Love, Ire & Song

When you've been tackling trials and tribulations left right and centre, there's nothing like an evening of riot folk to help get it all out of your system. Thank every god imaginable, then, for the visit of Mr Ben Marwood, Mr Franz Nicolay, and last but certainly not least, Mr Frank Turner (pictured).

The simple recipe of blending folk with punk rock has worked from the early experiments of The Clash and Billy Bragg, through the likes of The Pogues, The Levellers and Half Man Half Biscuit, right up to Frank and his compatriots for this evening. I think it's somehow genetically wired into the minds of people (like myself) who grew up listening to fast, loud, angry three-chord music, to eventually crave songs that express the same anger delivered in a more stripped-down, acoustic format. It's a magical moment in the life of any punk, when they hear Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Ewan MacColl, or all of the above, for the first time. It's like having been trapped inside a cupboard, and suddenly discovering how to open the door and explore the rest of the house.

The local library may seem like an odd venue for such an outpouring of youthful rebellion, but with a couple of hundred people on hand and plenty of great songs and banter from Ben, Franz and Frank, we managed to bring the place alive. There were plenty of well-timed digs at tonight's Eurovision (Frank: "I'm convinced that Jedward are some kind of performance art project...created by Andy Warhol...I'm sorry, I just can't live in a world where Jedward are for real") and inevitable jokes about the surroundings (Ben: "the last time I sweated this much in a library was during my exams"), and of course, cracking songs by the bucketload for us to sing along to. Folk-punk is nothing if not encouraging of audience participation.

Entertaining? Yes. Energetic? Yes. Over too soon? As always. All the more reason for some of the younger ones in the crowd to pick up their own guitars when they get back, and, as Frank says, try this at home.