Play on

Fairly obviously, this is not the early music concert I went to today. That was the impressive player of recorders and other wind instruments, Charlotte Schneider, at lunchtime in Blackheath, London.

This is Bellowhead's gig in Oxford this evening. Yes, I'm having a bit of a musical feast at the moment.

The irrepressible, hyperactive firework of a phenomenal fiddler, Sam Sweeney, opened the gig with his own band then went on to play an almost-two-hour set with Bellowhead. At the end he was still pogoing, leaping off raised bits of stage, morris dancing and rolling onto his back while continuing to play. I'm glad he was never my toddler.

The 12-member band - that's including the much missed Paul Sartin (extra) for whom they left a space in the middle when they took their curtain call - is made up of what appears to be wildly diverse characters. One of the brass players commented that his side of the stage were all period-piece drama, the opposite side were all Saturday Night Fever and the middle was a free-for all, with Benji Kirkpatrick in cut-off jeans and ripped T-shirt, showman Jon Boden changing mid-way through the concert from a bright pink jacket into a sparkly pink jacket and his erstwhile duo partner, John Spiers, who retreats into the shadows and lets his squeezebox do the talking, in grey.

The band honoured Paul Sartin with a recording of him singing while they stood silent in near-darkness. Gradually they joined in, until they were all performing together again. That was a bit shivery.