String Band

Yesterday was a day of blessings. Affection and gifts in the morning from family. A reprieve from the dentist, who decided root treatment wasn’t necessary after all. Plague had a job interview which seemed to go well. I managed some Javascript programming at work that I thought might have stumped me. I had a nice Mexican meal with an old friend before the Incredible String Band show, and came home to a lovely cinnamon cake baked by Pestilence.

The String Band experience was very pleasant, no more, no less. I didn’t feel the absence of Robin Williamson as keenly as last time I saw them. Mike Heron sang quietly for the most part, not risking much, but occasionally let rip the way I like his voice. He didn’t talk much, which is a shame, as I enjoy his turn of phrase (‘When I bludgeoned my way into the String Band at the beginning, from being in the audience watching Robin and Clive …" "We’re going to try a hippie drumming extravaganza now, which will probably exhaust us. Then we’ll have an intermission where we all lie down in a brightly-lit room …") It seemed to have a lot more spirit than the last time I saw them, and the mixed audience (about a third young people) witnessed the return of ‘a different instrument for every song’ from Fluff and Lawson, along with long tuning up periods. (Not as long as the old days – then they really tried to get them in tune; now they make a stab at it, and one of them starts the song while the rest catch up!). Clive Palmer didn’t do much – you might have thought it was Clive Dunn in a long-haired wig. At one point I swear he nodded off over his banjo. But there was a lovely moment after the show where he came out to pack away his stuff and some fans gathered by the stage begging him to sing ‘Empty Pocket Blues’; when he failed to oblige they sang it to him!

Set list (they dropped a couple because Fluff’s voice had gone):

• Everything’s Fine Right Now
• Medley: Air / You Get Brighter
• Cousin Caterpillar
• You Were Meant for Me (Clive solo)
• Water Song (Fluff and Lawson)
• Chinese White
• Ducks on a Pond
• Spirit Beautiful (great!)
   
• <break>
• Sleepers Awaken
   
• Hedgehog Song
• Painting Box (Mike and Fluff)
• How Happy I Am (Mike and Clive)
• You Know What You Could Be
• Cellular Song
• <encore>
   
• The Old Golden Land (from Job’s Tears)