Ah unfortunately I wasn’t there although I did see Alan stivell at Liverpool Empire in 1973 and then at the July Wakes Festival at Charnock Richard Chorley 1976. Wonderful memories
I was there for the whole weekend! I was 17 and had just left school. My friend David and I had a couple of weeks dinghy sailing off the Norfolk coast and then made our way by bus from Cley Next the Sea to King's Lynn and thence by train to Cambridge, where we walked to Cherry Hinton Hall on foot, rucksacks upon our backs. We put up our tent on Friday afternoon and then settled down to 30 hours of folk music over three days on three different stages. We saw all the acts in this video and many, many more besides. (Decameron, Gryphon, Alan Taylor, Martin Carthy, John Renbourn and Jacqui McShee...) It was as if the whole of the British folk scene were there in one place. Brilliant! A brief note on the Pigsty Hill Light Orchestra who appear in this video: for some reason, their guitarist was unable to make the weekend, so at the last minute they asked jazz guitarist Diz Disley to stand in for him, and you can see him in the clip included here. He hadn't had any chance to learn the songs so the bass player was literally calling out the chord changes as they went along... But it didn't matter, because Diz was such a brilliant guitarist that he just carried on regardless and you'd never have guessed that he was busking his way through the whole set!
Thanks for your lovely recollections! I knew some folks who were there would find it, and you're the first. I'll add a note on Diz Disley in the description.
Ah unfortunately I wasn’t there although I did see Alan stivell at Liverpool Empire in 1973 and then at the July Wakes Festival at Charnock Richard Chorley 1976. Wonderful memories
Amazing footage of Cambridge festival ❤️
Thanks. I'm waiting for the comments by people who'll say 'I was there!'. (And maybe, 'hey that's me!') I attended 2 or 3 years earlier.
I was there for the whole weekend! I was 17 and had just left school. My friend David and I had a couple of weeks dinghy sailing off the Norfolk coast and then made our way by bus from Cley Next the Sea to King's Lynn and thence by train to Cambridge, where we walked to Cherry Hinton Hall on foot, rucksacks upon our backs. We put up our tent on Friday afternoon and then settled down to 30 hours of folk music over three days on three different stages. We saw all the acts in this video and many, many more besides. (Decameron, Gryphon, Alan Taylor, Martin Carthy, John Renbourn and Jacqui McShee...) It was as if the whole of the British folk scene were there in one place. Brilliant! A brief note on the Pigsty Hill Light Orchestra who appear in this video: for some reason, their guitarist was unable to make the weekend, so at the last minute they asked jazz guitarist Diz Disley to stand in for him, and you can see him in the clip included here. He hadn't had any chance to learn the songs so the bass player was literally calling out the chord changes as they went along... But it didn't matter, because Diz was such a brilliant guitarist that he just carried on regardless and you'd never have guessed that he was busking his way through the whole set!
Thanks for your lovely recollections! I knew some folks who were there would find it, and you're the first. I'll add a note on Diz Disley in the description.