AFTERTHOUGHT
Country music
JOHN WELLS
What is the reaction of ordinary, decent country folk to the long-haired, strangely- dressed music fans who trail into their village in their thousands to squat on the grass and listen in ecstasy to the big names of the recording studios performing in the rural surroundings of a music festival? We have become accustomed to stories in the press of violence, drug addiction, promiscuity and the wanton destruction of private property: to what extent are these stories reflected in the experience of the farmers who have to face this annual summer invasion of 'beauti- ful people'? Surprisingly, hardly at all. As one old man I spoke to put it, Weirdies they may be, but I had my field-glasses out all this week, and I ain't seen nothing as ordinary folks could take exception to, and that's the Gospel truth.'
Glyndebourne is of course quieter than many other festivals of this kind. Mr Happy Sunblow, music correspondent of The Magic Expanding Galaxy, went so far as to call it 'Necropolis'. According to Mr Sunblow, Glyndebourne attracts 'a very elderly kind of cat', who can only be said to 'freak' or to 'freak out', in a very limited sense. 'We dig the crazy clothes, the long dresses and the beads, but you know some of these old guys pay five quid to hire a costume? Five quid to look like a Victorian waiter, just like all the others. And why black, man? To me it's a funeral, it's just nowhere. They have some wild sounds down there, but they just sit there. Man, they don't even dance.'
Certainly the low level of audience re- sponse as compared with other festivals, where fans sway dreamily to the rhythm of the music, clapping their hands and dancing, and then surging onto the stage to embrace the musicians at the end of each 'number', has struck many observers as disappointing. Mr Lew Grabboni, an independent ticket agent for the Festival, confessed that it sometimes made him weep. 'Special trains they have, no expense spared, ten times, fifty times the money the young kids spend, and then all they do is shuffle into their rows and drop off. I mean they're snoring by the time the music starts. I'd come here from the other places expecting a better class of music-lover, certainly. I was expecting them
to take their clothes off and dance in the aisles. But there's nothing. The most they ever do is clap their hands together a bit at the end of a number.
'There's nothing wrong with the entertain- ment, 1 can promise you that. Certainly they could do with a bit of amplification, but otherwise it would drive the kids raving mad anywhere else. Take the group they've got on at the moment—Raymond Leppard and the Callisto. They've got drag, the lot. And what that Leppard does with his crutch is nobody's business. You imagine the old birds are going to start tearing at their clothing and climbing over the seats to get at him. But they just sit there looking glassy. So do the old men. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. Very nice houses, it's steady money, but if you're looking for an old-fashioned have-up with a hit of under-age crumpet on the side, this is definitely not where it's at'.
Nevertheless, rumours of immorality and al fresco love continue to cling to any music festival, and they are hard to dispel. There is no doubt that intoxicants are used inside the festival grounds, and liquid substances are frequently displayed for the benefit of photographers by the more daring and flam- boyant participants. The police in general turn a blind eye on this though woe betide any music-lover who leaves the festival in a state of incapability at the wheel of a car. For the most part, however, moderation seems to remain the keynote, and instances of visitors becoming 'High' and joining in the singing, or making love in the bushes, are, like authenticated accounts of nude dancing in the stalls, extremely difficult to come by.
What is certain is that the villagers are beginning to accept the long dresses, the rather self-conscious picnic hampers and the archaic tuxedos as part of the pattern of the summer. As one of them summed it up: 'Why, bless you, when they started a-coming down yere thirty years back and more, there was old fellers out of the cowshed and the pig-pen standing three deep' all along the lanes, a-blowing raspberries and a-making personal remarks as would bring a blush to the cheeks of my baCkside, there was. But now, why, what with the fashions a-changing, there don't seem no harm in it, somehow. If they poor city blokes wants to forget their troubles and come down here and play make-believe in the field there, well, bless their little hearts, why shouldn't they? But what me and the lads want to know is why they can't take their clothes off like the others? We likes a bit of tit.'
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