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Salient: Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Vol. 32, No. 5. 1969.

Folk concerts

Folk concerts

Two concerts were recently held by the V.U.W. Folk Music Club. On both nights the house was full, the audience keen and receptive.

The first concert was of a good all round standard. Notable performances were given by Bey Altey, best known for his own compositions and for his competent guitar work, strongly flavoured by the British folk blues/ jazz artists and the talented combination of Simon Morris and John Murphy, who played a weird mixture of flamenco, jazz, and Hendrix, all improvised, with quick changes from guitar to recorder to xylophone to bongos.

Also worth mentioning was the Men of the Forest, a British traditional trio who produce interesting harmonies in unaccompanied selections.

The second concert could be better described as a variety show that a folk concert. There was a midnight raga from Javer Naran, a sitar player, accompanied by his brother-in-law on tablas; Jae Renaut, a special guest artist from Christchurch who sang an unaccompanied Doors number, among others; and Dave Jordan the APRA, silver scroll winner, who sang his own compositions.

The concert was of such a high standard that it is difficult to pick out people worth 'a special mention". There were the usual folk club artists—sleeve Rubberskin, Bitch Puke, and Dicky Docky who performed with confidence and aplomb as always.

A new discovery on the folk scene is Hilary King who has a strong distinctive contralto voice and who immediately won audience approval with her beautiful "The Loos of England".

The highlight of the show was the Windy City Strugglers, the best (probably the only) rural blues band in New Zealand. Their performance sems to get tighter and more coordinated every time they play, but unlike most other country blues singers in the country, they managed to capture the style, sound, and spirit of the raw country blues of the 20s and 30s.

The audience seemed to be in the mood for erotic songs (Dave Hart and Mitch Park had earlier done two songs with very complex double entendre)—the Windy City Strugglers' encore was a Bo Carter blues called "Ramrodding Daddy" which had no double entendre at all—it was explicit, and Rick Bryant sang it magnificently.

At the other end of the scale was the smooth, melodic sound of Ian Antony and Tony Thurston. who did two contemporary songs of the Dylan-Paul Simon type.

All in all a splendid effort by the club. I. for one, will be looking forward to future concerts.