IN: Fairport Convention are a British folk rock band. Formed in 1967, they are widely regarded as a key group in the English folk rock movement. Their seminal album Liege & Lief is considered to have launched the British folk rock movement, which provided a distinctively English identity to rock music and helped awaken much wider interest in traditional music in general. The band have drawn heavily on the Child Ballads, songs of the British Isles from the later medieval period until the 19th century.

The new band began a hectic schedule of performing in Britain and the World and prepared material for a new album. The result was the all-instrumental Expletive Delighted! (1986). This showcased the virtuosity of Sanders and Allcock, but perhaps inevitably was not popular with all fans. This was followed by the recording In Real Time: Live '87 which managed to capture the energy and power of the new Fairport on stage, despite the fact that it was recorded in the studio with audience reactions dubbed on. In this period the band were playing to larger and larger audiences, both on tour and at Cropredy, and it was very productive in terms of recording. Fairport had the considerable composing and arranging skills of Allcock and, to fill the gap created by a lack of a songwriter in the band, they turned to some of the most talented available in the contemporary folk scene. The results were Red & Gold (1989) The Five Seasons (1990) and Jewel in the Crown (1995), the last of which was judged 'their bestselling and undoubtedly finest album in years.' At this point, with Mattacks busy with other projects, the band shifted to an acoustic format for touring and released the unplugged Old, New, Borrow Blue as 'Fairport Acoustic Convention' in 1996. For a while the four-piece acoustic line-up ran in parallel with the electric format. When Allcock left the band, he was replaced by Chris Leslie on vocals, mandolin and fiddle, who formerly worked with Swarbrick in Whippersnapper, and had a one-off stint with the band replacing Ric Sanders for 1992 Cropredy Festival. This meant that for the first time since reforming, the band had a recognized songwriter who contributed significantly to the band's output on the next album Who Knows Where the Time Goes (1997), particularly the rousing 'John Gaudie'. By the time of the 1997 thirty-year anniversary Festival at Cropredy, the new Fairport had been in existence for over a decade and contributed a significant chapter to the history of the band.

was the album a hit?

OUT:

IN: The Menominee (also spelled Menomini, derived from the Ojibwe language word for "Wild Rice People;" known as Mamaceqtaw, "the people," in the Menominee language) are a federally recognized nation of Native Americans, with a 353.894 sq mi (916.581 km2) reservation in Wisconsin. Their historic territory originally included an estimated 10 million acres (40,000 km2) in present-day Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The tribe currently has about 8,700 members. The tribe was terminated in the 1950s under federal policy of the time which stressed assimilation.

In 1634, the Menominee and Ho-Chunk people (along with a band of Potawatomi who had recently moved into Wisconsin) witnessed the French explorer Jean Nicolet's approach and landing. Red Banks, near the present-day city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, later developed in this area. Nicolet, looking for a Northwest Passage to China, hoped to find and impress the Chinese. As the canoe approached the shore, Nicolet put on a silk Chinese ceremonial robe, stood up in the middle of the canoe and shot off two pistols. For at least forty years in the 20th century, this event was presented in a biased fashion to elementary school students studying Wisconsin history. The Native people were said to fear "the light-skinned man who could make thunder." John Boatman has said it was more likely the native people feared for the light-skinned man, as he had demonstrated questionable mental faculties. Anyone with local knowledge would know better than to stand up in a canoe on the choppy waters of Green Bay. Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix (1682-1761), a French Catholic clergyman, professor, historian, author and explorer, kept a detailed journal of his travels through Wisconsin and Louisiana. In 1721 he came upon the Menominee, whom he referred to as Malhomines ("peuples d'avoines" or (Wild Oat Indians), which the French had adapted from an Ojibwe term: After we had advanced five or six leagues, we found ourselves abreast of a little island, which lies near the western side of the bay, and which concealed from our view, the mouth of a river, on which stands the village of the Malhomines Indians, called by our French "peuples d'avoines" or Wild Oat Indians, probably from their living chiefly on this sort of grain. The whole nation consists only of this village, and that too not very numerous. 'Tis really great pity, they being the finest and handsomest men in all Canada. They are even of a larger stature than the Potawatomi. I have been assured that they had the same original and nearly the same languages with the Noquets, and the Indians at the Falls.

was this a peaceful encounter?

OUT:
Nicolet put on a silk Chinese ceremonial robe, stood up in the middle of the canoe and shot off two pistols.