featuring The Grateful Dead, Mighty Baby, Brinsley Schwarz, Marc Bolan, Pete Townshend, David Bowie, Hawkwind, Skin Alley, Gong, Pink Fairies, Edgar Broughton and…

…and books, domes, pyramid and …

…and since there’s a reason for everything: WELCOME to the six sided monument to sixties-into-seventies phun seekin’ dope smokin’ free wheelin’ acid droppin’ pyramid buildin’ freakery in the U.K. that is the Glastonbury Fayre triple album; Released in the summer of 1972 with the aim of clawing back some of the money lost in the throwing of the “first” Glastonbury festival which took place the week surrounding midsummer’s day 1971, and featuring music recorded at that event along with donated contributions from other sources by artists who had played or were sympathetic to the cause; Beautifully packaged with design by Barney Bubbles, photography from Paul Misso and Gaby Pape, words Mick Farren, cartoons Edward Barker — you get the picture — making it a HIGHLY collectable item and hens’ teeth rare these days. Dealers, bigging up its value, claim only 5,000 were distributed but John Coleman, head honcho at Revelation Enterprises, remembers it as 20,000 and even allowing for the unshifted stacks they used to prop up furniture at their Camden HQ that’s some disparity. There’s another claim that Jake Riviera holds further tapes from the festival with plans to release them “come the revolution” but don’t hold your breath — Jake was a later employee at Revelations, taking over the management of Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers from Coleman, and his credentials as someone ever on the look-out for the main chance are well known (During his days at Stiff he had the printers “accidentally” drop a picture of Eddie and the Hot Rods onto the back sleeve of the Damned’s debut album and then stockpiled the resulting first few thousand “collectors items”) so even if he has the tapes, or indeed any rights to release them, it seems likely he’d have done so by now. The legality of the whole shebang, in terms of all the straight stuff like permissions and copyright and publishing clearance, was questionable even at the time (A precised version of The Desiderata: “You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here etc” replaced the usual contractual guff around the circumference of the record labels), which is presumably why it has never been re-released (*) or officially CD-released. Anyhow — copies of the Glastonbury triple (original price: £3.99) in various states of completeness are now changing hands on ebay for between 75 and 250 quid and the cybertraders on there get VERY sniffy about anybody who’s discarded the printed polythene wrapper, rolled their smokes on the fold out cardboard sleeve, blu-tacked Bubbles’ spacey graphics onto their wall or, most heinous of all crimes, cut out and made the cut out and make pyramids and geodesic domes. Times change.

