Memories of a thousand* gigs #46

(* probably not actually that many, but who’s counting?)

#46: Hawkwind
Summer Daze Festival, Stapleton Farm, Langtree - 27th July 1996
Support: Trip, Captain Rizz, Bates Motel + about 30 other bands and DJs
Also present: MrsRobster (before she became MrsRobster)

I'm sure it must be written in some ancient rock and roll text that every man, woman and child who has ever attended live music events since 1970 must have seen Hawkwind at least once. It is pretty much a given, even if you don't remember it. My one and only experience of the Grandmasters of Space Rock came just a few miles from my house in deepest, darkest North Devon.

Summer Daze was a one-day festival that had run a few times in the area. Its main organiser was a lovely guy called Alex Duncan and the site was his parents' farm. I knew Alex in my capacity as the local music journalist and I'd covered his band Circle Of Hands a few times. A year or so later, I would venture into his recording studio with the band I was playing in at the time and he would produce our demo 'Hubris'. My involvement in the festival aside from writing about it in the rag, was to pen a few programme notes about some of the performers.

The future MrsRobster and I had only been going out for seven months. Being the old romantic that I am, I wondered what possible better way there was to express my love than to take her to see Hawkwind in a field and spend the night in a tent. Yeah, I knew how to spoil her alright. Of course, this meant I was not going to end up like I had done at previous Summer Daze events. One year, I ended up eating most of the chocolate cake I'd baked, and passed out under the mixing desk. It was probably down to a certain ingredient in the cake...

I got thanked! (click to enlarge)

There were three stages - the Main Stage, the Fluid Emissions Stage (curated by a local promoter of young bands) and a dance stage. I flitted between two of them throughout the day, and spent an awful lot of the time talking to people and drinking cider. To be honest, my memories of the day are extremely vague, except for one element: the headliners.

I'd only ever had a passing interest in Hawkwind, but I was captivated by their show. The lights were extraordinary and the music enthralling. It didn't really matter what they played (to me, anyway) as I wasn't familiar with most of their work, and there were a fair few others there I suspect were in the same boat. However, Silver Machine was the one true common denominator and the whole place came alive. I thought one day I would try to see Hawkwind again, but it never happened. It remains the only show of theirs I've ever been to. In fact, it was also the last time MrsRobster and I have spent a night under canvas.

This was the final Summer Daze Festival. There were stories of bikers gatecrashing the site without paying, and of some people trying to wreck the stage. In the end, the main reason was one of money; Alex made a massive loss and ultimately this would prove the death knell for Summer Daze. But he wasn't bitter. As he told me: "It's everyone's dream to have their favourite band playing in their back garden. I actually did it."

Here's Hawkwind's full set at Summer Daze (audio only)

Memories of Glastonbury: 1995

Glastonbury’s 25th Anniversary, at the time its biggest ever. It was also to be my last. Once again it was hot, hot hot. I blagged a free ticket from a local trader who was taking solar-powered showers to the festival in return for a feature in the paper. Probably highly unethical and completely against my employer’s code of conduct, but needs must. I was offered a seat in a minibus with some of the local rugby players. They weren’t my usual crowd and I was a little wary of spending the weekend with them. As it turned out though, it was one of the most hilarious weekends I’ve ever had. Each morning we’d fetch cider from our stash in the minibus. We nearly got mugged on one such trip before the biggest, scariest member of our party, Dave, sent the dirty scabbers packing. It was Dave who also built a perimeter fence around our cluster of tents and patrolled it each night with a big stick over his shoulder, like a sentry guard outside Buckingham Palace. Anyone who dared to step into our territory soon had a burly rugby player wielding a big stick marching towards them shouting “Oi oi, get off my land.” 

