Dylan is on fine form on the opening day of the Feis

The inaugural London Feis (pronounced "Fesh" and translated as a traditional Gaelic arts and culture festival) takes place in Finsbury Park. Really a continuation of the Fleadh festival which was also run by Vince Power and held in the same location from 1990 – 2004, with a break in 2003. Feis is billed as a "21st anniversary" celebration as it's 21 years since the first Fleadh. It's a showcase for Irish music, with some international acts thrown in to the mix, and quite a few stalwarts from the days of the Fleadh are on the listings for this weekend.

Initially it was to be a one-day festival on the Saturday with Dylan headlining, then the Sunday was added with Van Morrison topping the bill, a double coup. Tickets are quite pricey at £70 for the day, although there was a deal for buying tickets for both days, and there were rumours of some websites selling the day tickets for a fiver to bump up numbers after slow sales.

There's certainly not much of a crowd for the opening act on Saturday at Main Stage – Richie and the Runners, with a sound akin to Mumford & Sons, folk-rock with acoustic guitars, harmonica and tambourine. Disappointingly the band hails from Cambridge and not Ireland but apparently they had won a competition to open the festival and provide a good start to proceedings.

Across to the left of Main Stage, there is a big top, imaginatively named 'Stage 2' and towards the back, at the top of the incline and behind some panels, a tiny outdoor 'Stage 3'. Brian Kennedy is playing solo in the Big Top; he used to play the Fleadh years ago, when he had luscious long hair, and seems very pleased to be back although the hair has shrunk and he comments that he can't flick it like he used to be able to during some of his older songs. He sings Van Morrison’s 'Crazy Love' which he covered for a film soundtrack and the audience joins in enthusiastically. Kennedy also plays a requested 'Carrickfergus', a traditional Irish song guaranteed to bring a tear to the eye of anyone who has the slightest affinity to the country and finishes with a more upbeat World Party song 'Put the Message in the Box'.

Stage 3 is hindered by being outdoor and at the approach, just in front of the food stalls which range around the arena, the sound from Main Stage clashes horribly with it. Bipolar Empire can just about hold their own due to their heavy sound.

The Main Stage has now drawn a bigger crowd for The Undertones, hailing from Derry, Northern Ireland and introduced as John Peel's favourite band, a resounding endorsement, but of course that was in the days when Feargal Sharkey was the frontman. The band, which had split in '83 reformed 12 years ago with Paul McLoone taking on lead singer duties. McLoone announces that they're playing their eponymous debut album in its entirety, which the crowd certainly appreciates. They're all "fast, short songs" and include 'Here Comes the Summer', 'Get Over You', 'Jimmy Jimmy', of course 'Teenage Kicks' and 'My Perfect Cousin' (from their second album). The whole set is delivered with a fantastic energy and enhanced by McLoone's spiky dancing.

The Waterboys follow to play us "English, Scottish, Irish and Cornish rock and roll". Their sound is certainly Celtic in feel, with harmonicas, jangling acoustic guitars and Steve Wickham's awesome fiddle playing, and in the way their music evokes sweeping landscapes and speaks of spirituality. Highlights include a pedal-steel enhanced 'And a Bang on the Ear', 'Be My Enemy', 'Raggle Taggle Gypsy', the sublime 'Fisherman's Blues' and their crowd-pleasing anthem 'The Whole of the Moon'. They play a couple of covers – a brave cover of Dylan's 'You're a Big Girl Now' and Frank Wilson's 'Do I Love You', with frontman Mike Scott claiming he's a Northern Soul aficionado.

The US band The Gaslight Anthem are on next – it's a bit too posturing stadium-rock for my tastes so I wander over to the Big Top to hear Nanci Griffith singing 'From a Distance', which is apt as hundreds of us are stuck outside - the tent is rammed and overspilling, possibly as Shane MacGowan is playing in there afterwards.

By now the whole park is heaving, every inch of grass and walkway taken up so it's very difficult just to walk from one stage to another (goodness knows how wheelchair users are managing), there are queues at all the food vans and bloomin' scarily long queues for the toilets, and inevitably blokes peeing against the fence panels, even behind the ice cream van next to Main Stage, eugh!

Back at Main Stage, introduced as "one of the biggest bands of the last 20 years", The Cranberries are on. The lead singer, Dolores O'Riordan, only gets a couple of lines of their first number out and the whole crowd is singing along with 'Zombie', and does the same on 'Linger'. I pop over to Stage 3 to see Treetop Flyers, a London-based band who’ve just won an emerging talent competition to play at Glastonbury. A five-piece, their sound is alt-country, or "country soul" is their description and with four of them on vocals, the harmonies may draw comparisons with Fleet Foxes, which is no bad thing; well worth checking out.

Irish singer Christy Moore has the onerous task of being the warm-up man for Dylan, which he carries out with ease. He's joined by Declan Sinnott and together they play folk songs on guitars and bodhrán to an appreciative audience. Tracks include 'Ride On', 'Don't Forget Your Shovel', and 'Joxer Goes to Stuttgart', which gets a cheer at the line "...arm in arm with Jack Charlton singing Revenge for Skibereen" (about Ireland beating England during Euro '88 – had to look that one up, my football knowledge isn't great!).

Then' it's the moment we've all been waiting for and the reason Finsbury Park is heaving - the legend and icon, Bob Dylan, who turned 70 in May, takes to the stage. Feis is his only confirmed UK appearance this year, and he made his only UK appearance in 2010 at Vince Power's Hop Farm Festival. I last saw him play in 2003 when he rushed through the songs in his set, and with his indistinct vocals rendered them all barely recognisable. Thankfully, he's on fine form tonight, playing guitar and keys and bursts of harmonica, and his band are excellent. His voice is gravelly and raspy, but we can hear the lyrics which is the important thing. We're treated to an hour and a half long set which includes classics like 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue', 'Tangled Up in Blue' and 'Highway 61 Revisited', some boogie-woogie and dancing (the crowd not Dylan) for 'Summer Days', and a three-song encore of 'Like A Rolling Stone' with the audience singing "how does it feel?", 'All Along the Watchtower' and 'Blowing in the Wind'. Dylan has barely spoken to the audience apart from to introduce the band towards the end but he doesn't really need to, his back catalogue speaks volumes for itself.

Dylan Set List

Gonna Change My Way of Thinking
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
Things Have Changed
Tangled Up in Blue
Summer Days
Simple Twist of Fate
Cold Irons Bound
A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
Highway 61 Revisited
Forgetful Heart
Thunder on the Mountain
Ballad of a Thin Man
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Like A Rolling Stone
All Along the Watchtower
Blowing in the Wind

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