This last one is on Tim Acid’s blog. he’s posted here before and his blog’s always got lots of good stuff on it.
Update: Thanks a million to Ben for hooking me up with the DJ Producer oldskool mix, really enjoying it right now! Tracklist for this is out there somewhere. It’s apparently an Ableton mix and he’s sort of chopped up and layered all sorts of oldskool niceness together in a big hardcore rave flavoured sandwich. Yum.
Other mixes can be found by following the ‘mp3′ and ‘mixtape’ links on the right. If any of the links die please let me know and I’ll re-upload them ASAP.
At the time we used to say ‘hardcore you know the score’. We didn’t even really consider it a style of music, especially as you’d hear loads of different styles in one night and in one DJ’s set (you’d also hear a lot of influences/genres/styles in the space of one tune, which I guess is what hardcore is, by my definition anyway )
At Spirals parties techno started to play a larger part after a while. However, I can remember hearing all sorts of styles on their rig, partly ‘cos they let ‘other’ DJ’s on (e.g. chancers who just turned up with a record bag and said ‘can I play?’- for example an unknown but very good DJ from Dorset did this at Castlemorton), and partly because they weren’t (as lots of people seem to think) a finite entity with exactly (marketingspeak here I think!) 23 members. Bedlam were quite generous at letting guest DJ’s play, maybe even more than Spirals, I’m not 100% certain. If anyone can shed any light on this I’d be pleased to hear from you. I guess you’ve got to let other people on if you’re running a party for such extended periods of time
In my rather faulty memory banks I can only connect a handful of specific tunes with a handful of specific parties. For instance at the Spirals do in Rhayader I remember Aphex Twin’s ‘Digeridoo’ and Urban Shakedown’s Some Justice’:
A commenter, Ben, had this to say on the subject of the tune above: I cannot hear ‘Some Justice’ without thinking of Castlemorton. At some point on the Sunday night I walked a mile or so away from site in the pitch-dark to, ahem, clear my head a little as the Screaming Buddha’s had made everything a little too *intense*. After half an hour or so of just lying on my back staring at the stars the Ce-Ce Rogers vocal sample drifted lovingly through the air towards me, inspiring me to drag myself off of the floor, and back to the party.
Another contributor to this page clearly remembers Epitome of Hype’s ‘Ladies With An Attitude playing in the Circus Warp tent at Castlemorton. At the time he thought it was a DJ being clever with Madonna’s ‘Vogue’ (which the track samples) but since then he’s realised it was this:
Good old Amino Clang came up with the goods again, here’s his report on the 1993 edition of the Happy Daze festy:
Happy Daze Free Festival in a Swamp
Well, here we are – Happy Daze Free Festival number three!
I have no idea where the site for this festi was, but I later heard that it was officially “The Wettest Place in Wales”. I didn’t know that when we all set off with smiles on our faces, but hindsight is a wonderful thing! I swear that everything I am about to say is true and I have witnesses if you think I am making it up or if you think it is just the drugs talking.
I think there were three cars of us who came to this festi, and when we got near the site there was a full police roadblock set up with flood light and hundreds of police. At least they had the common decency to come down the line of cars and let us know that we were welcome to go onto the site if we wanted to, but that we would all be searched before we were allowed past the blockade. We thanked the nice copper, and then there was a mad scrabble to hide/eat drugs before we got searched. Out of the three cars of us (15 people I guess) only ONE person was not asked to take off his shoes and socks… the ONE person who had 6 trips and a quarter of dope in his shoe! The night was all a bit like that – bad luck that there was a roadblock, good luck that we didn’t get arrested!
We made it up onto the site – did I already mention that it was officially The Wettest Place in Wales? It was essentially a swamp with sideways rain (that fine rain that soaks you through!) full of traveller vehicles and pissed off looking raver types. The closest there was to a sound system was a couple of speakers rigged up next to a bus that was playing tapes all night (apparently they only got onto the site because the speakers were being used as seats in the bus at the time of the search).
My mates started tripping and I was given a dud pill that never really worked, but the night went by mainly with me looking after another friend (who had come independently) who had been in a tent (she wasn’t sure where it was and we never found it again) swapping tequila for trips. She was staggering about the site trying to be a tequila girl (you know the sort – shot glasses in an ammo belt, cowboy hat on, shouting “Tequila! Rrrrrrrrraaaaa!”), but never actually selling a single shot because she was so tripped out wobbling about in a swamp in the rain.
The next day we all found ourselves in a tent being talked at by a crazed traveller type who kept taking more speed and talking some more. The only thing I remember clearly about the conversations that were had in that tent was that there was a rumour spreading that the police were spying on the travellers using one of those satellite dish type listening devices. No sooner had this rumour reached us than we heard a couple of crusties walk past the tent shouting very clearly “MUMBLE, MUMBLE, MUMBLE… HEROIN.” To which his counterpart replied “MUMBLE, MUMBLE… THREE THOUSAND POUNDS!”
Ah, how we laughed!
Eventually I persuaded our new speedy friend that she would like to go and find me some acid. She came back a little while later with two Strawberries (not the small red fruit!) which me and another friend immediately ate (neither of us were tripping yet and all of our other friends had been on one all night). No sooner had we started to come up than the driver decided that he was straight enough to get us out of this hell-hole, so we helped him pull down the tent in the wind and the sideways rain (did I already mention that this was officially The Wettest Place in Wales?) and the psychedelic traces coming off everything and eventually we made it into the car.
We had stashed the last of the drugs, packed everything up and were ready to go. The only problem was the couple of trippers on the back seat pissing themselves laughing because they were coming up while everybody else was coming down.