Britpop was at its height in 1995, the line-up on the NME stage paid testament to this, though the Main Stage also hosted a few of the scene’s biggest names:

PJ Harvey
My only previous live encounter with PJ Harvey was at Reading in 1992, when PJ Harvey was the name of the whole band. By 1995, the band had split but Polly continued under the same moniker (it was her name, after all), and she was now on her third album, ‘To Bring You My Love’. And she was A-MAAAAAAAAAA-ZING! Resplendent in a fluorescent pink catsuit, with lashings of eye make-up and lipstick, her performance was confident, striking and not just a little bizarre. Only two oldies were aired, the rest was new material - so no safe hits set for Polly. ‘To Bring You My Love’ was an experimental record, reminiscent of some of Kate Bush’s finest work, and this came through on stage. You wonder in fact just how much Polly had studied Kate around this time. It was an unforgettable show.

Soundtrack:

Meet Ze Monsta [live] – PJ Harvey (from ‘Live At Glastonbury’ bootleg)

John Otway

The man who’s famous for not being famous. Although I had heard of John Otway, I had never heard any of his music. I decided to catch his set in the Acoustic Tent on the recommendation of one of my punk friends. I wasn’t disappointed; on the contrary, I was blown away. John Otway was no spring chicken (41), but he had more energy on that stage than pretty much anyone else I saw that weekend. He would perform forward rolls whilst playing guitar and not miss a single note! During Headbutt he would headbutt his mic – hard! And of course, there was also his famous take on House of the Rising Sun, with full audience participation. He’s still going strong (I'm seeing him in September, in fact) and every bit as good as he was in 1995. A movie has even been made about him!

Soundtrack:

House Of The Rising Sun [live] – John Otway (from ‘Greatest Hits’)

Pulp
Nowt I can add to what’s already been written numerous times about this show. It was undoubtedly the show that turned Jarvis into a bonafide star, but it may never have been - Pulp only stepped in as last-minute replacements for the newly defunct Stone Roses. What a stroke of luck for band and audience alike. I was there, at the front, and it was a ‘wow’ moment. If Common People had given them a mainstream audience, it was this live performance that truly won the hearts and minds of everyone who saw it. They also debuted their next single, Sorted For E's And Whizz, which pretty much summed up the event and the time. That, more than anything, confirmed Pulp was the most relevant band around at that moment. A remarkable performance that more than deserves its place in Glastonbury folklore.

Soundtrack:

Sorted For E's And Whizz [live] – Pulp (from ‘Live At Glastonbury’ bootleg)

Oasis

I liken Oasis at Glasto in ’95 to Nirvana at Reading in ’92 – there certainly are parallels there. Both had played the same respective festivals the previous year on the second stage halfway down the billing. In the 12 months that followed, each band became absolutely massive and were booked as Main Stage headliners. Both shows were hotly anticipated and much hyped. Both were also raved about afterwards with the words “legendary”, “historical” and “unforgettable” being bandied around like they were the only three adjectives in the English language. Yet, like with Nirvana at Reading ’92, I felt rather underwhelmed. Oasis weren’t bad – on the contrary, they were very good – but they were definitely outdone by PJ Harvey, Pulp and even John Otway in my book.

Soundtrack:

Supersonic [live] – Oasis (from ‘Live At Glastonbury’ bootleg)

Memories of Glastonbury: Johnny Cash

I’ve seen loads of bands at festivals. It’s a strange setting for a gig in my view, hardly intimate or easy for artists and audience to engage with each other. But from time to time, something pretty spectacular happens: Primal Scream (Glasto ’92), PJ Harvey (Glasto ’95), Public Enemy (Reading ’92). But one particular performance stands out for me, in that I don’t think of it as being part of a bigger event. It is as if it happened entirely separately to anything else that was going on, like a little bubble of time that existed for this one extraordinary hour before bursting and thrusting me back into reality once more.

It was Glastonbury 1994. An elderly musician had just released an album that was destined to be revered as the best of his entire career. That man was Johnny Cash. Having been cast aside by the Nashville fraternity and set to seed by record companies, Johnny Cash had barely existed as an artist for a decade or more before famed rap-rock producer Rick Rubin approached him to make a record. When ‘American Recordings’ saw the light of day, it captivated a whole new audience. It was just the Man in Black, an acoustic guitar, and Rubin at the helm. It revived his ailing career, but it was still a bit of a surprise to see Cash added to the bill for that summer’s Glasto.

