Monday, May 9, 2005

Highland Festival
I LOVE Highland Festivals. It was at this High.land Fest, two years ago, that I was first introduced to Clann An Drumma. Great music. My first thought about them was Punk Celts (which is fine, too). No, thery're traditional, but very loud. Five members play drums, and the sixth the bagpipe! (Okay, so they don't always play at once.) They sing, too. And it's great music.

The Fest was a blast! ^_^ So much fun. I had our Border collie "Mudpie" for part of the time, and our other Border collie "Blue" for a bit of the time. When I had him away from Mom, he was spending so much time worrying about where she was that he didn't have time to be as shy as usual!

Clann An Drumma was fabulous, as usual. We didn't tape it, I'm afraid, and this was their most unique performance I've been to so far. At one point, the long-haired one, Jamsie (or something like that....) told us we had to sing the chorus. Well, he sang it all at once first, and between that and the initial hesitation, we didn't do very well at first. So he did it line-by-line with Joe (the older leader--I think he's the leader) pantomiming. Joe did that during the first verse of song, too. Very humorous. Anyway, Jamsie warned us that he would be watching us, in case we didn't sing. After the first verse and actual chorus, he pointed into the crowd and said that someone wasn't singing. And he was holding a dagger. x.X Joe ran into the crowd, grabbed this poor girl, and took her on-stage. They made her sing the verse, with help since she didn't know the words. Then Jamsie started teasing her about how she sang. You know how a guy may imitate a girl's voice? ("It's his alter-ego, Georgiana.") Yeah, well... ^_^ It was funny. He mentioned, "Big men warriors--Ye're fit to fight with me."

And, of course, they did their classic of having one song where they bring kids on-stage with them. Joe had little shakers for the kids, and he had this one big guy come up while he was holding a maracca. But when the guy got there, Joe gave him a little yellow shaker-thingy instead. XD

And Mudpie was just fine with the loud noise, then and earlier when there had been a sound similar to an explosion. During much of CAD, she visited people in the crowd or was next to a red-haired girl getting belly scratches and what-not. She wasn't disturbed by the drums. This is one thing about CAD--when you have a six-member band, at least four (and maybe five) on the drums at once, and the sixth on the bagpipe...it's best heard in person. Mom's friend Hope said she was addicted during the first song, and she bought two CDs. ^.^

And I browsed the shops. There are so many interesting things to see. Blue found the sporans and fox tails, and other dead things, interesting. He went towards one man, but it was because the man was wearing a sporan. And he was very good socially. He tends to be a shy wuss, but he was excellent for him. Though, as I said before about the reason why....
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