this is after the rhythm section have dragged the fiddler's bag down a notch or two. Ne'mind...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JsMWXi5K68

[jackdaw version]

Those were the days . . .

The world was fresh.

Thanks for the word, Des. I didn't know Roeg had made this film. Too bad about The Edgar Broughton Band and the Pink Fairies. Memories will have to suffice; I could always play the vinyl I suppose.

[Adam Blake]

I didn't know Roeg had made this film.

Funny, that. Anybody'd think he was embarrassed by it or something.

[AndyM]

Those were the days . . .

The world was fresh.

Thanks for the word, Des. I didn't know Roeg had made this film. Too bad about The Edgar Broughton Band and the Pink Fairies. Memories will have to suffice; I could always play the vinyl I suppose.

I don't think the Broughtons were ever especially fresh..... An old mate of mine, who was a quasi-groupie before she became a respectable educational person, had, erm, contacts with the EBB. Oh the stories I've heard.....

[Rob Hall]

'Wasa Wasa' was the second album I ever bought. I took it back and exchanged it for 'Hot Rats'.

[john poole]

I remember "Edgar", or Rob as I think he was then, returning to his old school in 1964/5, to great acclaim as, if memory serves me correctly, he already looked much as he would do five or so years later. He had a group called The Talons then I believe.

[jackdaw version]

I don't think the Broughtons were ever especially fresh..... An old mate of mine, who was a quasi-groupie before she became a respectable educational person, had, erm, contacts with the EBB. Oh the stories I've heard.....

Wasn't quite referring to their personal hygiene of which I have no first-hand (so to speak) knowledge.

But I loved 'em back about 1972-72. They're not really the type of music that has aged very well, but I was somewhat amazed a year or two ago when I played Sing Brother Sing to notice that I was indeed singing along and still knew pretty much all the words. I suppose that when I listened to them a lot I probably only had about twenty albums so everything got played a lot and there were certain lysergic enhancements, which despite what some say can fix things deeply in the mind.

The freshness of the world was that sort of wide-eyed emergence at eighteen from what had been a very sheltered and rather rigid childhood. It was like being launched from a catapult. Everything was new and wonderful to me. Now, of course, I recognize that I was mostly very, very naive. But there are days I'd pay good money to get that naivety back.

[Adam Blake]

'Wasa Wasa' was the second album I ever bought. I took it back and exchanged it for 'Hot Rats'.

Very wise, Rob.

Andy, you know as well as anyone that anyone who shagged anyone, and I mean anyone, in any way connected to the Edgar Broughton Band or the Pink Fairies definitely deserved whatever they got...

Jon, I know what you mean, but it's youth as much as naivete.

[jackdaw version]

Well, yes, it was youth as well as naivety.

But not sure what you mean by "anyone, in any way connected to the Edgar Broughton Band or the Pink Fairies definitely deserved whatever they got". I was ever so slightly connected with the Pink Fairies and I had a number of interesting experiences in connection with them, including the first cocaine I ever saw — and still the biggest rock I've ever seen and I've been around since if you know what I mean. Can you believe it? I turned down sitting around snorting it at their expense 'cos I thought it was a heavy-duty psychedelic at the time and I was tired! That's what I mean by naive!

[AndyM]

Andy, you know as well as anyone that anyone who shagged anyone, and I mean anyone, in any way connected to the Edgar Broughton Band or the Pink Fairies definitely deserved whatever they got...

Well yes, but she ought to write it all down. Amazing how far a girl could get back then on hippiefied Jean Shrimpton looks and newly available contraception. She once scrapped with Germaine Greer over who was going to go home with Black Sabbath's drummer. And as for what happened with Colosseum in Aberystwyth.........

[Adam Blake]

Jon, you had a lucky escape and you know it.

Andy, ex-groupies tales are to be taken with a pinch of... er, salt. I know one who's been threatening to write it all down for years but I don't think she ever will. These anecdotes are so much more fun around the campfire of a few vodka and tonics, don't you think? In print they just look tawdry.

[jackdaw version]

But, on the other hand, if Andy were to invite her here to SotWorld to write it all down it would make a pleasant change from stories from such as I about the drugs we didn't take.

[jackdaw version]

Jon, you had a lucky escape and you know it.

And I made up for it later!

[AndyM]

Jon, you had a lucky escape and you know it.

Andy, ex-groupies tales are to be taken with a pinch of... er, salt. I know one who's been threatening to write it all down for years but I don't think she ever will. These anecdotes are so much more fun around the campfire of a few vodka and tonics, don't you think? In print they just look tawdry.

Vodka & tonic ? Tart's drink.