The band arrives and a roar goes up from the front of the stage. The crowd contracts; picnic blankets are carelessly stampeded. The headliners have arrived. After only two minutes a dense semi-circle of band faithful has solidified, a minor crush of less enthusiastic, or less aware, lingerers gather behind them.

A band that sings of love from the heart with honest lines. A group of musicians armed with a battery of songs reinforced by fresh metaphors. Line after line of innovation, a siege of passionate interpretations.

Image by Neil French

‘Are you happy? I thought you’d be happier. You’ve got the sun. Look at you all. You dunno what you’ve got.’ A harsh accusation, one most will admit is a painful truth. The songs lift the audience,  a polished live performance coloured with Ska that manages not to deviate too far from the studio recordings. The collective mood lifts. The people before the stage are reminded of the good and wholesome things they had begun to forget.

There is so little observed truth to be found in media today. An absence of what is decent and what is kind in a human being. Pages and airwaves clogged with the commercial and motivated by a ravenous economy. Desperate for money, or fame. Clawing at recognition, big cars and ludicrously expensive restaurants. Not much to inspire young lovers at a time when they so desperately need encouragement.

Swathes of the young and hopeful bouncing around to the tunes of their day; rapt by the pipers of their generation. A collection of young men who spent their days digging around in the uncharted depths of human feeling. A search party returning to the community, to sing about kissing and resolving, with walls of arms around them. Beautiful songs that can so easily make you miserable, because you’ve had that same feeling in you for so long, and it has gone neglected.

Drowned in alcohol. Dismissed by the wildly ambitious. Mocked in large part by those whose sole aim is to get ahead and lock the door behind them. The crowd pushes in closer, touched and touching. Writhing in the contagion of love and love making, an art so nearly lost in a time obsessed by interest rates and foreign investment. A society born to a kitchen table too rarely attended and so difficult to fill with food.