Folk For Christabel

  5th July 1969  Leyton Senior High School for Boys

Keith Brincorn remembers .. (through a purple haze)

There were at least three Keiths in Hyde Park on July 5th 1969. One was yours truly, one was on stage with two Micks, a Bill and a Charlie, the other was Mr Christmas. Two of them later trucked on down to Essex Road, Leyton with psychedelic gleams in their eyes, for the fourth School Folk Evening.

Co-starring with Hratch, Keith Christmas was clearly fired up by the free concert in the Park and the imminent release of his first LP, stealing the show with the likes of Cats Squirrel, I know you Babe you can't lose, and Trial and Judgement.

It was however the least successful so far of the series. Pete Stowe, the chancellor of our Exchequer reported a profit of five pounds. Perhaps the evening was overshadowed by the rather larger musical event earlier in the day.

Your narrator, in true sixties fashion, cannot remember much about the evening, apart from showing his Swedish companion the finer points of the Prefects' Room. His mind was still full of Crimson Kings, Third Ears, Battered Ornaments, Weavers of Life and Jumping Jack Flashes.

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