No Direction Home - notes from a festival

'Remember...(pause) just (shorter pause) remember'. Warren Ellis' last instruction to the crowd as Dirty Three finished an amazing set on the first night of the festival.That man looks like he's wiped and rebuilt more memory banks than most. Another role model for growing older with energy and style. My favourite wellies had sprung a leak. I had used a plastic bag as a temporary repair. We'd pitched the tent, but we were in the eye of a storm, it felt like seaside weather but we were at Welbeck Abbey, in the middle of the Midlands.No direction home seemed an apt description of the site, as the mud slides built up on the access routes. I was wet and cold, and beginning to think I should give up on festival going. But I was in good company - my older son and daughter, and we are veterans of some very wet Green Man festivals. We were also less than an hour from home if things got bad - as long as we could get the car off the field. So Warren, I do remember, I will remember. That's what this blog is all about. Back in the day I recognise that I was more observer than participant. I feel like a witness, and I'm a witness who had my wits about me. I remembered other festivals - Bath in 1970, one I have written about recently. Knebworth in 1976 - the Stones played but Todd Rungren made the big impression. Lincoln and Bickershaw with Joe's cafe - an offshoot of On the 8th Day in Manchester - it had more in common with a refugee camp soup kitchen than the pretty and vintage style food outlets you get at festivals nowadays. At Lincoln we were outside the corrugated festival perimeter fence - I don't remember seeing any of the music, though I think I heard Rod Stewart and the Faces. Bickershaw was great, in spite of the mud, because we were just at the side of the stage.I remember Dr John, and Beefheart and Hawkwind. And of course the man who did the high dive into a tiny tank of water! We were next to the Release tent, and I wish I still had a copy of their typewritten instructions on what to do if you were busted by the drug squad at the festival! I remember it quoting the words 'Oi sonny, you're nicked'. I went to Womad for a day when it was in Morecambe and saw Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. And then I didn't camp or go to a festival for a long time - until we made Green Man in the Brecon Beacons our annual family get together back in 2006. But this year we thought we'd try No Direction Home. The food was great, especially the breakfast pastries from the Welbeck Farm Shop tent. The Literature and Comedy yurt was a good place to get warm and dry whilst being entertained - and taking off muddy wellies in the entrance definitely helped keep it clean and comfortable. The Somerset cider bus, the red double decker bus cafe, the Mexican cafe - all highlights.Three generations in one place - the babies in their trollies with coloured covers like miniature wagon trains. A swan in the evening moving over the lake.Performers enjoying the festival, in the queues for the loos ( good) and drinks. Comedy highlights were Josie Long and Simon Munnery. Literature highlights were Jon Ronson, Mick Jackson , Katherine Hibbert and Richard King. All very thought provoking.And people you'd never see anywhere else, wearing clothes they'd never wear anywhere else. There were some familiar faces among them. Babies dressed as fairies ( cute) and a 7 year old and a 57 year old ( I'm guessing) wearing Sex Pistols T shirts! And the comedy compere revealed himself as a massive Captain Beefheart fan, so I had a conversation with him about my on tour experience back in Clear Spot days. John Robins - if you are reading this take a look at the last post of my old blog, Life and Death in the Peak District, written in response to the news of Beefheart's death. On Friday night I thought it would be my last festival. On Sunday after a gloriously sunny day, I look forward to the next.

Early Byrds

On Saturday night I found myself reminiscing about the Bath festival in June 1970. If you follow this blog, you will know that I went to it in rather unusual circumstances, my friend and I having persuaded the nuns who ran our boarding school that it was essential for our Duke of Edinburgh Award. In the course of the conversation I realised that there were people on the bill that I have no recollection of seeing, though there was only one stage, and as we had no tents, sleeping bags, food, water etc etc, I was under the impression that I stayed awake and watched everything from under a piece of clear plastic sheeting, handed out, refugee camp style to the inexperienced festival crowd. There was a lot of rain. So much rain that the running order was disrupted, due to the danger of mixing rain with electricity on stage. As the sun rose on the last morning, I was down the front near the stage, watching the Byrds play an acoustic set. I was wearing a Nigerian Fulani blanket my dad had brought back from Northern Nigeria a couple of years before. I still have it. Pure magic. At the weekend my friend James William Hindle posted a link to the Byrds 'Get to You' from the Notorious Byrd Brothers. As I listened, I was in floods of tears, happy to hear the song again, but overwhelmed by emotion I had no idea was there. Bath was my first ever festival. This weekend I'm off to No Direction Home at Welbeck Abbey - if it rains I'll come home. I'll take food and water and tents and air beds and sleeping bags. I know it will be a great experience, but there's still a bit of me that wishes I could be that totally unprepared 16 year old again.

