VENUE CROPREDY, OXFORDSHIRE

DATE 08/08/2024-10/08/2024

Miserable? Low? Struggling to cope with today’s unremitting deluge of despondency? Then take a trip to Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, where the clock seems always set to 1958, in the very best way. It’s a world where strangers are friends not yet met and the unpretentious joy of live music, the love of ale and enormous Oggie pasties is enough to bond 20,000 aunts and uncles, many of them sitting in an amassed crescent of camping chairs.

The benevolent stewardship of Cropredy guarantees that this is a safe space where manners, kindness and kinship is key.

Fairport co-founder Simon Nicol asks for people to approach the bill with “an open mind and an open heart”. And, sadly, for the first day, an open brolly. After a fortnight of sun and a long-range forecast set fair, Thursday was a traditional British summer day –cold with drizzle. This surprise sogginess needed spirits stimulated, so it’s just as well Rick Wakeman is headlining. Looking ever more like Timothy Spall’s stunt-double, he and his English Rock Ensemble are on fiery form, with Wakeman realising his dream of playing Journey To The Centre Of The Earth in its entirety at a festival for the first time since Crystal Palace Bowl in 1974. The great thing is, Wakeman quips, “You only have to clap once, at the end –and it’s the short version, only four hours.” It’s a jubilant performance. The night concludes with the bravura version of Starship Trooper that’s been in Wakeman’s set of late, complete with the duelling keytars of father and son Adam.