Rave before Rave … Watchfield Free Festival, 1975.
A disused airfield is how its history & description usually begin.
Big empty hangars, tarmac, small runway, sheds, space …
Bunches of folks with sleeping bags crowding a hangar.
Bikers turning up and deciding to roar and make a presence
riding through it.
Small campfires, a wood nearby, had to be.
Old beat-up buses … the start perhaps of what would be known
as ‘The Convoy’ … traveling folks from festival to festival.
See ‘Battle of the Beanfield’ for how that went.
A longhair at a campfire playing & singing ‘The Needle and the
Damage done’ from Neil Young … attending folks in quiet seriousness.
Acid … lots of acid … so an attendant ‘Freak-out’ space … a shed-
space with beds and helpers … suggesting that after you’d calmed
you visit the Hare Krishnas in a nearby shed-space who’d set themselves
up there and chanted & all with a happy abandon.
Oh the bands, had to look this up, so long ago now … Gong & Hawkwind,
were there … of course … Here and Now, Dr Dose and the Acid Drops
were listed, as were Sky Church, Toad and the Wet Sprockets, The Spangled Mob,
Magic City, Nobby, Mirage & East of Eden, Crazy Lizard & Judy and the Heart
Brothers, Zorch.
And a freak-run big cookhouse kitchen set up … free I’m guessing.
And ‘Wally’ … I remember calls of ‘Wally’ ringing out … someone out
there I’m assuming … but it became a Free Festival staple, the calls
of ‘Wally’ into the night.
Anarchic, loose, make-do …
Rave before Rave … Watchfield Free Festival.
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