Now! Then! 2025! - A Yorkshire Almanac

Excerpt

Touring America to any English band must be a revelation. Americans are spontaneous and make great audiences. They freed us from more constraints. It has been a long road losing those English inhibitions. Five nights at the LA Forum with Jethro Tull. 18,000 seats. We were opening our set at the time with the Lyke Wake Dirge, a grim piece of music from Yorkshire concerning purgatory, and we all dressed in dramatic mummers’ ribbons with tall hats. The effect was stunning. Five gaunt figures in line across the front of the stage, lit from below casting huge shadows, intoning this insistent dirge alarmed some members of the audience whose reality was already tampered with by 70s’ substances. It was most satisfying.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Original

Touring America to any English band must be a revelation. Americans are spontaneous and make great audiences. They freed us from more constraints. It has been a long road losing those English inhibitions. 5 nights at the LA Forum with Jethro Tull. 18.000 seats. We were opening our set at the time with the Lyke Wake Dirge, a grim piece of music from Yorkshire concerning pergatory and we all dressed in dramatic mummers ribbons with tall hats. The effect was stunning. 5 gaunt figures in line across the front of the stage, lit from below casting huge shadows, intoning this insistent dirge alarmed some members of the audience whose reality was already tampered with by 70s substances. It was most satisfying.

120 words.

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• British folk revival (1) ·
• Dirge (1) ·
• Folk music (10) ·
• Folk rock (1) ·
• Hallucination (1) ·
• Hallucinogen (1) ·
• Jethro Tull (1) ·
• John Tobler (1) ·
• Kia Forum (1) ·
• Los Angeles (1) ·
• Lyke-Wake Dirge (1) ·
• Maddy Prior (1) ·
• Mummers’ play (1) ·
• Music (26) ·
• Shadow (1) ·
• Song (20) ·
• Steeleye Span (1) ·
• United States (20) ·

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