Martin Carthy - and a Blipmeet

Martin Carthy was in Norwich this evening at the Octagon Chapel, a lovely building that I'd not been in before.  It was packed out, but the organisers managed to squeeze in a table in the lobby from which they operated a bar.  When I asked where the toilets were I was told, kindly, that 'the ones inside' were 'for Martin' so us punters had to skip a few yards down the street to use the ones in a local community hall which proved to be positively palatial.  They could have had the bar in there.

I had had a casual exchange with Blipchum Rosiecatwoman about this gig and whilst we didn't make any formal plan to meet up it was really nice when she rocked up and found a place on the pew (I kid you not) next to me.  Apart from both enjoying the gig we also crammed in quite a lot of topics of conversation during the interval.  And thank you Rosie for the almost half pint of red wine you bought me (the bar didn't appear to have actual wine glasses).

In photographic terms, it was a nightmare.  Rather low light and I really didn't want to use flash or my Nikon (the sound of the 'mirror slap' would have been like a gun going off) so I just used my teeny tiny Olympus pocket camera.  And this is the result.

Musically, whilst I enjoyed seeing Martin Carthy because he is such a nice man and very entertaining I realised that the only times I've seen him before have been when he's been part of bigger outfits like The Imagined Village or Waterson/Carthy.  It was interesting to see him by himself and to be honest the best bits for me were the instrumental pieces.  That's not a criticism of his voice, but of some of the material (apart from one particular song about the horrors of war) which just didn't click with me.

A good evening out though, nonetheless.