music festivals: Isle of Wight 1970

 

The Doors

The Who

The Moody Blues

Jimi

In 69-70, I was still under a certain amount of somewhat liberal parental guidance: liberal, in that I was free to trek to a local Blind Faith concert, but not so  free that I could stake out an event like Woodstock or the Isle of Wight - that would take another 2 or 3 years, by which time I was freely hitchiking up and down the East Coast at risk of life (more than once)

In retrospect I do  wish I had been a year or two older - so that I mgiht have gone to Woodstock. Most of my stars were in line - except my age. Similarly, I think I have always had a back-of-the-mind hankering to "do" the Isle of Wight Festival/Concert. This need probably stems from the 1970 festival rather than the more recently revived but similarly ostentatious iteration.


For about 2 years, the Isle of Wight festival (back in 68 or so) was a work in progress. The Isle isnt highly conducive to the likes of "flea-haired" hippies : the indigenous are  mostly folks with yachts and large yards, rather sedate and preferential to their 5 o'clock tea types. So much so that they ended up putting a kibitz to the whole thing after the over-board '70 program.

But it's the 1970  program that earned its reputation., Granted, since the chow came back on line in the early 2000s, there have been many many bug time acts: the Stones etc, etc. But again, it was and is the 1970 program that remains the name of legends.

It is probably instructive to look at Jimi Hendrix's too short frestival sojourm: Monterey Pop, 69 Woodstock and then 70 Isle of Wight as indicagtive of the times and of his trajectory
Not the best of venues or circumstances (the operators lost big-time money/ the sound system and stage setup were apparently pathetic), I would have to assume that it was a combination of the alignemtn of the stars (hippie speak for just plain good karma) and a pretty damn good selection of artists.

Four days that included: (from Wiki): Cactus, Chicago, The Doors, Lighthouse, The Moody Blues, The Who, Miles Davis, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Jethro Tull, Sly and the Family Stone, Ten Years After, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Free

 

Music Festivals: Newport Folk Festival 2012-Dawes

Dawes: A Little Bit of Everything (Live from Newport 2012)
[purchase the album that this song is on]

I have written about the trip that my wife and I took to the Newport Folk Festival back in 2012 a few times. It was our first time there, and it was a great experience, despite the fact that we got rained on both days. At a festival often identified with Bob Dylan, it was fitting that a hard rain did fall, and we unsuccessfully sought shelter from the storm, as we waited for our ship to come in and take us back to our hotel.

But I haven’t written about the moment at the festival that I remember most strongly. It was not a pleasant moment, and I’m willing to bet that my wife will be surprised when she reads this.

I’ve been a lawyer for a long time, and for a while before our Newport trip, I had not been happy at my job. Despite that, I stuck through it, because the pay wasn’t bad, and I had settled into somewhat of a rut—sort of like the one that Nick Lowe wrote about in “Rocky Road” (“The rut I was in had once been a groove”). By the time we went to Newport, the end was in sight, and I was looking for a new gig. I actually spent a good portion of my post-festival Newport vacation reviewing deposition transcripts using the Panera Bread’s free wi-fi (which was better than the hotel’s) for a summary judgment motion to try to stay in the senior partner’s good graces, to keep the paychecks coming in. I did a good job, I think, and I ended up creating a 45 page statement of undisputed facts from my Newport work. We lost the motion, and the trial (which I helped prepare for, but which took place as I was basically out the door.) So, as we were enjoying our time in Newport, I was very uneasy, because I didn’t know how long I would be staying at the firm, and had no alternatives, other than the risk of starting my own law practice.

One of the bands that I was excited to see at the festival was Dawes, a band that seems to have recently evolved into essentially the Newport Festival house band—supporting other musicians who don’t always travel with backup musicians, and often having other performers sit in with them. In fact, that is one big way that Newport differs from the other festival that we have gone to (and which I have written about), the hopefully-returning-in-2017 Clearwater Great Hudson River Revival. Although it does happen at Clearwater (seeing Jason Isbell and Patterson Hood sit in during each other’s solo set was a highlight, and there are other examples), it seems like more of a regular thing at Newport for people to play with each other. This adds a feeling of camaraderie and friendship to the music, and you get to hear interesting, often unique, combinations (like this great version of The Band’s “It Makes No Difference” by My Morning Jacket, with Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes, from the 2012 festival, that I missed waiting for a ferry to get us out of the rain).

Dawes’ sound is often compared to the Laurel Canyon sound of the 1970s—CSNY, Joni Mitchell, The Byrds, etc., with a bit of Band thrown it. And I also have to believe that they also were influenced by the Uncle Tupelo/Wilco/Son Volt/Jayhawks alt-country sound and artists like Ryan Adams. In keeping with their debt to the great confessional singer-songwriters, their lyrics often plumb emotional topics, which is certainly true about one of my favorite Dawes songs, “A Little Bit of Everything.” The song has three vignettes: the first, focusing on a man planning to jump from a bridge, not for any one reason, but for an accumulation of things, the second about an older man in a buffet line, musing over his life’s disappointments while deciding what to eat, and the third features a woman writing invitations to her wedding, and explaining to her fiancé why she was working so apparently humorlessly on the wedding planning. As the song’s writer, Taylor Goldsmith, explained in an interview, “each verse would provide the phrase with new meaning. In the first verse, it’s used to describe why life’s unlivable, in the second, what it takes to forget, and finally, what matters most about love.”

