| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 06/06/2011 : 22:03:48
The Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music was a music festival held at the Royal Bath and West Showground in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, England on 27–28 June 1970.
Hey Zappa was there, Zep, Airplane, Floyd ...what a lineup!!!
Lucky Dukie!!
The festival started at midday on the 27th (a Saturday) and finished at about 6:30 am on Monday morning. It featured a lineup of the top American west coast and British bands of the day, including Santana, The Flock, Led Zeppelin (headlining act), Hot Tuna, Country Joe McDonald, Colosseum, Jefferson Airplane (set aborted), The Byrds (acoustic set), Moody Blues (unable to play), Dr. John (acoustic set), Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, Canned Heat, It's a Beautiful Day, Steppenwolf, Johnny Winter, John Mayall, Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, and Keef Hartley.[1][2] This lineup eclipsed the more famous Isle Of Wight festival held in August of the same year, but as it attracted less press coverage at the time and was a smaller affair, it has generally received less attention in the years since.
Bath was the brainchild of promoter Freddy Bannister and his wife Wendy Bannister , who had held the smaller Bath Festival Of Blues within Bath itself in 1969. The 1970 show attracted a significantly larger crowd of 150,000,[1] but, like the Isle of Wight festival, an audience of such magnitude created some serious on-ground difficulties. The logistics proved to be too vast for Bannister's small team to adequately cope with, and his security staff stole large amounts of gate receipts, resulting in a far smaller profit than expected.[3]
Actually getting to the festival itself was another problem for many of the throng of fans. The country lanes leading to the site were swiftly blocked by cars, also meaning that many of the bands' equipment trucks could not get to the site. On Sunday morning this led to Donovan casually walking out onto the empty silent stage, to address the expectant but bored crowd -which were slowly drying out from the drenching received during the night. Being a folk singer, his genre was not what the crowd had gone there to hear. So to test the mood of the crowd out, he engaged in a bit of small talk, where he explained that he had spent the night in his van in a nearby field and so on. Then worked around to asking if they would like him to play a song whilst they waited for the billed act to arrive. A lively rendering of jump down, turn around, pick a bail of cotton raised the crowds spirits. Then he played some of his classics. As the crowd seemed to appreciate this, electric guitars, amps and a few reluctant musician (or rather stage-hands that knew a few chords) were pressed into accompany him. Still no bands came, so Donovan continued. His impromptu and free performance eventually filled in for a 2½ hours of what otherwise would have been silence.
As a consequence these delays, the festival ran behind schedule and many bands had to play to diminished crowds in the small hours of Monday morning. The last act, Dr John, hit the stage at dawn on the Monday.
The festival featured many innovations, including projections of the bands on screens on the side of the stage, a good quality PA system, on-site tents for the patrons to sleep in and larger tents which projected films such as King Kong throughout the night . The expenditure on these items ate into the profits, and many people decamped with the tents, which were hired. This was another expense that had to borne by the promoters.
The festival was captured on both film and on video, in varying quality, but a lack of post-festival organisation led to the footage being lost for many years. Much of it has now been recovered, but the black and white footage is of poor quality and is in many different hands. It is considered unlikely that it will ever see the light of day as a legitimate release since no one can agree on who owns the copyright. This situation could be contrasted to the Isle of Wight Festival, which was professionally recorded and filmed in colour.
The festival was widely bootlegged, and several audience tapes are now in circulation. It is rumoured that excellent soundboard tapes also exist, though to this point they have not publicly surfaced.
An 'alternative festival' was staged in an adjoining field where the Pink Fairies and Hawkwind played on the back of a flatbed truck.[4] This was a precursor to the many free festivals of the 1970s.
Here's a great site with cool info and pix....lets get the interest up to out this great festival on DVD/CD!!! These guys have film and audio but are holding out for someone to want to officially release it!
http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/bA1.html
_____________________________________________
So forget this cruel world
and whatever’s going on
I'll accept my fate
while I sing this song.
But if one day you should see me from your cloud
lend a hand and lift me
Away from the crowd. |
| 7 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| ALLANAGAIN |
Posted - 08/06/2011 : 22:54:15
we are lucky that in Britain we have "magic mushrooms" going and growing free in the fall.
