Check
out our photo gallery of Cropredy 2004. Photos by Hannah Wiggins.
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The
rules for snappers are clear at Fairport Convention's annual reunion
festival: no cameras on stage.
But
surely, I thought, I'd get away with it in a discreet, see-straight-through-me
disguise.
Okay,
I think some of the 25,000-plus festival goers might have noticed
as I galloped on in the middle of a concert, wearing a medium-sized
horse.
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| Our
man Simon - and horse |
I steered
my traditional-style hobby horse right to the centre of the vast
platform, raised my camera and clicked. No one tried to stop me.
I got
a great picture, though I think there may have been someone about
32 rows back who wasn't smiling at the lens.
Getting
backstage in the first place involved even more severe measures:
I had to dress up as a morris dancer.
And
before anyone thinks we go in for tawdry tabloid tactics here, I
should say that I had a valid performer's pass.
It's
not often morris dancers get to perform in front of thousands, but
this was the day we got the credibility we deserve, complete with
an electronic, electrifying folk-rock soundtrack.
Ex-Fairporter
Ashley Hutchings first applied the rock-band treatment to Oxfordshire's
traditional dance tunes back in 1969, when his Morris On was the
year's best-selling folk album.
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| Cropredy
festival attracted a monster crowd. |
There
have been three more Morris On albums since, and my fellow members
of The Outside Capering Crew have had the honour of playing - and
dancing - on the latest two of them.
Yes,
I know that dancing on a CD is a strange claim to fame. We're proud,
but we keep it in proportion.
So
it was that we performed on the big stage at Cropredy, alongside
Ashley's band and the mould-breaking young dancers of Morris Offspring
(brilliant choreography, great energy - and they practise in Adderbury,
you know).
It
was a powerful, exhilarating experience. The traditionally friendly
crowd clapped and danced along with us, making it strangely un-scary.
If we could have bottled the adrenalin, it would have been dangerous.
Fairport's
Simon Nicol called it "a superb act" in a BBC Radio Oxford
interview.
And
what of the picture I took from the stage, and the 150 others I
snapped behind the scenes?
Well,
somewhere out there in the Cropredy mud, smaller than a postage
stamp, there's a little black memory card from a digital camera…
if you find it, let me know.
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