For the want of a wire

I had thought it was going to be a quiet weekend but I was wrong. I knew we had A Swamp Marshalls gig on Friday down on Portland. Now I am not saying that these people have any history of pirating at all, but they certainly like a bit of the old yo ho ho. The Royal Portland Arms does not serve food, because it is a pub and the landlady Jill is the pirate Queen. She is accompanied behind the bar by James the cabin boy, keen to please his customers and never short of a kettle lead or mic stand if you happen to have come out without one. There are regulars. After 3 visits you realize that its the same people as the last time, they are always up for a bit of music especially when it involves fiddles. If it involves two all the better. So after a late night on Friday, Saturday I am sat at home quietly crocheting a mermaid tail in preparation for the the imminent arrival of my first Grand child. When the phone rings and it is Molly Masket, from the mumming troupe. It would seem that the Worlds Smallest Indoor Wassail, which I had thought I would have to miss as it clashed with the Portland gig was in fact that very night and they would pick me up in half an hour...yippeeeeee The Worlds Smallest Indoor Wassail, takes place in the bar at The Barton Inn, another of the south´s pub wonders and boast a random jukebox, a tuned piano and a life size cardboard Elvis, amongst other treats . An apple tree (albeit a dead one) is bought into the bar and wedged between the floor and ceiling. The Mummers do the play and then there is the singing of wassail songs and shooting party poppers till the dead tree is beautiful. Then the sword dancing begins. St George and The Black Knight both have long and hefty swords and Devility Doubt is extremely light on her feet, but everyone in the pub gets a go. Word is that this will be the last one as Damon and Anita, who have run the Barton Inn, to the great amusement of all who enter there, are going to close in July. (if anyone fancies buying it and continuing to run it as a great little real live country pub check it out here)

Sunday, and I am busy packing to go to Vienna, when Mikki (Co Star of The Senile Delinquents) tells me that that The King Arthur in Glastonbury are having a Sunday afternoon festival type thing with stalls and acoustic music and the what not. So we decide to nip over and see what is what. We arrive about 3.30 and there are a number of kids watching a film in the back room, no sign of any music, stalls or the healers, except some chalk boards advertising them. I ask at the bar, the bar man seems completely ignorant of any such event and generally gives off the impression that he would rather be home watching the telly than having to deal with serving drinks and god forbid that he should actually get drawn into conversation. He blames who ever it is that does the website for putting up false information and continues to looked over worked and under appreciated. Rather deluded at having given up precious packing time to go to what now appears to be a none event I am glad when I see Sam, of Hustle and Flow, who tells me that he and Sam, Sam Welbourne of Mindful Sounds are upstairs putting the final touches to the mixing of a new track that they will be releasing on video, and asks me up to have a listen. (now released and viewable here ) Watching Sam Welbourn work is a delight, I have a good knowledge of how to use a digital studio but watching Sam, moving levels adding slivers of compression and nipping out bum notes is like watching a ballet. The video which will go with the track, a cool funky original called Get It On, is currently on a really good camera, but they are having some trouble moving it on to the computer for the want of a special and rather expensive wire. Sam Welbourn is currently homeless, having recently been asked to leave St Dunstan's house, where for several years he has been running his state of the art digital studio and putting on some great gigs. I had the pleasure of working with him in the summer to put on a picnic and musical event in the garden of St Dunstan's. Which is right next to Glastonbury Abbey and a lovely place to play. It is hard to say weather the event was a success or not. I suppose I am rather European in my attitude to event organization and have far too much faith in the public to chip in or as they put it in France to "participate" in the event.

