Music / Infinite Rolling Stones: The Final. At the National Folk Festival, April 21. Reviewed by ALANNA MACLEAN.

On the last day of the National Folk Festival, I  caught the finals of the Infinity Song Contest, a wonderfully shambolic event that is on every year.

The idea is for various folk groups to have a go at their version of some well-known music. In this case the music of The Rolling Stones was the target and it was mostly disintegrated in a series of attempts by the finalists.

Among the attempts there was a touch of urbanity from Fred Smith and a touch the Spooky Men from Stephen Taberner and a ragtag group of singers and musos.

Vikings in plastic-horned helmets (historically the Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets and knew nothing of plastic) told IKEA jokes and mangled Mick and a bloke in a top hat and sunnies brought in some elegance.

Mandy Connell came up with a powerful version of Ruby Tuesday. Tug Dumbly raged satirically about Trump.

There wasn’t much writhing like Mick (probably no one can quite writhe like Jagger) and the songs often came apart under the pressure to do something other than how they may have been done originally. Perhaps the Rolling Stones are inimitable.

Intervals between acts were filled with Stones trivia questions and the liberal distribution of Easter eggs to those who knew the answers.

Eventually it was the massed Ukestral Voices and Ukastle Ukestra from Newcastle who took out the award with great singing and ukelele playing and enthusiasm.

Their piece used the words of Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech and some of their costumes featured the inimitable woman-centred T-shirts from the Blue Mountains Mount Victoria shop Mt Vic and Me, a great counterbalance to any Rolling Stones misogyny.

The Infinite Rolling Stones and its predecessors is an event prone to a bit of self indulgence but given the depth of The National, a couple of hours taking the mickey (or the Mick) is not out of place.