I have allways LOVED a good trip though. |
| captain america and billy |
Posted - 08/06/2011 : 20:27:48
Sometime in the eighties or at least ninties,buying acid become really dangerous,as more and more supplies were watered down with highly potentially fatal substances such as strychnine.Of course,there have been bogus forms of the various street drugs ever since they became fashionable,but I understand there WAS a time when it WAS possible for any ordinary run of the mill Joe Blow to obtain LSD in it pure form,most notably the millions of doses that eminated from the infamous Owlsey labs.Nowadays..ehhh..you probably have to BE someone big enough to KNOW someone big enough to get hold of the safest trips possible.Of course,there's always risk in any lysergic adventure,but today the likelihoods of nightmarish bad trips and even death may be too steep of a price to pay for a magic carpet ride in the sky with Lucy. |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 08/06/2011 : 19:34:28
Can't speak for the UK, but by '70 it was not the same and rather iffy....but yeah....a few good trips to be had.
_____________________________________________
So forget this cruel world
and whatever’s going on
I'll accept my fate
while I sing this song.
But if one day you should see me from your cloud
lend a hand and lift me
Away from the crowd. |
| ALLANAGAIN |
Posted - 08/06/2011 : 18:44:33
was the L.S.D. good in 197o guys? |
| harvey |
Posted - 07/06/2011 : 20:50:18
I went to Weeley in my Sunbeam Alpine. Parked it in Backstage car park as Girlfriend worked for Melody Maker and got a pass. Only thing she didn't get was special tickets for food which was the only way you could get it.Backstage Traders not allowed to take money. Slept in car and we had to live off tinned soup which I had taken with a small stove, and any food she could scrounge off people she knew there. Lots of Hells Angels in backstage area and they had big fights with traders selling food in outer arena. Terrible toilets, just big tent with lots of slit trenches and a few scaffolding poles. Really good sound system, much better than Bath. Mostly JBL bins and horns, not WEM 4x12's as was the norm. Spent most of time in press enclosure close to stage. Faces were excellent, got some pictures of Rod posing onstage somewhere. T Rex got booed because they were turning electric. Barclay James Harvest had real problems as the orchestra could not read the music because the pages kept blowing about until someone produced a bag of rubber bands. As far as I remember it was mostly dry. There are several good websites about the festival. Interesting fact that the organisers did it to raise money for local charities and had only organised donkey derbies before. Good festival but nearly all British Artists.
Harvey the roadie |
| Dukie |
Posted - 07/06/2011 : 10:27:07
I was at Weeley, but I think it was in 1971 and it was a long way in a Morris Minor from South Wales! |
| harvey |
Posted - 07/06/2011 : 00:50:29
I was there, my mate and I hired a car to get from London to a campsite near the festival site. Picked up a couple of girls on the drive down, got to the festival ok Saturday AM but had to park on the single track road some way away. We had tickets but everybody was getting through holes in the fence. We just followed but in the process my mate lost the keys for the car and I seemed to lose the girls who spotted someone they knew. Stayed until very late on Saturday night then decided we had better get back so turned away from the stage and looked back to where mate was 10 seconds ago and he had gone. I knew how to get back to the car luckily and on the way back I passed the flatbed truck where the bands were playing. Stopped there for a bit and then found the car and mate was there with another bloke trying to hotwire the car having forced a small window.(luckily it was not fitted with a steering lock back then). Got back to campsite and then spent a bit of Sunday morning trying to get new keys for the car which we managed to do. Went back to festival and then drove home to London late Sunday night. So I missed a few acts but saw most of it. Total chaos on stage most of the time, nobody seemed to know what was going on, no-one telling audience that there were no bands or equipment there so Donovan got a right earful a lot of the time. PA was used mainly for asking Jerry to meet Fred by the Left hand speakers etc etc and not too much for the music. Later when it got going properly it was difficult to tell which bands were on. For an early festival (in the UK) the sound was fairly good. Such a lineup of bands but the food was difficult to find and the other facilities ??? were non existant or disgusting. Seemed to be a lot of London people there as I knew a lot of them so there was a really good atmosphere. Think I still got my ticket somewhere but definitely have the Melody Makers from around that time with the write ups and the lists of bands. Best bands I remember many years later were Flock with Jerry Goodman on the violin and Edgar Winter, maybe because the violin and the slide guitar cut through on the old style ( boxes and boxes of 12 inch speakers) PA.
Great memories, especially the one where I turn round and my only means of getting home (my mate) is not there any more and I am in a field full of people 250 miles from home, not enough money for a train ticket home,....aaargh!!!
No wonder I wasnt fazed with all the problems Arthur and Love threw at me on the '74 tour.
Now who was at the Weeley Festival in Essex a short time later.
Harvey the roadie |
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