A bit of a tradition of a ‘veterans slot’ was beginning to emerge. The previous two years had seen Tom Jones and Rolf Harris perform, but Johnny Cash didn’t seem to be regarded as much as a novelty as his predecessors. And rightly so as I’ve never experienced anything quite like Johnny Cash’s performance at Glastonbury ‘94, either before or since. It was possibly the most entrancing show I’ve ever witnessed, and that’s really something when you’re standing in a large field surrounded by thousands of strangers.

Those present that afternoon witnessed something extraordinary. We were all rapt in the company of a man our grandparents probably admired. After tearing through some classics with his band, Cash then played a few tracks from the new album completely solo – and this is when the real magic happened.

June Carter

This old man held the enormous audience in the palm of his hand. There was a respectful hush as he played, followed by an almost euphoric howl of approval as he finished each song. It really was spine-tingling stuff. Only the spontaneous “woo-woos” the crowd sang back at him during Let The Train Blow The Whistle broke the mood a little, but that’s far from being a criticism. On the contrary, it seemed to lighten things a little and Cash clearly loved it. All that was left for him to do was bring the band back onstage and round off with a few singalong favourites, including one or two with June Carter.

Johnny Cash’s performance at Glastonbury remains one of the most memorable and fondly talked-about festival shows of all time for good reason. When it was over, I was back. Cash had transported me into a little world of my own during that show, set apart from the rest of the festival. It was one of those jaw-dropping moments I’ve mentioned before, and it’s why this is the only festival performance I’ve dedicated a whole article to.


Soundtrack:

Let The Train Blow The Whistle [live] – Johnny Cash (live At Glastonbury 1994)

Jackson [live] – Johnny Cash & June Carter (live At Glastonbury 1994))

Memories of Glastonbury: 1994

The year the Pyramid Stage burnt down just weeks before the festival. Fortunately a replacement was hastily constructed in time. For me, this was the year it started to become less about the big music stages and more about the ‘fringe’ areas; much exploration ensued. Even so, the big talking points took place on the Main Stage.

Peter Gabriel
The most elaborate and spectacular stage show I’ve ever seen anywhere. I may have remembered this inaccurately, but I seem to recall PG rising onto the stage through the floor! It would have been easy for him to play a straight set of hits with no theatrics – he’d have still gone down a storm – but instead, he rose to the occasion, employing many of the astonishing visuals he had used throughout the 'Secret World' tour over the previous 12 months. A brave move, for sure, but ultimately one that I’ll certainly never forget. A brilliant, brilliant performance.

Soundtrack:

Steam [live] – Peter Gabriel (from ‘Secret World Live’)

James 

One of the big surprises of the festival. James appeared to be on a commercial downward slope following the success of Sit Down. ‘Laid’ had been a critical success but its more experimental nature led to lower sales figures than hoped. They bounced back with ‘Whiplash’ in 1997, but during the post-‘Laid’ lull, they produced a magical turn which made everyone realise just what an excellent band they always had been – and still were. “Thank you Glastonbury,” Tim Booth acknowledged. “We thought people didn’t love us anymore.” It’s hard not to love a band like James.

Soundtrack:

Laid [live] – James (live at Glastonbury 1994)

Rage Against The Machine
One of the most anticipated acts at the festival, sadly the most disappointing. My overriding memory of RAtM is the lengthy pauses between each song. At one point, I counted a gap of nearly two minutes of silence between songs. Oddly, some people point to RAtM as one of the festival’s all-time highlights. Each to their own, I suppose.

Soundtrack:

Bullet In Your Head [live] – Rage Against The Machine (live at Glastonbury 1994)

And then there was a certain Johnny Cash – but that’s deserving of a post in its own right, which you can read tomorrow.

Memories of Glastonbury: 1993

Another scorching weekend, both in terms of the weather and the music, though I don’t remember feeling quite as blown away by anything as I was the previous year. Maybe that led to me seeking more thrills away from the music the following years.

