Last weekend I attended the Lodestar festival in Cambridgeshire with my friend Håkon. I went down on the Saturday morning and, in spite of it being only 8 miles from his house in Cambridge, we decided to do the ‘authentic festival thing’ and camp. Civilized camping, of course – I took my eight man tent so that we had plenty of room, a proper table and chairs, some decent food and a few bottles of quality wine.
We were originally going to be having a stand selling for Breckland Orchard, Håkon’s wife’s soft drinks company. However, in the end, the festival organisers reneged on the deal and apparently used their negotiations as a stepping stone to get someone bigger in. Disappointing, really. In spite of that, the weather was good, the bands were good (most of them unsigned) and the whole ambience was fairly chilled…I reckon that there can’t have been more than 2,000 people there all weekend. My favourite bands over the weekend were Violet Bones and The Foxes and I ended up chatting to the Violet Bones’ lead singer, Si, and bought their CD from him.
It got me to thinking. Its been a long time since I’ve been to a festival. There was a time that a week didn’t pass without me seeing a live band, whether it be Motley Crue at Wembley or a smaller band in a local pub. There was one time when I saw both in 2 consecutive nights. Thunder supported Aerosmith at the NEC and the next night played The Jug in Doncaster!
My last proper festival was actually in 1991 at Castle Donington for the Monsters of Rock. The line-up on August 17, 1991 was
The line-up was good, but not a patch on Donington on August 20, 1988 -
- Iron Maiden (Recorded, appears on the bands album, The BBC Archives)
- KISS
- David Lee Roth
- Megadeth
- Guns N’ Roses
- Helloween
This was an incredible lineup but was also tainted when two music fans were accidentally crushed to death during Guns N’ Roses performance and there was no festival the next year. Everybody surged forwards to see G’n'R but I have to say they were disappointing. I’d been lucky enough to see them in Nottingham’s tiny Rock City night club a year earlier, just before they hit the big time, and they absolutely blew me away along with the other band on their ‘double bill’, Faster Pussycat. Its disappointing to see that they never reached the heights of the late ‘80s again and that they’ve been in the news in the last couple of weeks for poor festival performances.
Back then was a time when, as a teenager and into my mid 20‘s I was in a band called The Dr Fundlekrotch Experience. We were as good as that name sounds! Officially, we never split up…but nobody knows where the bass player is, so the world is safe for now. However, my interest in music grew and grew, to the point where I now have something like 3000 albums on my ipod, covering everything from Simon and Garfunkel to Alice Cooper and taking in such well known groups as Laibach (a Slovenian Fascist Arts movement!) and the Dave Howard Singers who once nearly had a hit with “My name is Jon Jonsson”!
For the last 15 years the interest in music has still been there, but faded into the background whilst other things took up my time. However, I’m now finding that I’m able to find the time to listen to more and more music again. My latest acquisition is a superb CD/DAB/ipod dock/wi-fi radio. The wi-fi radio is brilliant and at the moment I’m listening to a couple of American Blues stations, broadcast into my kitchen as if I was there in California or Louisiana! Isn’t technology great?
I’m off now for a wander around the venues of Newark’s great Blues Festival.