To the Festival! “… taking the A4 until approximately seven miles west of Marlborough where you take a left onto the A361 through Devizes, then Trowbridge, then Frome. Follow the 361 straight through to Shepton Mallet. A wave of energy bursts out of the Lake of dreams, spreading like a globular ripple. The mind energy races across the Moon, leaps space, engulfs the Earth, envelopes the Sun and roars out into the purple void towards the cold light of the stars. The journey takes approximately four hours” — From London that is. The beautiful people had been traipsing down to Glastonbury since the mid sixties seeking enlightenment via a combination of Arthurian legend, ley line plotting and UFO spotting and so it was that Andrew Kerr and Arabella Churchill (PA to Randolph Churchill and granddaughter to Sir Winston respectively — so undeniably “posh hippies” the pair of them) came to set up camp down at Worthy Farm with the stated intention of creating a “Fair in the medieval tradition”. Stonehenge had been considered as a site and rejected because it would have been far too easy to piss off local farmers and anyway Michael Eavis had proved himself up for such an event by holding the Pilton Festival the previous September where for a quid you were offered a Hog Roast, free farm milk and a bill including Keith Christmas, Quintessence, Stackridge, Al Stewart, Steamhammer, Amazing Blondel, Duster Bennett, Sam Apple Pie, Wayne Fontana (mindbending?), Roy Harper AND… Marc Bolan replacing The Kinks at the last gasp and arriving, as legend (Bill?) would have it, in a suede covered Buick. Andrew and Arabella were joined by a young Thomas Crimble (ex of Hawkwind) and dubbing their operation Solstice Capers they sent out word of freebie fun to the freak community via bush telegraph, handbills at gigs and snippets in the underground press. Jeff Dexter (promoting Implosion at the Roundhouse) and John Coleman (then music editor at Frendz magazine) were brought on board and set about inviting everybody who’d played the Roundhouse in the last couple of years and taking a few longer, and ultimately unsuccessful, shots at people like the Dead, the Who and the Floyd, and ended up with a line-up that looked something like: Help Yourself, Skin Alley, Brinsley Schwarz, Quintessence, Quiver, Bronco, David Bowie, Terry Reid, Toad, Daevid Allen and Gong, Traffic, Flash Gordon, Magic Muscle, Melanie, BB Blunder, Hawkwind, The Pink Fairies (Ladbroke Grove must have been quiet that week), Uncle Dog, Henry Cow, Gilberto Gil! (living in London at the time at the insistence of Brazil’s military regime, in fact when he first came over he shared a Portobello Road flat with Terry Reid), Fairport Convention, Family, Mighty Baby, Edgar Broughton Band, Arthur Brown and Kingdom Come, the crazy world of Magic Michael and… Thomas Crimble’s Worthy Farm Windfuckers. There’s a film, ‘Glastonbury Fayre 1971’ (David Putnam a production credit and Nicholas Roeg photography) that very neatly compliments this record, there’s no duplication of performances — you get stuff on the film you don’t get on the record: Superlunged Terry Reid singing his heart out (Sounding and looking, in star spangled skinny top and woolly hat, about as cool as it’s possible to get) and his killer band — young drummer Alan White toking on and passing back a joint, giggling like a girl and tickling the band into easy action with the great Californian lap guitar player David Lindley and lovely little Linda Lewis, her hair as big as the rest of her, testifying way beyond the call of duty; Magic Michael in a Frank Spencer tank top and nowt else, shaking his dick at the audience and his sidekick, that ubiquitous loon — Jesus of Camden Town, on bongos; and the big boys — Winwood, Capaldi, Woods and Mason’s Traffic working up a fantastically funky Rebop Kwaku baah’d ‘Gimmie some lovin’; and Woodstock veteran Melanie, and Maharaj Ji, and the massed drums of the Pink Fairies Marching Band and sunkissed frolics in the long grass and loads more. So see the film, it gets shown on TV once in a blue moon and there’s a bootlegged dvd out there somewhere, but most of all… hear the record… for it is good:

RECORD 1 SIDE A: The idea that the Grateful Dead might play Glastonbury wasn’t such a crazy pipe dream and it must have been on the cards at some point ’cos it was their record company, Warners who insisted (against Andrew Kerr’s better judgement) on the spelling of “F‑a-y-r‑e”, presumably wanting a bit of that Ye-Olde-Englande vibee for their charges. They’d made their English debut at The Hollywood Festival near Newcastle-under-Lyme the previous spring and they’d play again in the wind and rain at Bickershawe near Wigan the following May but, despite varying degrees of thumbs up from Alan Trist and Phil Lesh, Glasto ’71 would be one long strange trip the Dead would NOT make. Shame. They headed instead for a festival near Paris which was rained off (Ironique, n’est pas?) and wound up at the Chateau d’Hérouville, Elton’s Honky Chateau where Pink Floyd would, in a few months time, record the soundtrack for Barbet Schroeder’s ‘La Vallée (Obscured By Clouds)’, and Bowie, a couple of years later, do ‘Pin-Ups’, and Gong — Well Gong and the Dead must have just missed each other, the “French” band taking a break from recording ‘Camembert Electrique’ to travel to Glastonbury while the Americans moved in the opposite direction to play a midsummer night’s pool party for the Hérouville townsfolk. The Dead would wait another seven years for their moment of oneness with the universe when on September 16th 1978 they played in front of the Great Pyramid at Giza during a total eclipse of the moon. So… the 24 minutes of ‘Dark Star’ on here are from the band’s second of two dates at the cold and cavernous Wembley Empire Pool on their ‘Europe ’72’ tour (the bulk of the London material on THAT live triple album comes from the cosier Lyceum Theatre on the Strand) and initially they don’t sound over-relaxed by their surroundings. That’s to say this doesn’t proceed in quite the sure footed and stately manner of the the version recorded on home ground at Filmore West, February ’69 that appeared on ‘Live Dead’. This has a more agitated / distracted feel (or maybe they’re just trying to warm their fingers) until it settles into its themes of exploration / finding light in the dark. Keith Godchaux’s piano tucks in behind Jerry Garcia’s tentative guitar and Phil Lesh’s ever alert bass as they edge forward step by step until they come again to that place where Robert Hunter’s lyric give this stellar crew renewed purpose, “Shall we go, you and I while we can, through the transitive nightfall of diamonds?” and Garcia’s guitar attacks, cutting like a scalpel, flashing and quickly slicing then dripping with crimson jewel-like shining droplets. You just can’t help wondering how much more magical this might have sounded coming out of Bill Harkin’s polythene and steel pyramid in the Vale of Avalon.