The Ukrainians
One of the strangest projects the Wedding Present ever did was the whole Ukrainian Peel Sessions thing. Even stranger is that it was actually pretty good. After being fired from the Weddoes, Pete Solowka formed the Ukrainians and my only live encounter with the band was in the Acoustic Tent at Glastonbury. They were good. Very good, in fact, romping through energetic versions of traditional Ukrainian folk songs, original material and a Smiths cover or two thrown in for good measure. Great fun.


Soundtrack:

Koroleva Ne Polerma – The Ukrainians (from ‘Pisni Is The Smiths’ EP)


Rolf Harris

I’m slightly hesitant to praise Rolf Harris given recent revelations [updated link]. At the time, Rolf was regarded as an entertainment legend. Most of us at Glastonbury that year grew up with Rolf on our TVs. We all knew what a wobbleboard was, we’d probably all owned a Stylophone at some point, and everyone could do a Rolf impersonation that usually included the phrase “Can you tell what it is yet?” Because of this, Rolf went down an absolute storm at Glastonbury, much to his own surprise. I interviewed him the following year for the North Devon Journal in which he told me he had never been more anxious than the moments before that Glasto appearance and felt genuinely overwhelmed by the reaction he received. I felt I was in the company of greatness and found him charming, eloquent and accommodating. No doubt various other adjectives will be used to describe the man from now on…

Soundtrack:

Stairway To Heaven [live] – Rolf Harris (Live on ‘The Word’)

Velvet Underground

An opportunity to see one of the most influential bands of all time reunited? Duly taken. Sadly, to say it was rather underwhelming would be an understatement. Perhaps if just one member of the band looked remotely interested it would have lightened the mood but for whatever reason, Lou, John, Stirling and Mo all appeared to want to be somewhere else. Mind, the reunion tour as a whole wasn’t exactly raved about by the press, and it all fell apart once Reed and Cale locked horns, not for the first time.

Soundtrack:

Venus In Furs [live] – Velvet Underground (from ‘Live MCMXCIII’)

The Kinks
If feeling let down by the Velvets wasn’t bad enough, finding myself cringing at the Kinks made me want to crawl back into my tent and cry for the rest of the weekend. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but Ray Davies is a hero of mine and I think I anticipated some otherworldly kind of performance from him. What I got was a middle-aged man who seemed like he was trying to emulate Freddie Mercury – and failing dismally. I almost succeeded in forgetting this show entirely, but sadly I can still recall some of the worst bits. Never mind, one listen to ‘Muswell Hillbillies’ and all is OK with the world once more.

Soundtrack:

Hatred (A Duet) [lve] – The Kinks (live on Jay Leno Show)

Memories of Glastonbury: 1992

It’s the mother of all music festivals this week, and to mark the event I present a special daily offshoot of my memorable gigs series featuring the standout moments of the four Glastonburys I attended in the early 90s.

The 1992 festival was not just my debut Glastonbury, but my first ever festival – and what a way to start. Blistering sunshine throughout and some extraordinary live shows.

Primal Scream

If I had to name the best act I ever saw at Glastonbury, I would be really torn between two or three, but the Scream would be right up there. Their 1992 headline performance pretty much summed up the time and the scene. Indie kids and ravers mingled as one to witness what must rate as one of the most stunning live performances of all time. Surely no guitar-oriented indie-rock band could transform so suddenly and so effectively into a dancefloor-filling electronic act and slay a crossover audience of thousands in just a single festival show. But Primal Scream did it with ease, playing pretty much the whole of ‘Screamadelica’ and not much else. There were no calls for older material or fan faves – everyone got exactly what they wanted from the Scream that night and more besides. A seminal moment in the festival’s history in my book, and I was there. Mind well and truly blown!

