Fairport Convention entered into my life when I was on my fourteen. It was the beginning of seventies. The days of �Those Were The Days�, �I Who Have Nothing�, �Something�, �As Tears Go By�... The good old days... I was listening to all those beautiful songs from the radio. In the town where I was living, there was no record store, but when visited big cities, I was eagerly looking at the long-play sleeves... A turntable was the dream of my early teens..

Bulent, my brother, who was living in a big city, was also interested in music, and one day he came home to visit me and the parents with a Garrard turntable and a long-play in his hands. It was a second hand Garrard, and a second hand long play of a strange named band... I asked him what kind of a band they were, and he explained that, he also didn�t know them, however, when he asked the seller for an extra benefit for the deal, the seller gave him that LP as a gift. It was the U.S. edition of �Unhalfbricking� with elephants and a ballerina on the cover... And it changed my life...

Later on I purchased many many LPs, I interested with many more bands and musicians, but Fairport Convention, especially the singing of Sandy Denny, always had/have a special place in me.

Despite all my interest, and all my collection of recorded material by the Fairport, I didn�t see them on stage till 1993.But, before Christmas 1993, Jan, my friend at the British Council who knew that I was a fan of folk music called me and told that they were planning to invite a folk band from Britain to introduce the British music and culture to Turkish people, and asked me a list of folk bands available for international tours. I was very happy for this occasion. I advised him not to think too much, and to call the Fairport�s management. At last, my dream was coming true. I would be able to see Fairport Convention. This was my dream since the summer of 1969. A few weeks later, Jan called me again and said: �Levent, Fairport Convention accepted our offer to visit Turkey for a seven-day tour, but nobody knows them here in Turkey, so you must give some info about them to the music-public, you can do some public performances of their albums, and write some articles and reviews, etc., and begin to do all these from now on, hurry up!� It was really hard to give people an idea about the music they were not familiar with in such a short time.

In the beginning, I wrote a press release about Fairport�s music on behalf of The British Council. Later, I organized a public performance of Fairport�s CDs at the the Atlantis Hi Fi Center, the most famous music store of Ankara where later on Fairport signed their CDs for the new fans and spent several hours taking photographs and talking with the beautiful lady and manager of the store. I was very eager to attrack people to the concerts, and therefore I decided to write a long article giving information about the past and present of Fairport Convention. I did it and it was published in a mag with several photos taken from various sources. Before Fairport came to Ankara, I sent a copy of the mag to Dave Pegg just in case. The time was passing very slowly and I was impatient for waiting so long to see them. It was really hard to wait for an overseas fan, because that would probably be their one and only tour to Turkey. I was thinking to arrange an opportunity to shake their hands, I�d have a chance, to talk to them.

They were all great musicians and probably, it could be very hard to contact them. Well, at last, the great day came. The first gig was at the Sheraton Hotel�s ballroom. I was there about one hour earlier the concert time. Out of the ballroom was unexpectedly crowded and everybody was staring around to see the band members. Me too. A while later, Jan of The British Council came to me and told, �hey Levent where the hell you are, I�m looking for you for hours, Dave Pegg shows everybody your article in the mag, I don�t know where he found it, and asks where the journalist was, he wants to meet you, come on!�

A few seconds later I was with Peggy. What a great man. He thanked to me for the article and for I sent it to him. He also gave me some recent CDs of Fairport as gift (he later told me somewhere during the tour not to tell anybody about those gift CDs for some other people could expect to be given CDs as presents-sorry for writing this Peggy!) and invited me to the Black & White Bar after the concert. It was unbeliavable. The show was great and after the show we went to the bar. All the band members were very sincere. We talked and drank beer until midnight and took and have been taken lots of photographs (the characteristic of the Black & White Bar is that all the walls of the bar is full of hundreds of black and white photographs of famous stars such as Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, etc.-and if you visit the bar, you�ll see three framed photographs of Fairport from that night!). When we talked about Fairport Convention, Ric began to ask me several questions. �Hey, Levent, tell me where Maart is from�, and I gave the right answer.

Later, he directed another question to test my knowledge: �Well, tell me what is the title of our first album�, and he heard the right answer again. He was seeming angry, because he wanted to show my lack of info: Therefore, the last question came assuming that I couldn�t know: �Okay Levent do you know what Richard Thompson eats at his breakfast?� How could I know that. So, he won the game. At another gig at another town, Peggy, before the show, came to me with a rare t-shirt in his hands, with naked girls under Fairport Covention logo, and gave it to me as present. That night we went to Istanbul, and before the concert when he saw me in the saloon, came to me again and we talked about the music and the life till the concert time. It was my last stop for the tour. Before leaving, they invited me to the resting room, gave me some beer, and we said goodbye. This was my first meeting with Fairport and all the things I lived with them was more than I dreamt. More than I dreamt. Thanks chaps!

However, the biggest of my dreams was attending to a Cropredy Festival... And, in August 1997, I was there, I was one of the 30 thousand people at the Cropredy area. The big surprise related with the festival, I faced months later was my picture in the booklet of concert CD. During the concert, Simon took lots of pics of the crowd from the stage, and they used one of those pics for the center page of the CD booklet. I�m there at the far right, front row!

Fairport Convention Pics in Turkey

Cropredy 1997 Pics

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