RECORD 1 SIDE B: Brinsley Schwarz’s ‘Love Song’ is as dramatic a contrast to ‘Dark Star’ as the Dead’s own songs on Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty are to ‘Dark Star’, breezy Americana before the term was coined being the Brinsleys’ stock-in-trade, with John Sebastian’s Lovin’ Spoonful a more obvious reference point for this particular pop country ditty than the usually cited Crosby, Stills & Nash and The Band. Brinsley Schwarz played at Glastonbury, their set interrupted and their PA commandeered for the squat 13 year old guru Maharaj Ji (think Tattoo off Fantasy Island) and his creepy followers to scam for Engleesh pounds off the more monied and gullible audience members, but ‘Love Song’ is a studio cut, a straight lift from their second album ‘Despite It All’ the self mocking title of which referred to an ill-judged hype mission to the USA and the subsequent indifference of the music business, leading to the band concentrating on playing peoples festivals and the newly developing pub rock circuit and becoming beloved of punters everywhere as purveyors of songs for dancing to. Nick Lowe’s a genius anyway and ‘Love Song’ is pretty and it grows on you and you can whistle it.

And so it falls to Mighty Baby to provide the record’s first track recorded, by the sound engineers from Free Radio Geronimo, AT the festival itself — 5 o’clock in the morning on the 25th of June, according to the sleeve notes, which would have been the day people were rolling up their sleeping bags and drifting away — so they had THIS beautiful music ringing in their heads as they moved on. ‘A Blanket In My Museli (sic)’ is a jam stewed, apparently (and I must admit I can’t hear it), out of John Coltrane’s ‘India’, a version of which The Action (Mighty Baby in a previous incarnation) included in their live set back in 1967 (14 minutes of Village Vanguard ’trane freeform modalling condensed into a three minute mod floorfiller. That, you gotta hear!). You wanna hear a more transparent lift of the ‘India’ theme? Check out Roger McGuinn’s dangling four note intro to the Byrds ‘Eight Miles High’. Incidentally, and proving that musicians oceans apart could be on the same wavelength, The Action also covered McGuinn and Crosby’s ‘I see you’ among their Holland Dozier Holland and Smokey Robinson work outs and Reg King originals. ‘Museli’ sets out (or maybe it’s the end of something preceding it) with the sound of shakers like cicadas in rhythm / a katydids chorus, joined by the chimes of volume control phased guitars and then, raising the excitement, shouted encouragements from the band members / stage hands / audience and Martin Stone’s lead guitar tripping out over Bam King’s choppy rhythm, Roger Powell’s splashy percussion and, crucial to the intensity of the groove, Ian Whiteman’s urgent, stabbing, pumping keyboard — This is sinewy, organic, tasty stuff and beautifully played. Somebody, looking for an easy label to stick on The Baby, called them “The English Grateful Dead” and sure, there’s a similar blend of West Coast Blues, Country and psychedelia in the mix but, don’t forget, The Action had the Detroit side of things going down as well playing urban soul grooves for the sharp dressed kids to pose to, and Mighty Baby still wear that influence on their sleeve — so when the drums kick in a more solid beat and the band adopt a serious dance stance this thing fucking STEAMS along. Some breakfast this must have been! I was so taken with the sound that Martin Stone made on this track I resolved to follow his sufi muslim psychedelic space cowboy T‑bone walking jump blues guitar pickin’ arse around London for what was left of the better half of the seventies — first with his old Junior Blues Band mate Phil ‘Snakefinger’ Lithman in Chilli Willi and then with his very own Jivebombers (sometimes featuring the notorious Ron Watts, late of Brewers Droop and the Nags Head in High Wycombe, on vocals). He stepped in to play the last few gigs with the 101’ers before Joe bunked off with the boys from the London SS, hell — he even turned up on the Pink Fairies’ Stiff single ‘Between the Lines’ in the guise of Mad Dog. And then in the eighties I happened across a yellowing newspaper clipping pinned to a shelf in a Charing Cross Road bookshop that alluded to a second career as a master in the art of antique book scouting. Martin Stone — What a guy! So despite neighbouring artists on this compilation having bigger names and longer careers, or maybe for exactly those reasons (I started young with the inverse snobbery), ‘Museli’ was the track I loved the most, I did then, I do now. Simply, You HAVE to hear this!

