How lovely to meet up with a few friends at a bijou pub in that London for a few (overpriced) pints of Explorer, a bespoke pork pie which was absolutely worth the price and a retrospective pop show at The Barbican, featuring the (early) music of Fairport Convention, tracking their astonishing move from being a handy west coast psychedelia covers band to the progenitors of an entire movement in four short years. The music itself was sublime - particularly the first half in which, essentially, some old flatmates recreated the songs they were messing about with forty years ago to thrilling, one could say spine tingling, effect. The ebullience of youth tempered with the experience of four decades' playing. From my vantage point I was reminded once again of the precise artistry of Dave Mattacks, surely the world's most reliable drummer, the exquisite and seemingly effortless talent of Richard Thompson, Ashley Hutchings' peculiarly anachronistic single finger bass plucking and the sea anchor rhythm guitar playing of Simon Nicol - the unsung guitar hero's unsung guitar hero. It also reminded me that Iain Matthews always seems improbably pleased with his own place in pop history, given everyone else's perception of it. Dame Judy Dyble rose spectacularly to front what could have been a nerve-slashing opening section. If you think you've got some front, then just you try opening a set like this armed only with an autoharp and four decades worth of expectation weighing on you.
Split into two halves, the evening's first section finished with "A Sailor's Life", a song I've never been fond of but which was handled divinely by Kellie While, a smiling chanteuse with the looks of your favourite barmaid and the voice of an angel. Knowing ASL to be a fair ten minutes long on a good night, I used the opportunity to beat the queues for both the loo and the bar, leading to a surrealistic period where, in the brightly neon-lit Barbican toilets I listened to the excellent sound system relaying a long instrumental section while I went about my business alone. It was like being in my very own Luc Besson movie.
The second half was a more familiar retread of past glories, but presented the opportunity to check out Kami, a Thompson fille I'd not taken to before but who was everything I look for in a frontwoman - sassy, great voice, good shoes - and her brother Teddy, one of those artists who I make a point of owning all the albums of. When Linda Thompson (nee Peters) came on and shared a mic with the pair of them for the last number it was a real 'moment', particularly when she kept glancing to the side of the stage, almost as if to check with her one-time embitteredly ex-husband that she was doing it right.
At the close of the evening, with the massed band of the ex-members and guests congretating at the front, it was a nice touch when non-playing bassist Hutchings drifted from the lip of the stage and took up position next to Mattacks on the kit, who had generously paid tribute to his late predecessor earlier in the evening while (and by) expertly executing his drum parts, and surveyed the scene beatifically, all the better to commit the scene to mind.
For all the technology in the world, on the web and however many pixels of memory you can pack into a digital camera, there's nothing quite like experiencing those single moments, those fragments only you take from the shared experience. We all had ours. These were mine.