Soundtrack:

Don’t Fight It, Feel It [live] – Primal Scream (live in Tokyo)

Blue Aeroplanes
I wandered through the field in a daze while Blue Aeroplanes played. I caught the end of their set which involved not just the band but what could well have been the entire backstage crew as well, each playing guitar. A wonderful wall of guitar sounds washed over the crowd in one of the best climaxes to a live show I’ve seen.

Soundtrack:

The Boy in The Bubble [live] - Blue Aeroplanes (from ‘Fruit (Live: 1983-1995’))

Youssou N’Dour 
I first saw Youssou doing an instore show at HMV’s flagship store in London’s Oxford Street. It was such an uplifting experience, it resulted in me spending more than £100 on CDs! That’s what you call a sales tactic. Three years later, he headlined Glastonbury on the final night. The atmosphere was perfect; the sun was going down at the end of a scorching summer’s day and Youssou ran through another energetic set, with his incredible voice at the front of it all. Then, to round it off, he brought on a special guest – none other than Peter Gabriel. I was astounded enough, but the guy in front of me was going into meltdown, so overwhelmed was he by his hero making a surprise appearance. “Oh my GOD! Oh wow! Oh… my… GOD!” Such is the power of music, and it is always a delight to witness the joy it brings.

Soundtrack:

The Lion (Gaiende) – Youssou N’Dour (from ‘The Lion’)

Lou Reed
I wandered through the field in a daze while Lou played (hmm, sound familiar?). I stopped to watch him for 10 minutes or so, during which he did a divine rendition of Satellite Of Love, a song which still reminds me of Glastonbury.

Soundtrack:

Satellite Of Love [live] - Lou Reed (from ‘Rock 'n' Roll Animal [2011 re-issue]’)

Tom Jones
Everyone hoped for a hits-laden set to wriggle our hips provocatively to. Instead we got a pub-band set of soul standards that most people (myself included) got pretty bored with pretty quickly. Even so, being the last day of the festival, I did hope no one threw their knickers at him - he never deserved that…

Soundtrack:

Hard To Handle [live] - Tom Jones (from ‘Live in Las Vegas’)

Memories of a thousand* gigs #11

(* probably not actually that many, but who’s counting?)

The Reading Festival 1992
Little John’s Farm, Reading – 28th–30th August, 1992
Also in attendance: Wayne, Andy G, Stu, Clive & Steve P

Part two (In case you missed it, Part One is here.)
When it was time to get up, Wayne, Andy and I decided to wander off site to get some brekkie in town and let the others get themselves sorted. Truth be told, me and my soft, country boy ways, I really wanted some clean dry clothes that morning, but there were none. All the bags saved from the tent overnight were soaked through. They had been inadvertently chucked on top of the other bags in the van and soaked them through too!

I went about the rest of the weekend in a daze. Tired, and wet, and still reeling from the previous evening’s assault on my senses, it all seemed rather surreal. The Sunday started with a stroll to a takeaway just offsite and the chance to use a proper toilet. But the site itself was a quagmire. Once we assessed the damage, we realised how lightly we had gotten off. The two Scottish lads who were pitched near us lost pretty much everything. Their tent was destroyed. (I seem to recall we invited them to spend the final night in the van with the rest of us, but can’t remember if they accepted.) That final day resembled to a ‘T’ the media’s clichéd depiction of music festivals. It rained incessantly, there was no escape from mud. The Session Tent – a huge marquee like a circus tent which hosted the festival’s ‘second stage’ – had lost its roof in the storm and half the bands scheduled that day were cancelled! But, perhaps more bizarrely than anything, everyone had a smile on their face.

