Wiki only gives the English title, so what's going on with your copy, Paul?

Jules

I got a nice cheap copy of Off the Screen DVD for a couple of quid.  Inside was this newsletter for 2010.  £85 in 2010 is £126.87 today (Bank of England inflation calculator).  Ultimately, this tells much of the story (I think), as does the lineup...

I think whenever Cropredy ends it was always going to be by default. It was always going to be as soon as any given year failed to break even. I can easily see why we might have reached that point. It's core audience has diminished and/or become more risk averse for a number of reasons. The band at its heart are no longer the dynamic, essential attraction that they were even 10 years ago. And the festival is so heavily associated with them, irrespective of who else might be there, that it is not going to stand up to any significant refocussing/rebranding. All things come to an end and it's time may well be up. Indeed the time for festivals generally as a form of mass entertainment may nearly be up unless they have the kind of scale, brand recognition, media reach and more importantly, social media reach of the likes of Glastonbury or the Isle of Wight.

Ah, that's Mare de Specchi under its English title. I almost bought a copy of Sea of Mirrors until I realised.

It'll be an awful shame if 2024 becomes the final year of Cropredy by default rather than by being planned that way, with a much stronger lineup to go out on.

But these days, who *are* the really strong acts that are both crowd-pullers *and* financially/logistically feasible for Cropredy anyway?


Well, this is my point. Cropredy obviously has to refocus away from that original audience, which it's clearly been trying to do in more recent years, and the people in their forties and fifties would seem to be the prime target - the ones who were teenagers in the 80s and are steeped in that particular era of pop culture, but who also know music from the 60s through to the 90s because they grew up during a period where there was simply a much wider range of music heard on radio and TV and in everyday life.

I don't think aiming much younger than people born from about 1970 onwards is likely to work.

 I only got into the Coral with that album, but enjoyed it hugely - and personally I think the most recent album 'Sea of mirrors' is even better; melodicism dialled up to eleven....

A couple more runs through the album and I have concluded that it's mostly lift music with the occasional hotel bar/lounge "entertainment".

Not a fan, sadly.

The trouble with that is that Fairport were a Sixties and Seventies band, essentially, when at their peak commercially..albeit not a very high one.
The 'old' audience are of the same vintage.
They are/were into music of that era, and either bought records by or went to see Fairport's contempories when it was the current happening thing. People who were old enough to go to Bath Festival and see Fairport, Pink Floyd, Zappa, Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane, The Byrds and so on. This is why prog acts are popular with a part of the crowd, and also your Steeleyes, John Martyns, Lindisfarnes. (Progressive rock meant something different in 1969.)
The undercard was largely always up and coming acousticy/folky acts, which was what Fairport were in the Eighties. (Acousticy/folky, not up and coming.)
I can't see Fairport fans being Petula or Tony Christie fans - Glasto may get away with one act like that each year - but that's not Cropredy.
I can't see a future for Cropredy with The Human League, Culture Club, Rick Astley, and the Pet Shop Boys, with Fairport playing to a half empty field at the end, either. A Madness or Proclaimers for a bit of variety maybe, but there's plenty of festivals catering to that, and us die hards would go elsewhere, sadly.
If there were any folk festivals left.

I had the great privilege of being at The Maverick festival once, watching some old timey Americana duo be absolutely delighted to be introduced by our compere, one Stephen Foster.

Unfortunately, he cancelled his U.S. tour (slow ticket sales or "scheduling issues," who knows?). He was planning to come to our fair city. U.K. dates are still on.