RECORD 2 SIDE C: The first three tracks on the second disc feature names that might have attracted the attention of a wider public although my memory is they didn’t — perhaps because of their association here with such a deep and dirty underground, but Bolan, Townshend and Bowie were certainly glittering stars by 1972. Marc Bolan, after headlining the 1970 Pilton fest, was by now well into his rags (velvet, naturally) to riches story and his home made contribution is a rattling acoustic ‘Sunken Rags’, a more produced version of which joined ‘Jitterbug Love’ as the b‑side to ‘Children of the Revolution’ in the same year. More Tyrannosaurus than T. Rex, this Bolan bop with its double tracked quivering vocal, chugging strum and blue Gene yelp, hints at Presley preen and delivers Donovan daze. “It’s a shame how you unzip my winter poetry, It’s a shame the way you treat me like a fool”. Sweet. A true star, little Marc may have been away with the teenyboppers by this stage but he was still way too Grove groovy and cute to be regarded as a sell out by the heads. The monolithic WHO would surely have overshadowed proceedings at Glastonbury — The crowds they’d have drawn. The fees they’d have demanded! They may not have fancied it after Woodstock and the Isle of Wight anyway, but Pete Townshend could always be relied on to lend support to a worthy cause. The track, ‘Classified’ recorded in Pete’s studio is a typically personal Townshend piece dealing with that idling away the time activity of checking the small ads in the newspapers, the sort of thing that has its modern equivalent in dicking around on the internet: “I’m gonna find me a love / a car / some land in the country far” and a neat pun about “my Evening Star”. A different mix of this song appeared on the ‘Let my love open the door’ single of 1980. David Bowie was another of the artists who had played the festival in ‘71, his set famously scheduled for some ungodly hour of the morning and peaking at sunset with the darling David all pre-raphaelite locks, floppy hat and bad teeth, but this is freshly feather cut Bowie, cat suited and platform booted and well into Ziggy mode delivering a new version of a song originally recorded for his ‘The Man who Sold the World’ LP. This later ‘Supermen’ was recorded live in the studio at Trident during the Ziggy Stardust sessions and features Mick Ronson’s vicious Les Paul licks and Tony Visconti on up-in-the-mix bass (producers prerogative?). Bowie and Ronson were right on top of their game at this time — Heaven and Hull, What a pair — I remember having one of those centre spread posters out of Sounds where they were practically licking each other’s balls. Bowie’s electrifying vocal (Anthony Newley wired up to Vincent Price and Sally Bowles) is spine tingling: “When all the world was very young and mountain magic heavy hung…” and then the shivery delight as Ronson slithers in with six string squall. Fantastic! Bowie never got any better than this for me.

