From 60s to sixties

ON THE day that the Rolling Stones shook Shanghai, in the week that a Madonna concert sold 50,000 £160 tickets in ten minutes, Julie Felix played Frosterley Village Hall.

There were 120 tickets, £6 each.

They'd been snapped up within a fortnight. It wasn't so much a folk club as an old folk club; most of us, anyway.

"I know I'm over the hill, " she told her audience, "but I kinda like it on this side."

Ms Felix was never in the musical super-league, of course, never part of the Baez tapestry, but after 40-odd years in the business remains an enduring, entertaining and (probably) an enigmatic figure.

"Before my time, " a late 40s lady had said, disdainfully, at the match last Saturday afternoon.

"So was Julius Caesar, but you've heard of him, haven't you?" replied her outraged interrogator.

Born in California and of American Indian descent, Julie Felix became the first folk singer to sign for a major British record label, had her own show on BBC1, was resident singer on The Frost Report, enjoyed a couple of top 20 hits in 1970.

Much of it was - still is - protest stuff, marching to the music of unease. Perhaps her best remembered song, however, is the apparently inoffensive Going to the Zoo, written in an age when a zoo was a place they kept wild animals and not the North-East nickname for a licensed rough house (from which the wild animals are let out every evening. ) She'd filled the Royal Albert Hall, sung to 27,000 in a single US venue, brought Westminster Abbey to its knees. Now Ms Felix had gone from Frost to Frosterley, from 60s to sixties.

She'll be 68 in June, and still the flower child blossoms.

FROSTERLEY'S between Wolsingham and Stanhope in Weardale, hitherto best known for Frosterley marble, said to have been formed 325 million years ago at a time when water covered the whole of the North-East of England and in that respect must have been much like last month.

The two-storey village hall will be 100 years old in 2009, weekly events ranging from bridge to bingo, from French to flower arranging. There's also a Sunday club, which meets on Tuesday afternoons.

There was a raffle for Easter eggs and things in a bid to raise a few bob more, a bar which sold something called Bobby Olley's Westoe Netty Special, which for some reason was exhausted after two pints.

The audience was boosted by a group from Burtreeford at the top end of the dale - "A suburb of Cowshill, " they insisted, thus ensuring their hamlet's first ever mention in the paper.

Ms Felix came to England in 1964, rooted in Scandinavia in the 1970s, returned to America in the 1980s and - "a bit of a feminist" - now lives in Hertfordshire, with a tree house as back-up.

She had asked for nothing more than a jug of water and a bottle of Becks beer - perhaps having heard about the Westoe Netty Special. She sent to the fish shop next door for a bag, a small bag, of chips, spent the night at a B&B in Brotherlee.

"She's been tremendous, no bother at all, " said Keith Hutchinson, the organiser, though Frosterley barely appeared to have noticed her arrival.

The council's "Coming events" board hadn't been updated since December, the kids at the foot of the stairs weren't waiting for autographs but for their fish and chip suppers.

It was part of the "Bright Shadows" tour, named after her new album. The lady seemed far from penumbral yet.

SHE'S about 5ft 3ins, still long black-haired, still hitting a high note and striking a mean chord.

She began with Masters of War, one of Bob Dylan's, wandered off into songs about yoga and the spiritual and stuff, talked of a magnificent journey to the other side - by which she probably didn't mean Bollihope Common - admitted that she was old enough to remember when vinyl gave way to cassette.

In truth she's old enough to remember when life turned at 78rpm, and somehow seemed the more sedate for it.

After the interval there'd be requests, she said - "As long as it's not Joan Baez; you can ask me, but I won't sing it". During it, there was tea and sponge cake and a debate about her age.

In truth she wears very well, though when the interval stretched from 20 to 30 minutes, there were those who wondered if she'd not just fancied an early night instead.

Thereafter she sang bits of Leonard Cohen and Woody Guthrie, lots of Bob Dylan. It included a song called Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowland which formed a complete side of a Dylan LP and had, she supposed, "a billion and one" words.

She was almost perfect, nothing wrong with her memory, though there was a short intermission when the singer got cramp in her toes.

"Try yoga, " someone said, unkindly.

She still talks of illegal wars and horrible politicians, of Blair and Bush and b-words less offensive, campaigns actively against land mines. She still marches against Iraq and other perceived outrages, still longs to give peace a chance - but may have reconsidered, if not quite mellowed, the approach.

"People ask me if I've calmed down and become less rambunctious, and the answer is that I haven't.

"I don't think we can change a lot of things by shouting. We have to have an inner peace and radiate it outwards. I won't go on, we could be here all night."

It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening; felicitous, it might almost be supposed. Thus garlanded, she'll be back at the Village Hall on November 17, direct from the Cock and Bottle in Bradford. That's the Frosterley Report, anyway.