There’s no fool like an old fool, they say, so what happens when a bunch of oul’ coots gather together to make music? The next bunch of posts may enlighten you as to the question just posed and may also, perhaps, enrage or entertain. Anything’s better than a yawn, I guess. These songs were the result of a few sessions around a table laden with alcoholic beverages of various kinds. Plonked in the centre of the table was a laptop with built-in mic that somehow survived the knocks and spillages that were part and parcel of the sessions.
Song 5: King of the Fairies/Queen of the Fairies– Another pair of tunes from the Irish instrumental tradition. The fiddle is central to the sound of Banter and here it is given due prominence in this brace of melodies. For me, Michael Hoffman’s 1999 Midsummer Night’s Dream with Rupert Everett
as Oberon and Michelle Pheiffer as Titania springs to mind when I hear the titles of the tunes now. Anyway, I have always disliked the greeting-card imagery of fairies and angels as cute-as-buttons homoculi cavorting around petal-strewn gardens or fluffy white cotton-wool clouds.
Quentin Bega's Blog 