Hawkwind played the 1971 festival, of course, try and keep them away. It was allegedly there where an out-of-her-tree Stacia first hooked up with the ‘Wind. The Hawkwind stuff here however is from the February 13th 1972 benefit gig at the Roundhouse (immortalised on the Greasy Truckers Party double album — see Seth Man’s review) by which time Robert Calvert had joined the band, and it’s his arch vocal you hear on the original un-messed with recording of ‘Silver Machine’. Layers of overdubbed Dave Brock studio riffage and Calvert’s actorly tones replaced by Lemmy’s head back delivery would make it the hit we know and love, but it’s interesting to note that Captain Bob makes more of the “FLY HIGH Silver Machine” lyric, which suggests whimsical adventure and freedom, while Lemmy stuck doggedly to “I’VE GOT a Silver Machine” which smacks more of space technology and militaristic power — which only made it all the more attractive to us adolescent Quo and Sabs fans and Sladists. ’Course I could be reading too much into that. Meanwhile… back in Chalk Farm, with the dry ice thickening and the strobe lights a’ flashing: “helloEricWELCOME. Welcome to the future, Welcome to the days you’ve made” and Dik Mik and Del Dettmar hunched over the knobs and levers getting the thing up to speed… “You are welcome. Your will come. You. All. Will. Come.” and massive chunks of crackling shuddering space rock blitzkrieg, and then — all hands on deck for the UBERCHORD! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!! the sound of the Hawkwind machine on spin cycle. “Thangyoo”. Hang ‘em out to dry.

Ending this most various of sides — Skin Alley with ‘Sun Music’, studio recorded and featuring a singer whose vocal stylings veer alarmingly between Jacqui McShee Pentangle plainsong and Ozzie Osbourne Hammer Horror hollering, and ending with a Beatle-ish all together now round the piano singalong. It doesn’t really do it for me… but it may for you.

RECORD 2 SIDE D comes with the beat title, ‘Glad Stoned Buried Fielding Flash and Fresh Fest Footprints in My Memory’ and from there on it gets LESS clear: “Um this band has come all the way from Paris just to do this one gig and included in the band is a gentleman called Daevid Allen who used to be lead guitarist with the Soft Machine. This is Daevid Allen… a‑n-d‑d… G‑o-n-g-n-g-n-g-n‑g…” is surely Jeff Dexter’s Glastonbury 1971 introduction for the band, and I’d always assumed the soul stirring tribal drumming and heavy cymbalism and Allen’s Aussie twang: “It’s only the world said the girl… and that’s where I am says the man” that follows was continued recording, except that about four minutes in with the festive atmosphere seemingly unstoppable… It STOPS. The generator blows and we say “See ya” to a field in South West England and “Allo” to …a Belgian nunnery? …? I’ll explain. Daevid Allen, in his sleeve notes, gives the Gong line-up as he on guitar & vocals, Laurie Allen drums, Didier Malherbe saxophones & flute, Gilli Smyth vocals, Christian Tritsch bass, Peter Pussydog mad laughter and Venux Du Luxe (Francis Lindon) switch doctorin, but then contradicts himself by admitting that drummer Laurie Allen was gigging in London with Fat Harry when Gong appeared at Glastonbury and sure enough — in August 2006, in an obituary for the sadly departed Pip Pyle, the Flash Fest Footprints in Daevid’s memory led him back to remembering that it was Pip (battling a bout of rheumatic fever even) who provided the metronomic underground beats at Glastonbury ‘71 — The line-up listed only became active December ‘71 / January ‘72 (with the joy of an added Kevin Ayers as floating member), and pot headed history has that band playing club dates with Daniel Laloux and Nico in Brussels over the New Year period before retiring to the Hannut Convent in the province of Liège which is just possibly where the rest of the stuff on this record derives. Possibly. So I’m clinging to a wavering belief that it’s Pip with the tumbling percussion on ‘It’s only the world said the girl’ recorded LIVE at Glastonbury, but after Jeff Dexter’s apologies for the shagged power supply (which grinds to a halt, the sound of a tape coming to a stop, rather than the more traditional “Phut!”) it’s a more obviously cut and spliced and continental makeshift studio based Gong which continues. Probably. Thusly: ‘Fun Gods (Ha Ha, Name Game, Toe Cake, Awe Mantram, Dingobox)’ is like some chaotic sound effects collection, the Pussydog’s manic echoing laughter followed by a mish mash of name calling, number crunching, Wildean quips and shouting in a bucket culminating in a stamping tantrum of cryingest baby wah wah guitar and blah blah vocal interplay. John Peel drops in from a Radio broadcast somewhere to add his judgement: “Curious band”. “Divine Mother” is the longest and most fully formed section and features the little deathly breaths of Smyth’s sexy Welsh space whisper, Malherbe’s somnolent sax, fluttering percussion and whirring electronics and the eerie time travelling sound of Allen’s eternally churning glissando guitar. ‘Radio Gnome’ sees the first(?) appearance of our whirly headed little friends the Pot Head Pixies with a cascade of step and repeated self promoting jingles which disappear in a rain of ricocheting gunfire and explosion before a blurt!ed ‘Bambolay’ chant announcing the final piece, ‘Ya Sunne’ on which, above crawling over the tracks beats, Allen comes on like a mineret topping muezzin calling the faithful to prayer — and then, in a surreal continent bounding leap from East to West, goes all high Hollywood camp with: “Ah sweet mystery of life I shall remember” and “Anytime you wanna call me Meester DeMille”. Wha?!? These 23 minutes were the first we’d heard from Gong (Virgin Records’ ‘Radio Gnome Invisible’ trilogy was yet to come and the earlier French recordings would be released later) and from here on, suitably teased, it was: In Gong We Trust. By 1974 Gong had moved their operation to a farmstead at Whitney in Oxfordshire and, using that as a communal base, gigged relentlessly throughout England’s grey and unpleasant land (usually with the Global Village Trucking Company in tow — which was almost too much of a good thing), providing those of us who’d spent the sixties wearing school uniform, rather than all the colours of the rainbow, a chance to get off on some of the freedom of ideas and expression and the possibilities of continual change the latter part of that decade had seemed to promise — and the squad rotation of decent musicians and the wacky headgear we liked too — and for that it’s a massive: Merci les gens de la théière de vol. The side finishes where it started with a smattering of enthusiastic applause and yelled appreciation from the festival crowd — to maintain the magickal illusion.