The Blank Generation - my punk experience

Late 1976. I had left university with an English degree. I was married. I owned my house. I was working in a wiring factory, waiting to hear if I'd got funding to do a masters , studying vernacular architecture in West Yorkshire. Late 1977. I was living with my Dutch boyfriend, Jan, former roadie to Alberto y Los Trios Paranoias.I was dyeing his hair black over the shared bathroom sink, and sewing his jeans to his skinny long legs, Ramones style. I was living in a flat on Northen Grove, West Didsbury, famous for being the residential road where a disgruntled cannabis dealer had once planted a home made bomb under the drug squad's Jag.I was treasurer for On the 8th Day,whole food shop and cafe on Oxford Rd, once the centre of idealistic hippiedom in Manchester and now a serious part of the workers' co-operative movement. How did this happen? Some of it was down to punk. At 22 in 1976 I felt a little too old, and possibly a little too conventionally pretty ( though I wouldn't have been able to articulate that back then)to fully embrace the punk movement, but it still had an impact. How did we learn about it? There was no internet. TV, radio and the music press were limited in their scope when it came to reporting new influences in music, lifestyle and fashion. Viral was cold sores and chicken pox. Some friends were in the music business, some independent record shops shared what was coming, some journalists had ears to the ground and John Peel did his bit. Word of mouth. I was aware of Blondie, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Patti Smith, Television and of course the Velvet Underground and Iggy Pop.Manchester grew its own - Magazine, Buzzcocks, Fast Breeder, Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds. I've already written about how bored I felt, how middle-aged and past it, with the mainstream music scene that was becoming so bland and corporate. I still loved soul, and Little Feat, and Captain Beefheart, but the rest was all just a bit too much about singing in tune. There had to be more. I was back at 8th Day. My husband had been made an offer he couldn't refuse, as were many unemployed graduates - poacher turned gamekeeper - and was working for the Department of Employment at the local Labour Exchange.One of the co-op members had just inherited some money. He also had a new baby. He had cut his hair short, bought a bright green Citroen 2CV and a stylish leather jacket. We heard that the Sex Pistols were playing Wigan Casino that night. We followed the road to Wigan, but the Sex Pistols didn't - it was just an ugly rumour. However Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds were on and we experienced a punk gig. On leaving Wigan casino, the Northern Soul crowd were waiting to go in for their customary all nighter. There was a police presence. When our friend opened the boot of his new car, we were all pounced on by uniformed officers, arrested, searched and taken down to the station. Unfortunately my husband's boss had given him a small piece of cannabis the day before, as she was 'giving up', and this was discovered in his jeans pocket. He was charged and prosecuted. He had to resign from the civil service before he was fired.I can only assume that because we didn't look like typical punks or Northern Soul fans, the police assumed we were drug dealers. We were all straddling several worlds at this point - from hippy ideals to left wing socialist politics. We were educated but not interested in conventional professions.We were rebels in our own time, but these days were different. The time was ripe for shock tactics and the rejection of the status quo. Pretty went out the window and in came pretty vacant. 1977 was the year the year of the Silver Jubilee, of desperate unemployment and a lack of connection ( deliberate and accidental) from the government of the day. The working class was unemployed and unemployable.Rock against Racism took a stand against the fear and ignorance of attitudes towards the new wave of refugees finding their way to the UK.Echoes of the present time. Punk's attitude was - if we can't be free we'll make bondage a fashion statement. If you think we are rubbish we'll wear bin bags as dresses. Ripped and torn clothing, held together with safety pins, laddered tights, shaved heads, sugar water and food dye mohicans.Let's make fashion out of necessity, take it to the limit one more time. Razor blades as earrings.The symbolism is amazing, and it gave fashion a whole new vocabulary. This wasn't simply a political movement, it was about taste, bad taste, and it was rotten. And that was amazing.I was more observer than participant, but it changed my attitudes. Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren recognised this as a piece of performance art, to be managed and manipulated through the media. It was soon absorbed and adapted by the mainstream. Katherine Hamnett and Zandra Rhodes took on the aesthetic - even Versace's safety pin dress for Liz Hurley referenced it. Never Mind the Buzzcocks is a jolly family music quiz. I have just been informed that there is a perfume called Anarchy in the UK. I'd like to think it's a joke but I have a horrible feeling it isn't. What price Smells Like Teen Spirit next.

The Bard of Salford

BBC 4' Punk Britannica and the documentary Evidently John Cooper Clarke got me fired up with recollections this week. The Bard of Salford was one of our own. I was brought up in Salford, as were both of my parents, but it was the place that dare not speak its name for my mother. Synonymous with slums. My mother is a Catholic doctor's daughter from Salford - a very troubled heritage if there ever was one. She denies it but her lifetime obsession with Coronation St is a bit of a giveaway. So the punk poet appealed to me on many levels - familiar turn of phrase, wicked sense of humour, literary interest. Before I was sent to boarding school I went to school in Salford - to Adelphi on the Crescent. I worked in Salford Central Library when I left school, before I went to university, all paid for by Salford. Salford was good to me. There were many points of contact with Mr Clarke through my 20s - music venues, performances, mutual friends. I'm not sure he ever really knew who I was - he tended to confuse me with my next door neighbour Jackie, Bruce Mitchell's wife. I was flattered. I've seen him perform several times over the last few years - Buxton Opera House and the Green Man festival. A far cry from the slightly seedy pubs and clubs of late 70s/early 80s Manchester. Some years ago I thought about booking him for the Bakewell Arts Festival but took the advice of a former member of the Invisible Girls and didn't - problems of communication, management, money and reliability were presented to me in a succinct and convincing way.Wise words I suspect at the time, but it could have caused a revolution in Bakewell's cultural life if I'd pulled it off! I'm encouraged to hear that he's part of the National Curriculum. I'm pleased I saw him back in the day.I wish my mum hadn't paid for elocution lessons for me. I'm glad he's recognised as the talent and influence he has always been. I asked someone at work if they'd seen it. 'Is he dead?' was their response. It's something special to have a documentary like this shown when you are still alive and creating. It was very poignant to see film of Martin Hannett as I remember him, and Alan Wise larger than life admitting to putting about the rumours of John's 'long relationship' with Nico. Enough of punk poets. More about punk as it appeared to me next time.

