Oysterband Big Session
This started as a comment on flick's journal, but it occurred to me that there were others of you who'd want to see it. Sure I'll be doing something on my 'proper blog' in a bit, but that will probably be a bit more focused on the music.
Summary: Gosh, that was good.
Weather: it's odd, you know, whenever it's not sunny you wish it was sunny, and when it is sunny you keel over from heatstroke. It was glorious, but I keeled over from heatstroke.
Pints beer drunk: oh, I dunno, more than the 'average' 5 pints per person, to be sure.
Seamless trousers purchased: nil, but they *are* impressive (on Flick).
Weight lost: lots, all sweat.
Ceilidh: oh yeah.
Occasions swooning at JJ: lots, for all that he's old enough to be my dad. I did manage to not do the gushing fangirl thing this time, though later it occurred to me I might have managed to get a better icon.
Better than expected acts: Justin Sullivan, who was *fantastic*; Whapweasel, who are sort of ceilidh band as reinterpreted by Madness and are totally fucking insane. 'Big Session House Band' -- ie oysters + eliza carthy + ratcatchers + benji kirkpatrick + seth lakeman on Friday night -- jolly good and doing the sort of informal 'session' that I think they were hoping would happen most of the weekend. So of course I wasn't taping.
Worse than expected acts: er, none really. Nick Harper was a bit lackluster, exactly as expected.
Brilliant just as expected: Oysters, who did 2 1/4 hours Saturday and another half hour or so finishing up on Sunday; my tapes of the Oysters lasted us all the way home in the car.
Should never, ever have allowed JJ to talk him into it: Chopper -- "this is my first ever solo gig". He's the cellist/bass player.
Stop me if you've heard this before: "The hall told us we'd sell about 10 barrels of beer with this many people. [pause]. So we got in 36, with a hold on a further 10. We've now sold 80, and we can't lay our hands on any more that we can get settled for tomorrow lunchtime, so that's that."