RECORD 3 SIDE E: Finally! One big slice of plastic with a hole in the middle inscribed on both sides with grooves filled entirely and unequivocally with material recorded LIVE… at Glastonbury… in June… 1971. It comes with the completely superfluous instruction ‘LOUD!’ printed on its labels and was the platter on heaviest rotation at our house back in nineteen seventy two, not to mention three — In with the red lightbulb and on with the Pinks! and don’t spare the cheap cider and funny cigarettes. Ahh, the Pink Fairies — Like punk never had to happen, right? Kick started with the thrummed and phased strains familiar from ‘Never Never Land’, and it’s that album’s classic four piece, double drummered line up in their final furious days that (“All right, Oh Yeah” Blat! Blat!) piles into ‘DO IT’. Duncan ‘Sandy’ Sanderson on bass, Russell Hunter drums, Twink more drums and vocal, and the magnificent Paul Rudolph on screwdriver spiked speakered swirl-a-round guitar — the SOUND of cracked black leather and scuffed crushed velvet soaked in patchouli oil. Twink, sneeringly menacing, pre-Rotten rotten: “Don’t WRITE about it, DO it! You’re gonna rip me off, You better Fuck Off ‘cos you blew it. D d d d d d d d d d d d d d d Do it! Do it Do it Do it Do it Do it Do it Do it Do it Do it! … Yer Mothers” and Rudolph’s off and running (the missing speedfreak link between Chuck Berry and Hendrix) with blistering guitar and the Pinks are AT IT — The ultimate freakscene call to action (Check Twink’s mission statement for the band: “to revitalise the scene with cosmic rock ‘n’ roll while simultaneously sticking it to ‘the man’!” Yay!), a punkrock anthem before its time, and as such it’s over as quick as it’s started (Well, three minutes is short and sweet on here), making way for the Fairies’ other big crowd pleaser — dedicated “to Andrew, and Michael the farmer, and to the Frendz tent, and all the good dope” — ‘UNCLE HARRY’S LAST FREAK OUT’. Pure piss-taking Pinks, that title — There was always as much of the Goon Show as the White Panthers about the Fairies (“Hello dere Hello dere. Pink Fairies on Earth? I have a call from Ur-Anus for you. The what the what? It’s where it’s where?” etc etc). Paul Rudolph’s on a longer leash on ‘Harry’ getting really free with a torrent of wah wah, always with that signature creak like it needs a bit of axle grease, and wide arcing sustain and feedback, while louche Sandy Sanderson gets on the suavest of bass grooves, Twink bothers cymbals, and keeping it firmly, albeit deceptively loosely, together — that blur of corkscrew afro and flailing limbs that is the Fairies main drummer (When The Muppets’ Animal made his first appearance on British TV screens every hairy household across the nation must have risen as one from their skanky sofas, pointing excitedly and going “Ha! Russell Hunter!”). Rudolph gets so far out on his big slabby tornado’d guitar instrumental excursion he leaves the others skulking behind, taking time out for a smoke, while he goes it alone out on the prow of the stage, like a fuzzy figurehead, high above, mocking and taunting and then dropping back onto the riff and bringing the rhythm section back in for a final barrage of crashing and clattering and “Well we DID IT again, They can’t hold on to us” and assault and battery and feedback and sustain and suspend and… “KEEP IT TOGETHER!”. Thank FUCK for the Pink Fairies.