Two sevens clash

Last week two completely unconnected ( except through me) friends on Facebook posted links to Stevie Nicks' songs. On BBC4's music programme on Friday there was footage of George Benson, from The Old Grey Whistle Test, circa 1976. I usually write about concerts I have enjoyed, and I've usually enjoyed the concerts I have been to, but there are two that are fixed in my memory as personal turning points. They really made me feel that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometime around 1976/77 I went to see Fleetwood Mac with Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, at the Ardwick Apollo.I'd loved Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac since I was about 14, and Christine MacVie was one of my favourite singers ever. I couldn't stand the way she was upstaged by Stevie Nicks, and I wanted to see a progressive British blues band, not some Californian hangers on. Of course with the benefit of hindsight and maturity I can see that it worked for them then and the millions of fans since. The appeal carries on because all eras of music are now so accessible, and I have calmed down! Around the same time I made a special trip into Manchester to see George Benson at the Palace. Now I like jazz guitar, I appreciate those smooth sounds, and I love soul music. On a summer's evening like we are experiencing as I write, there's nothing better than 'Breezin' blowing in the wind. But on that night back in 76/77 I could barely keep awake during the concert. I was bored by live music. Luckily something was stirring to fire up my enthusiasm and wake me up. Punk, New Wave, Rock against Racism, reggae - a new energy created when two sevens clashed.

Young hearts run free

1976. I'd just left university and was working in a car wiring factory. Radio One was played over the Tannoy system in the mornings. Candi Staton's Young Hearts Run Free was the sound of that summer. My friend Marie loved the song, loved the sentiment.I loved the song but the sentiment didn't seem as relevant. My heart wasn't running free - I'd been married for two years and didn't see the end of it. Fourteen years, a divorce, a second marriage and two children later, I got a phone call to tell me that Marie had taken her life.Running free in her own way. Last summer Candi Staton was part of the Manchester International Festival, and my son and I got tickets to see her in the big tent in Albert Square. It was packed with devoted fans. We were right at the front, by the stage.We could see the colour of the nail varnish on her toenails! She was warm, pretty, in her seventies and totally fabulous. You Got the Love. It felt like being surrounded by friends. The emotional impact of her songs was overwhelming. She had already given some free performances in a local gospel church. This was no Radio One pop concert - her music took us all to a higher place. She is coming back to Manchester to the Royal Northern College of Music this summer. Go if you can.

Dr Dee - Manchester, Myth and Magic

There's a real buzz about Damon Albarn's Dr Dee in the run up to the Olympics. He was on Jools Holland the other week talking about his opera, and I think I heard a song from it on Radio 2 when I was out and about last week. I haven't heard him say much about John Dee's links with Manchester, but it is because of those links that the opera was devised for the Manchester International Festival last year. I went to see it, as I have been fascinated by the story for some years. I also really regretted not getting tickets for Monkey in a previous festival, and I didn't want to regret missing Dr Dee. He was strange figure, playing an important role at the Elizabethen court as a magician and mathematician, a conjuror and astrologer. He fell out of favour and was exiled to Manchester, where he allegedly attempted to levitate Manchester Cathedral. I was thrilled to discover that a group of Manchester psychogeographers tried to repeat this event a few years ago. How fantastic! That area of Manchester is still part of my dreamscape - not quite as it is in reality, but along with a dream version of Leeds railway station, it appears in my remembered dreams several times a year. It is thought that John Dee was the inspiration for Prospero and Faustus, two of the most powerful and mysterious figures in Elizabethan drama. His scrying mirror - a polished piece of obsidian, Aztec in origin - has featured in the recent BBC series Shakspeare's Restless World, and is part of the British Museum's collection. The opera portrays a broken man, tricked by his so called friend and teacher. It's a fascinating blend of visuals, words and music. The sets are amazing, and one point there is a crow that steals the show. It's not a pop opera,nor a stage musical yet it's accessible. It's very charming,authentic and folkloric, international in the mix of musicians and instruments, and yet quintessentially English.It extended my appreciation of Damon Albarn and the tragedy of John Dee's rise and fall. I feel privileged to have seen it in Manchester, and before the hooha of the Olympics takes it over.