Friday 3

An unexpected situation takes me away from the music for a while. It means that I missed the Dhol Foundation on Stage One. A performance that apparently saw a band that normally numbers around twelve swelled to nearer twenty.

It’s on of the great mysteries about Cambridge is the way it expands bands. A trio is booked and five people turn up. A solo singer suddenly turns up with a band. A duo become a duo plus backing. This is one of the biggest increases in terms of numbers if not percentage.

Anyway, I also manage to miss the first Oyster Ceilidh Band set and more annoyingly The Belles in the Club Tent. I get back to face a choice of Josh Ritter on the Radio Two Stage and Loudon Wainwright III on Stage One.

Josh Ritter has been described as a young Loudon Wainwright. It’s partly for that reason I go with Loudon. Josh is playing again tomorrow so I can see the original before catching up with the young pretender.

Loudon is on cracking form. He’s a great raconteur as well as a consummate performer. His banter is great and so are the songs. Every Loudon Wainwright set I’ve seen has had its own flavour and this is no exception. That said to a degree he’s trapped by the length of his career and the choice of his material. There are always shouts for particular favourites from the audience. Sure it happens to other artists, but Loudon suffers more than most.

If an audience is invited to shout requests that’s one thing, to do it in an ad-hoc rate can be, particularly when it’s happening almost every time there’s a break between songs. You wouldn’t go into the technology office at work shouting for an RS232 interface lead, just because it used to be your favourite.

Loudon down I now have my comparative mark for tomorrow. It’s off to the Radio Two Stage for the second set of the Oyster Ceilidh Band.

I had thoughts that this might have been a ceilidh in name only, but this thought is quickly dashed after the band finish their first number. John Jones starts organising as many rows of dancers as it’s possible to get in the area of the Radio Two Stage.

Animated directions prove that for the first time in 15 years, the Oysters are a genuine ceilidh band. The rows of dancers are tight, but functional. The mix of standards adds to the sense of organised chaos. I can the first few numbers before sneaking quietly away for Kepa Junkera.

There is a joke, that angels get harps, those condemned to hell get accordions. It doesn’t help that the Basque word for the accordion, trikitixa, roughly translates as ‘bellows of the devil’.

I last saw Kepa here about three years ago; it was my first encounter with another Basque instrument, one that I haven’t heard since, until now, the txalaparta. If you’ve never seen one, imagine a xylophone made with a dozen scaffold planks laid on a soundboard. Now imagine a couple of people with a stick in each hand bouncing those sticks on the giant keys. You’ve got the idea.

Continued