RECORD 3 SIDE F: Upon which free festival favourites the Edgar Broughton Band borrow the Fugs’ Pentagon levitating chant and Gary U.S. Bonds’ Hey-hey-hey-hey-hey call and response and employ them to FULL Effect. The Broughtons weren’t the last act on at the festival but they’re the perfectly fitting finale on record. Arthur Grant (That’s one heavy name Arthur) bass, Victor Unitt (like Twink, an ex Pretty Thing) guitar, and siblings, Steve on drums and Rob Broughton guitar and vocals (Edgar’s his middle name and the name of the band but he’s Rob. A mate of mine, dosed on mandies, spent an entire gig at Amersham College in ‘73 shouting “Can you hear me Edgar?” into one of the PA bins — so in retrospect that was daft for AT LEAST two reasons). Brother Steve puts down a snappy four four and Rob sets to, in full stoic Warwick, with the oratory — a hairy general geeing up his freak army — starting with the carrot, “You will get HIGHER than you were, however HIGH you are already” and proceeding with the stick, lecturing the masses on the dignity of labour (“Work! WORK! Work! WORK!”), man’s place in time and space and, touching briefly on the redemptive power of Love (“Love! LOVE! Love! LOVE!”) building to such a level of communal excitement — “Take it up! Pick it up! Raise us! Raise us! Higher! HIGHER! Higher! HIGHER!” that when the guitars plug in and the earth-quaking big bad boogie chillum rhythm finally erupts and rolls out over the heads and the herds and the fields, it’s like some unstoppable lava flow of molten rock picking up everything in its path. Everybody’s well up for this, exorcising their own personal whatever it is that needs exorcising with the huge and lusty ‘OUT DEMONS OUT’ mantra filling the night air. “Fuck me old boots, What a set!” concludes DJ Andy Dunkley at the finish and “AMEN” — Mister Livin’ Jivin’ Jukebox — to that.

Now at this point I was going to suggest that, due to the rarity of said item and the similar scarcity of the Buccaneer bootlegged CD, and fully in the spirit of the original event, someone with the requisite tech.knowledgey might like to burn this shit to MP3 and distribute it… FREELY Maaaannnnn. Like Magic Michael said (on another occasion), “Music IS the property of the people” He said a lot else but music is the property of the people was the meat of his message and TOO RIGHT. I was also going to mention in passing that some of this Glastonbury fare can be found in other places (Like for instance — Dark Star is apparently on CD4 of a box set called ‘Steppin’ Out with the Grateful Dead: England ‘72’ and anyhow don’t the Deadheads insure that every note their heroes ever played is recorded and available somewhere? The Mighty Baby track is added to the Flash CD release of their second album, ‘A jug of love…plus’ and also crops up on an Italian thing called ‘I Miti Del Rock Live’ where you can also find half of the Gong stuff, the whole of which was also digitally remastered and lovingly packaged by the GAS people for their first archive release, and the two Pink Fairies tracks are reproduced on ‘Mandies And Mescaline Round At Uncle Harry’s’), but… NO NEED. Huzzah and Whoopee-fuckin’-doo and this is where that cheeky little asterisk back in the first paragraph comes in — (*) Arkama, the Italian outfit, have plans to re-release the triple LP, re-pressed on 180 gram vinyl and packaged exactly like the original with all the inserts, posters and pyramids, erm, any day now. This is in no way an advert mind, in fact — a note of caution — the last I heard of Arkama I was being warned off a shoddy Patto compilation on account of the dishonesty of its claims, but IF this turns out to be what it says it is… you may wanna jump on it… before it goes all rare again.