The plan was, everyone brings food and drink to share, picnic rugs etc, there would be hats carefully placed around the place to collect money to pay the bands. Headlining we had The Driftwood Manor from Ireland, plus a host of other local talents. Sam recorded the whole event so everyone who played got a live recording of their performance to use as a demo or whatever they wanted. Here is mine. So as far as putting on a day of fantastic music and getting it recorded it was a huge success, the picnic idea didn´t seem to catch on at all, nor did the putting money in the hat. We ended up paying the band 7 each, but all had a great day. Sam, whose brain is a constant alka seltza type frothing of brilliant ideas is trying to get a program of concerts together in The King Arthur which could then be streamed live on the Internet. He has most of the equipment he needs, bands to play , a team to work the events and even menu ideas for each individual gig, but is lacking one rather expensive wire.

This all reminds me of an incident that took place many years ago, I suppose it must have been about 1984. I was traveling round England with The Peace Convoy, a kind of anarchistic carnival come mobile ghetto. We had started the year at what we didn´t know then was the last Stonehenge Free Festival. In my teenage mind we were a bunch of modern day troubadours taking live music in its purest form to the masses. Everyone bringing what they had or could do to make the party happen. One posse, down from Wales came with a beautiful brand new red and yellow circus tent that they had made over the winter. They soon made friends with another posse who had turned up with a sound system. This was back before the days of the rave party and all the music was played live. (There were a couple of Bob Marley records that got played between bands but DJ was not as yet considered to be a real job title) Over Stonehenge and the following festivals they collected together a selections of performers of which I ( who had spent the winter in London learning to perform on the London Underground) was one. There was a cafe which sold tea and cakes and made food for the people who worked there. I worked cooking and serving in between writing songs and playing gigs. Tea and cake didn´t really make enough money to support the entire crew and the budget was augmented by lads selling a bit of pot, extra spicy cakes maybe a few tabs of acid. Hard drugs were banded on site, but hard drugs seemed to be classified as heroin and speed. There was at the time an enormous amount of yuppy drug cocaine in England and making free base was considered on art not a form of drug abuse. By 1984, the drug that was to become known as crack was certainly changing the way the free festival movement worked.

1984 was a huge year. A convoy of over 300 vehicles left Stonehenge. Hundreds of people had left the towns, bought a van or a little truck loaded up all their possessions and hit the road with a gang of like minded disillusioned youths. Divorced housewives, bought an old bus, took the kids and moved out of fast disappearing council estates. Wide boys from Essex lived out of saloon cars. The miners protests were in full swing and Thatcher was busy selling of the countries wealth to her mates at rock bottom prices and encouraging all who would listen that they could be one of "haves", as long as they were willing to piss all over the "have nots". I suppose that the cocaine was really helpful here and the age of selfishness and celebrity worship was born . The convoy I don´t think bothered Thatcher that much at this stage. A bunch of entrepreneurial go getters who were more than willing to get on their bikes to go invent themselves a job. She changed her mind by the next year, but that was after we got involved with the miners. By the end of July numbers had diminished. Mini convoys broke off to go do there own thing. There had been a lot of sickness after we moved onto a piece of common land just outside Bristol, which the local farmers had sprayed with Pig shit in a failed attempt to stop us putting our festival on. We had gate crashed a little festival in Norfolk where we had not been able to put up our tent or do our show and most of the existing venues were fully booked, so it was hard to get gigs, the only people doing any work there were the drug dealer. By the end of July we had set up camp on a more somewhere outside Manchester, hoping to get the show on and draw a crowd out from the city to enjoy a weekend of music and debauchery in the country side. The weather wasn´t good but by Thursday we had the tent, sound system and cafe set up. It became apparent that there was a rather expensive wire missing, I can´t remember if it had broken, or had disappeared but either way we didn´t have it and without it there would be no amplified music at the festival. Now I am a massive fan of fireside acoustic music, but when we are talking about luring party goers out of Manchester to sit round campfires listening to acoustic music in the rain, it just isn´t the time or place. I don´t now how I got elected, I probably volunteered, to go talk to the drug dealers, explain the situation, and ask them for the money to buy the expensive bit of wire. It would after all be them that was making the money from the sale of wares once we got this party started. Although they were quite willing to give me all the drugs I could take, even set me up in business, they would not pay for the wire.