MAD TROUSERS, profoundly wayward whiskers, people with backpacks and accents at the merch stall buying (new! vinyl) copies of 5000 Spirits and Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, their old ones packed with joint-bums or simply loved to death. It's a glorious audience, a rave review of a crowd - Robert Plant's among them, so's Roy Harper, and, incongruously dressed in a matronly, herringbone suit (befitting her role as Mayor of Aberystwyth; I couldn't make this up) is black-haired Rosie, one of The Girlfriends who helped fill the stage back when the Incredible String Band morphed from folk duo to love commune. Their wild, complex, dreamy Spirits and Hangman albums were toted like maintenance manuals by British hippies in the middling '60s. They still sound shit-hot without acid.

Robin Williamson and Mike Heron dissolved their partnership in 1974. This is their very first reunion - two dates, Glasgow and London just because they felt like it. And no, of course it wasn't the way it was. For one thing no frivolous trousers, no women, dogs or babies, just four musicians (Mike and Robin, Dove Haswell and John Rutherford), none them looking particularly cosmic. For another it was too tentative, too reined-in, to go boldly skinny-dipping in the musical maelstrom that the Stringies always managed to emerge from just about alive. For that matter, there was little classic-era ISB material - half a song from Hangman, nothing from Spirits. Which left you, the fan, the choice of being a) miffed that you didn't get to wave your arms like a willow and singalonga "We are the tablecloth and also the table", b) proud that they didn't do the predictable, nostalgic crowd-pleasing set, or, as it happened, c) benignly tolerant of anything you got.

So, not so much a String Band reunion, then, as a Robin Williamson/Mike Heron one, each essentially performing solo(ish) - in Heron's case, solo plus band; in Williamson's vocals plus harp/recorder/mandolin/guitar band -while the other looked tenderly (Heron,) or somewhat sternly (Williamson) on.

Williamson, whose body is now as big as his voice, dominated with his poetry (excellent), his stand-up comedy spiels (close your eyes, it was Billy Connolly doing Alice's Restaurant ) the virtuosity of his vocal on October Song; Heron, who still looks like a small, sad pixie and sings in that compelling flattish voice, has the less folky, more interesting material.

In some ways this was a reunion that showed more why they parted than why they got back together. But, having said that when they did come together - most notably on Incredibles' songs Everything's Fine and Log Cabin - the cackles of many a hippy's heart were well warmed. If you couldn't get a ticket, watch out for the upcoming TV documentary.

Sylvie Simmons