Fairport Convention fans - help

For those of you who are fans of early Fairport, I'd encourage you to seek out the live peformances from the band's annual Cropredy Festival. There are multi-disc sets available for the bands 25th (1992), 30th (1997) and 35th (2002) reunions. These sets feature repetoire of the early bands with the the same musicians (the living ones anyway). So you can enjoy Leige and Leif as played by a similar version of Fairport but having the benefit of another 30 years of playing! At the same time the current touring version of Fairport includes a fair amount of the older material in their set-lists. The band is embarking on a US tour for the month of June and I'd encourage all those who have even a remote interest in this musical genre to attend a performance- you won't be disappointed! The itinerary may be viewed on the band's website

"Benefit" of another 30 years of playing?

Thanks for the info Linkster.

I have a friend in England who sends me, ahem...cough... unofficial copies of those festival gigs. They're OK, but I agree with the gist of Patrickamory's question. There's no substitute for RT and Sandy Denny. Rather like the Dead without Jerry Garcia (why bother?).

Frankly I'm always a bit dismayed when fans are constantly engaged in debate about which version of Fairport is better, or choosing to ignore anything the band did in the 32+ years since Richard Thompson left. I'd urge all who have a passing interest in this genre to check out the last four studio albums (in chronological order): (1) Jewell in the Crown, (2) Who Knows Where the Time Goes, (3) The Wood and the Wire and (4) XXXV.