I reached the main stage on that Sunday just as John Peel introduced Björn Again, the world’s most famous Abba tribute band. Yes, really.[1] For 40 minutes, everyone there sang every single word to every single song. We were knee deep in mud and all everyone was talking about was Nirvana, but here we were bellowing Abba classics at the top of our voices. This was years before it became supposedly cool to love Abba again (you know, before people who had long forgotten about them flocked to see the godawful cheese-fest that was Mamma Mia and subsequently declared Abba as the greatest group ever or such like.) This was the closest you could get to seeing Abba live, and we were cold, wet, muddy and waiting for the noisy rock bands to come on. Maybe it was ironic; or maybe it was recognition that Abba actually were one of the greatest groups ever. Most likely it was a bit of both. Either way, Björn Again really rekindled the festival spirit and when they finished, several thousand soggy people were grinning like idiots. This was all swiftly followed by the ever-reliable Peelie spinning Nine To Five by Sheena Easton…

Of course, where there is mud and an inebriated festival crowd, there will be mud fights. Some of the battles will be amongst the audience members. Watching someone on the main stage (I forget who exactly), I suddenly saw a section of the crowd disperse and a big pool of mud was revealed. In the middle of it, writhing and wrestling, were two complete nutters (male, female… it was impossible to tell), covered head to toe and trying to grab random onlookers to join them as they wallowed (hence the crowd dispersal). It was later that evening, as I relayed these events to the boys back at the van that Stu piped up: “Yep, that was me and Clive! You saw us? Aw man, if I’d seen you, we’d have definitely dragged you in too!”

Inevitably though, some of the mud was always going to be hurled towards the stage. It seemed to start with L7. For the uninitiated, L7 were four female grunge-punks who weren’t exactly backwards at coming forwards. I loved that whole Riot Grrrl movement they found themselves part of, in spite of the fact that, being male, it really shouldn’t have appealed to me.  Bands like L7, Babes In Toyland and Bikini Kill were all about female empowerment and sticking a big one up to the male chauvinist-dominated music industry, media and rock music consumer. But I admired that, modern man that I was. Not in a patronising way either, women always offered something different to the male perspective in rock music and these bands were exactly that – different.

Earlier that year, L7 performed their hit Pretend We’re Dead live on trashy late night TV show The Word. As the band thrashed the final chords of the song and proceeded to trash the set, the cameras caught singer Donita Sparks with her jeans around her ankles and her bits in full view on national TV; it was enough to leave even host Terry Christian speechless! (See it here, in full gruesome detail...[2]) Now, being pelted with mud during a frustrating set at Reading, Ms Sparks took things one step further. Rather than simply telling the offending audience members where they could stick their mud, she simply rummaged around in her pants, removed a blood-stained female sanitary product from inside herself and lobbed it into the crowd, yelling: “Eat my used tampon, fuckers!” Cue another rapid crowd dispersal…

The mud-flinging continued for a while (predictably it reached a peak during Mudhoney’s set!) before things began to settle down as the time for Nirvana drew nigh. Sadly, I hadn’t quite gotten into Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds by that point, so couldn’t appreciate the majesty that adorned the stage as the sky darkened, but I was there as Kurt Cobain was pushed onto the stage in a wheelchair while wearing a blonde wig and hospital gown (a sardonic swipe at the rumours of his and Courtney’s health in the media), and the legendary headline slot kicked into life and what would become a significant moment in rock music history began to unfold.

That history would have it that this was Nirvana’s defining moment; that this really was the world’s greatest band at the time at their absolute zenith. It is believed by many that this was one of the greatest rock shows of all time. Yet I was rather underwhelmed. Sure, I remember it and yes, it was a pretty good show. The band was on form and Kurt seemed surprisingly cheerful and boyish, quite charming in fact. Yet I wasn’t blown away. I left the Reading Festival in 1992 with loads of great memories and stories, but while everyone else spoke of being there as Nirvana ripped the place up, I recall how on the previous night Public Enemy absolutely destroyed me.

That PE show made me feel like I’d been assaulted, physically beaten by a gang of politically-aware African-American freedom fighters wielding the most powerful weapons in existence – passion, words and FUCKING IMMENSE BEATS.

Soundtrack:

• S.O.S. - Björn Again (from ‘Live at the Royal Albert Hall’)
• Shitlist - L7 (live at Rockpalast)
• Lithium - Nirvana (from ‘Live at Reading '92’)

---

[1] As odd as it may seem, the reason Björn Again played at all is because Kurt Cobain insisted on it as a condition of Nirvana headlining. Or so the story goes.
[2] The You Tube clip is labelled 1993. It's wrong, it was definitely 1992. Honestly!

