Music for a Renaissance festival

The one in California, south of Oxnard, (can never remember exactly where it was!), I went to twice and the 2nd time as part of our theater group class dressed in complete Elizabethan garb and doing vignettes and pieces of theater ... with a lot of twisted Shakespeare in it ... more like George and Martha get drunk sometimes!

In those two instances, I can not even remember the artists or bands that played there, which ought to tell you my attention span, and I was ALREADY into the European music scene by that time, and a lot of the "local music" stuff was not specifically exciting, though catching Robin Williamson was fun and neat ... and he fits into the the idea really well ... but I think that he would say that he would go to those for a lark and fun, and maybe play a little, but I doubt that he would stick to "hits" and likely only play traditionals, most of which would be labeled "what" when it came to southern California ... which is bad for a band or audience! But he did really well in the folk and bluegrass circles in California ... but not Oregon ... go figure!

By the time I came up here the story about the OCF was already huge and the main attraction for many years, would be the unannounced show by the Grateful Dead ... one member would show up, and then another join in sometime, and there was no rhyme or reason, except to party! I'm not sure that these days, folks can even relate to this at all.

The GD's experimental side and free form essence, was huge, and something that a lot of "progressive" music idolized from the late 60's when many European bands were doing similar things and thanking the West Coast folks for their direction. However, the free form noodling that the GD did, was fun for a lot of these fairs not only because they knew that a song would show up somewhere in the middle of it, but that in between you could go on groovin' and holerin' ... which was one of the attractions of the Fair in the first place!

In this particular manner, I would not pay 10 Cents for any of the bands listed at all ... though I might make an exception to The Third Ear Band, but what is it that they will do ... turn water into wine and wine into water...? If you can get the crowd to sing along it might work, but otherwise, I think most of it would fall flat ... and the listing of well known bands in those fairs, is not specially attractive, although Phish has been listed a couple of times in their day ... but I'm not sure they would be the "perfect" band for the festivals at all, anywhere in America. 

I think I would rather see a FOLK/BLUEGRASS revival in these fairs for the stoned and party fun ... a lot more than any of the folks listed.

I don't find Amazing Blondel's music boring at all! Plus, the RenFairs I've happened to attend seem to blur the lines with regards to what is fitting to the exact era they're claiming to represent (e.g. Whose Renaissance? 13th Century Italy's? France's with François I/Leonardo in the 1500s? Great Britain's with Edward IV through Elizabeth I?) Plus, I find that the average person has a very difficult time pinpoint particular musical styles to particular eras of history much less countries and composers, so "medieval" versus "Baroque" versus "Elizabethan" could mean Merovingian (do we have any music that we know survives from the early medieval? John of Damascus? Peter Abelard?), Gregorian (von Bingen), Carolingian, Occitan troubadours, the Eleanor of Aquitaine era of courtly music, Dufay and des Prez, Palestrina and Vivaldi, Teleman and Haydn, but who would know? I think we, the listeners, care about the use of period(-sounding) instruments (wood and brass) and pre-Industrial Rev-sounding music. Most Renaissance Fair personel seem to prefer the term "anachronistic" anyway. Thus, any time will do! Today's musician/performers are quite eclectic anyway and rarely show any allegiance to any single composer or single pocket of music, thus they fit into the world of "anachronistic" performers perfectly!