National Folk Festival - Day One - 20/03/08

Mumsy and Dadsy paid for a season (5 day) ticket to the National Folk Festival for my birthday, so youngest bro and I headed out tonight for the opening show.

Then someone ran up the back of my car and only did a little damage but I have to call the police apparently to get it all worked out - that will be a task for tomorrow morning before I head out for day two.

Anyways, here are my observations on the opening show:

I will have to check back and find the names of these guys (edit: Genticorum!)- they are from Quebec and were all very lovely and smiley - the guy with the afro played the flute and it was very alluring (I love me a good folkie!):
If you don't arrive early enough you will rely on the big screen to take your photos.
I walked past the guy in the hat on the way out - Claim to Fame tally: 1

Time taken before there was dancing in the crowd - 20 minutes:

This is the MC - he looks a bit like Harold from Neighbours, liked a good ramble but would cut off mid sentence once the sound crew were ready - he did a good job:

Mal Webb is the guy that reminds you of that friend of yours that will say anything to set up a terribly lame but funny pun and you will roll your eyes and snicker a little. He is also totally kick ass with a little machine that records the bird noises and mouth tricks he does and loops it around and around - he did the most AMAZING thing with a trumpet at the end (obviously, playing it, not some disgusting trick) and I may just stalk him down to hear if he does it again over the next four days:
He also likes to sing in falsetto.

These ladies are called Pacific Curls (from NZ) and they were featuring Miss (something) Beattie (I think - she's the one on the left - she's a Celt) who does some AMAZING things with her violin - simply beautiful! The lady in the middle is the main singer and had a beautiful voice but also did some gutteral jazz as well which was funny but awesome. The lady on the right did some backing singing and played the ukelele (I thought of you, Jen!) and had a tattoo between her boobs:

I'm also going to have to check back to get the name of this guy - he sang a song about saying sorry (five words so hard for a man five foot tall) his mum (whose name he saw on the side of a ship when he landed in NZ), a song about a pearl (that could almost be interpreted as being about a hooker) and a song about Lleyton Hewitt being a c*nt - good job, you!:

This is Cloudstreet, who were the most traditionally folky of all the ones at the roundup show tonight - she has a strong clear voice and he compliments it well and they give good banter. They also harmonise really well but we were getting excited about Rory, she kept talking about The Green Man and how friends are like shiny gems that have been collected in the net of the NFF, and he reminded me of Tobias Funke once youngest bro pointed out the likeness:

And then it was my future husband to be - Mr Rory McLeod:

Mmm - he was great! Sadly, he only went for half an hour (the strictly allocated time) so he only got to do three songs, but he promised he'd try not to repeat any songs over the weekend and hinted at taking requests, so I'm going to take my iPod tomorrow to put together a little list (yes, I'm a stalky nerd).

A few people up and left after he finished but we stuck around for the last act - The Duhks:
Apologies for the not so awesome shots - they were pretty fantastic too! They do very bluesy rocky music, doesn't sound so folky. The women has a very bluesy tone - she kinda reminds me of Joss Stone, but I haven't heard much by Joss herself. I also really liked them because I think I have a similar figure to the lead singer and she was looking pretty frickin hot up there. A lot of people left during their show - I'm guessing because it wasn't so traditional.

Youngest bro has predicted that 'you know how they are' will be the catchphrase of the festival - as in "Those dirty old folkies, you know how they are - snaking your seats/ looking for any excuse to whoop or clap / doing cartwheels/ clapping out of time".

Time for bed - big day tomorrow (hopefully I can update these with actual names and be a bit more accurate - this show was not really timetabled properly so I'm lacking reference material)!