Memories of a thousand* gigs #10

(* probably not actually that many, but who’s counting?)

The Reading Festival 1992
Little John’s Farm, Reading – 28th–30th August, 1992
Also in attendance: Wayne, Andy G, Stu, Clive & Steve P

Part one
It’s generally accepted that Glastonbury is the mother of all festivals. In the early 90s, I attended four consecutive Glastos, culminating in the 25th anniversary festival with that legendary Pulp headline slot.

But the festival I have the fondest memories of, certainly the one I have more stories about, was the 1992 Reading Festival. This was back in the days when it was a stand-alone event, before it became ‘Reading-Leeds’. And of course, this was the year that Reading hosted what some regard as the ultimate festival performance – ‘twas the year Nirvana headlined, their last ever UK show.

Of course, no one was to know it would become the stuff of legend. Nirvana were the biggest band in the world at that moment, so there was obviously a lot of anticipation for that coveted Sunday night slot, but it would be another 20 months before Kurt Cobain’s premature death so the real significance was unthinkable. Strangely though, when I think about that weekend, I don’t immediately associate it with Nirvana. I think of Public Enemy.

Anyone that’s ever been to a music festival will tell you that it’s the event itself that makes it, not a particular band or artist. In fact, the more festivals I attended, the less it became about the music for me. I loved exploring, absorbing the sights, sounds and smells that would inevitably come my way. The people you meet, the company you keep, the food you eat, the various, um, other things you try out – the collective experience of festivals really has to be sampled by everyone at least once before they die.

And so my Reading weekend started out in my beloved VW camper van with five mates – Wayne of course, Andy G, Stu, Steve P and Clive – each of whom was determined to get to the site totally trashed. We arrived early Thursday evening. My camper couldn’t accommodate six pissheads for the whole weekend, so it was decided Wayne, Andy and I would kip in the van, while Stu, Steve and Clive would pitch a tent outside. My grandfather had kindly given me a large polythene sheet when I mentioned to him that the van had a leaky roof. He suggested it could be used as a makeshift awning which when tied to one side of the van, could be pulled up over the roof to keep the rain out and pitched down the other side. That’s what we did, and the lads set their tent up underneath, thus doubling their chances of staying dry in the event of rain.

The weather – the bane of festivals. We always see images of mud-covered throngs dancing in a quagmire that resembles the Somme, and this is how it seems the media loves to portray such occasions. Truth is, I attended four Glastonburys on the trot and came home with sunburn each time. Not a drop of rain whatsoever. The summer of ’92 was generally a good one if I recall, but it had rained the weekend prior to the festival. By the time we arrived at the Reading site though, there had been a couple of dry days and the ground was firming up nicely. The forecast was good and the mood was upbeat. Regardless, we felt rather smug that we had prepared for rain just in case. Van parked, tent pitched, awning in place – we were set. “Crack open another bottle of cider and roll a fat one boys,” I announced to my already inebriated compadres. “It’s time I caught you up!”

My real story begins on Saturday, day 2 of the fest. Friday had passed without incident. I watched the Milltown Brothers, Mega City Four, an immense performance by PJ Harvey, the legendary PiL (during which the ever-affable John Lydon mooned his bare buttocks at his adoring public) and the Wonder Stuff on the Main Stage. My one regret in hindsight is that, for some inexplicable reason, I failed to wander over to the Session Tent to see the magnificent Cardiacs. Stu delighted in letting me know how great they were.