So, I’m sitting there, watching Dawes, getting toward the end of a great first Newport day, very much enjoying their set, when they launch into “A Little Bit of Everything,” in the version you can hear above. And the next thing I know, tears are streaming down my face. Was I identifying with the suicidal guy who was feeling overwhelmed? With the old guy at the buffet thinking about “when his bright future had left him”? Or the woman who reassured her fiancé about the power of finding the person you truly love? Clearly, it was a little bit of everything, but it affected me so profoundly.

I recovered, though, both at the festival, where we went on to see Amy Helm, Patty Griffin and the beginning of My Morning Jacket before we evacuated, but also professionally. I played out the string at my old job, and in March of 2013, I opened up my own practice. It hasn’t been easy, and there have been struggles, but I’ve learned an enormous amount and have never enjoyed being a lawyer as much.

That all being said, I still get emotional when I hear this song, which, I guess, shows that Mr. Goldsmith knows what he is doing.

MUSIC FESTIVALS: LISDOONVARNA/Christy Moore

Everybody needs a break,
Climb a mountain or jump in a lake.
Sean Doherty goes to the Rose of Tralee,
Oliver J. Flanagan goes swimming in the Holy Sea.
But I like the music and the open air,
So every Summer I go to Clare.
Coz Woodstock, Knock nor the Feast of Cana,
Can hold a match to Lisdoonvarna.

Well this couldn't be timed any the better, being that time of year when I bundle my kit into the car and head off into the sunshine, hopefully the sunshine, in search of the outdoor muse. I commented here, just a couple of years ago about my intent to revisit my youth and to start attending music festivals once more, after a decade or so of good behaviour. It was Cambridge Folk Festival that broke my fast, a venerable warhorse of such events, now in its 52nd  consecutive year. Folk is a multi-faceted definition these days: this year featured such finger in the ear trad. arr. stalwarts as Wilko Johnson and Charles Bradley! But amongst the Satchmo all-inclusiveness was the fellow I praise today, Mr Christy Moore. The featured song is one he wrote about an Irish festival, sadly no longer in existence, but, judging by the lyric, would have been right up my street.

Lisdoonvarna is a small town in the west of Ireland. The video above gives a good grasp of the place. Small as in very small, less than 1000 inhabitants. But between 1978 and 1983 it was home to the festival that bore its name, described here as:"Lisdoon, of course, was the Irish Woodstock. First held in 1978, it was conceptualised as the Irish equivalent of the Glastonbury Festival in England: part-scout jamboree, part-Bacchanal frenzy, part-hippy-dippy roots-embracing finger-in-the-ear jig-'n'-reel extravaganza...If all those who now claim to have been at Lisdoon 1978 were actually there, Co Clare would have tipped up and slipped off the Cliffs of Moher."--Irish Independent

 Does that not sound wonderful? Sadly the combination of several "revellers" drowning off the coast, and the unhelpful presence of the ubiquitous Hell's Angels finished it off, the local council vetoing any further such endeavour. (Why do the media always refer to festival attendees as revellers, a seemingly compulsory journalistic term I abhor, even writing to the august British Medical Journal in 1994 to lambast them for this lazy verbiage. Sorry, no link, they didn't publish!) However, should you need still to get to Lisdoonvarna and happen to be single, there is still this, the worlds largest dating festival.......

So what about Christy Moore? A bastion of probably more folk festivals than nearly anyone, he has been a fixture on the circuit for an astonishing 4 decades, retiring more than once. A founder member of both Planxty and Moving Hearts, each of whom propelled traditional irish music out of pub back rooms and  into global recognition, first of all acoustically and then with the full electric band dynamic. Each, in my humble, never bettered. Thereafter he retreated to his roots and his battered guitar, often alone, or with longterm trusty sidekick, Declan Sinnot, mesmerising audiences with his combination of political commentary, eirocentric whimsy and unexpected covers. His voice a gentle fire, with an unusual power and a soft beauty, often as much a sound as a medium for the lyrical content, though you would be foolish to miss that aspect. And, having been forced off the road in the 80s through alcoholism and heart disease, both now seemingly in abeyance, his schedule as busy as ever. Here he is, playing at Cambridge barely a month ago. And here is an example of his latest and recommended release:

I must rush; next weekend sees me in Shrewsbury for another 4 days of, um, revelling....... (Indeed, the curious interested in seeing this scribe in action at last years event might stop the promo video at 1.13, catching the handsome fella with a goatee, enraptured by whomsoever was playing at that time. I appreciate it would be even more curious if you did.)

Buy the song, but do yourself a favour, check out the back catalogue, including his Planxty and Moving Hearts releases.