I don’t recall what bands I saw on Saturday, though I’m fairly sure I caught Buffalo Tom’s set, seeing how they had recently released ‘Let Me Come Over’, their third album, a record which I still rate in my all-time top 10. Wayne raved about Shonen Knife[1] in the Session Tent and I immediately felt pangs of jealousy that I hadn’t seen anyone yet who had blown me away like that. Until…

I had no desperate urge to see either headliner that night. I wasn’t into rap music at all, so Public Enemy held very little appeal to me. The other stage hosted BAD II, a ‘new’ version of Big Audio Dynamite. I knew little about them and despite being fronted by Mick Jones, I couldn’t get that excited about them. So I decided to catch the end of Ride’s set, watch the start of Public Enemy, then stroll over to see a bit of BAD II, before finding a doughnut van for supper. What happened instead was one of the most mind-blowing musical experiences of my life.

The one thing I never prepared myself for was the sheer power of rap music. When Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Professor Griff and Terminator X bounded onto the Reading stage and let rip, they bowled every one of the thousands of witnesses into the middle of the following week. I mean, seriously – Reading had always been traditionally a rock music festival, yet here was a hip hop act, practically unheard of at such an event and almost the antithesis of what many felt live music should be, completely stealing the show.

I stood, open-mouthed in awe, as they fired track after track after track at me with such ferocity, such emotion, such raw unrestrained power – Shut ‘em Down, Bring The Noise, Don’t Believe The Hype, Fight The Power – BANG! BANG! BANG! Public Enemy slayed me unlike any band had ever done before or indeed since (though the White Stripes and Arcade Fire came pretty close). That show was a true epiphany for me. That show took everything I thought I knew about music and shredded it mercilessly in front of my eyes. That show wiped the canvas clean and forced me to think again.  

That show completely fucking changed me.

You see, music has to touch you personally for it to really make sense. There has to be something that resonates in you before you can truthfully say ‘I get it’. Alas, some never experience this and are destined to forever remain tuned into soulless commercial radio stations. Rap music had never touched me like a lot of other music had, so it is safe to say I never ‘got it’.  I was 12 when White Lines by Grandmaster Melle Mel came out in 1983. While I now acknowledge it as one of the greatest singles of all time, I could never have been expected to connect with the anti-drugs message of the lyrics. Its delivery was even newer to me – these guys weren’t singing, they were just bellowing stuff aggressively. But then, rap was still pretty new back then – the first proper rap record Rapper’s Delight by Sugarhill Gang had only come out four years previous.

For nearly a decade I carried with me the theory that rap music wasn’t really worthy of the classification of ‘music’. But that Saturday evening in a field in the south of England I had my perception of the genre altered for good. Rap wasn’t just music, it became performance art.

“IS EVERYBODY HOT?” Flavor Flav yelled to the crowd. A tumultuous “YEAH!” resulted. “We’re gonna pray for rain to cool everybody down,” Flav continued, before leading the crowd in prayer.

Now, I’m not a religious person, but something tested me that evening. Not only were my musical beliefs coming in for a severe battering, but my almost non-existent spiritual side was dragged out of hiding when, within hours of Public Enemy and tens of thousands of disciples (old and new) calling to God to open the heavens, it actually happened. It rained... and how. The first I became aware of it was being awoken by a loud banging on the side of the van (a dodgy lock on the side door meant it could only be opened from the inside). The guys in the tent wanted to come in.

“We’re flooded!” they wailed.

“Has the tarp blown off?” I asked.

“No, we’re pitched in a puddle!”

It was true. The makeshift awning was holding true, but the rain was filling a dip in the uneven ground right where the tent was – they were being flooded from underneath! There was one hell of a storm outside and unfortunately, Steve, Clive and Stu were in the thick of it. Before we knew it, the van was full of the lads’ kit that they’d salvaged before they clambered in themselves and all six of us – one half dry and warm, the other half soaked – attempted to drift off back to sleep. There was mixed success. It was now cramped and humid in that van and I never completely managed to get comfortable again. Besides, I still had She Watch Channel Zero thumping around in my head. Sleep? Not a chance, boyeeeeeeee…


To be continued….

Soundtrack:

• Shut 'em Down – Public Enemy (from ‘Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Back’)
• She Watch Channel Zero - Public Enemy (from ‘It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back’)

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[1] 22 years on, and I will finally get to see Shonen Knife - they play Cardiff next month.