The Pit of Eternal Laughter is a place you sometimes visit when you are tripping and once you are there it is incredibly difficult to get out again. This is not that bad as all you do is laugh, but it does become quite painful eventually. It is a happy and psychedelic place where everything is funny, especially the fact that you are laughing so very much. Whenever you see the gates out of the Pit, and catch your breath just long enough to avoid passing out, you remember what was so funny and off you go again, tumbling into the warm colours of the pit as it tickles you and pulls you deeper and deeper into it’s belly. I could go on, but I reckon you probably get the picture.
Anyway, back at the “rave” we were desperately trying to pull ourselves together enough to make it through the police blockade without drawing any attention to ourselves. When we had calmed down a little (still giggling, but a lot better now) we set off down the hill towards the police.
As we approached the blockade, I wasn’t sure if I believed what I was seeing (it has been confirmed by lots of other people who also made it onto that soggy hillside though) – all of the police were wearing dayglow Mickey Mouse sunglasses (under real glasses if necessary, but EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM!). They flagged us down (me and my tripping buddy trying so hard to keep out of the Pit) and the windows got wound down.
“Good morning!” said the police officer in charge. “Did you all have a nice time last night then?”
“Yes thanks!” we replied in a state of total confusion.
“We were just wondering if it is anybodies birthday this weekend?” asked the copper.
It just so happened that one of the crew had been celebrating his birthday so he owned up to it. The entire collection of police at the blockade proceeded to sing Happy Birthday to our friend and then they sent us on our way with a jolly “See you next year then!” from the copper in charge.
We barely made it around the corner before the whole car was firmly entrenched in The Pit. The driver had to pull over he was laughing so hard. Nobody really believed what we had just witnessed, but as I have said – everybody saw it and the rest of our mates who came in different cars all confirmed the dayglow sunglasses and the eerie happiness of the police blockade. There was a suspicion that they were all tripping too (you can tell another tripper when you are tripping), but there is no real evidence to support this wild accusation except the looks on the police’s faces and the distant glint in their eyes.
Ah, Happy Daze!
Again, if anyone can help with exact(ish) location that would be great
Another party I missed out on, but sounds like it was a cracker. Amino Clang, who wrote this, is a dear old friend and fellow veteran of many amazing nights (including the 1992 Happy Daze Free Festival). I think this experience affected him so deeply it made him build his own bowel-shakingly loud soundsystem
Incidentally if anyone can help out with exact dates that would be great. Enjoy the read!
The first time I heard of a festi (that’s what Teknivals were called before they added the “TEK” bit), the first time I heard of Spiral Tribe and the first time I took acid are all intertwined in the same dreamy weekend – Happy Daze Free Festi in Bala and I still can’t work out if it was 1990 or ‘91, but what a weekend!
“Have you heard? The festi has come to Bala this weekend. It’s only down the road, are you comin’?” He asked.
“What’s a festi?” I answered. I was only 15 but I had been a stoner and a mushroom tripper for a while already and I wanted to know more. Anything to do with a festival had to be better than dossing about in my dead-end backwater of a home town for the night… again!
I decided that the best way to find out would be to go and check it out so that night (the Friday I think) I got a lift down there in my mate’s dad’s ancient Landy. When we got there we turned into the dusty field (it was summer) past a single police car with a couple of pissed off looking coppers in it and drove onto the site.
As soon as we were past the “Police Blockade” my mate got up on the roof of the Landy to check out the territory and we drove through a couple of fields of sensible looking vehicles painted in the full spectrum of the psychedelic rainbow, other (less sensible) vehicles, marquees, strung-up tarps, funky backdrops and loads of people – traveller types, raver types, local farmer types, everybody, all ages, all colours (mainly due to the dust!) and all classes just chilling out together and enjoying the evening sun.
We hadn’t been there long before another mate offered me half a “Double-Dipped Purple Ohm” and before long I was coming up and asking for the other half ; )
I spent most of the night on top of the Landy (we had put a mattress on the roof) laughing hysterically listening to the sounds of the festi come at me from all directions (all kinds of music, each coming from a different direction, all combining together to make a beautiful noise before separating out again to be a full surround sound experience) and watching the technicolour night sky go wild before my eyes (acid can do that to you sometimes!)
There are a couple of things that have ingrained themselves in my head, but almost my entire memory of that night is just laughing uncontrollably on top of that Landy.
1. I remember going for a walk about the festi (still giggling uncontrollably) and seeing a fully hippified crusty type sitting cross-legged in a little makeshift tent with a sign advertising “Hash for Cash”. I think we stopped to buy some, but couldn’t really be sure!
2. I remember LOTS of people shouting “Hash for cash”, “acid”, “ecstasy”, “whiz”, etc, etc, etc, but mainly just “Hash for Cash”. Except there was this one couple of geezers walking about shouting “Acid… to my wife the other day…”. I guess they were trying to be discreet. Not surprisingly that just made me laugh some more.
3. I remember one guy trying to stop me from laughing and saying that he would give me a spliff if I could stop laughing for 30 seconds. I struggled, but despite his attempts to scupper me I managed it… and then the fucker backed out of his side of the deal, so I guess I just carried on giggling.
4. I remember one of my friends trying to skin up, but finding it difficult because the tobacco was wriggling about like worms and wouldn’t “Just stay still long enough for me to skin up… pleeeaase?” (more laughter!!)
Eventually the driver was saying that we had to leave because he had to get back so I got back in the Landy and we started to head off. I guess I must have had my head down just listening to the festi go on around me again before we left, but that sound just would not leave me alone. We got dropped back in town and started the walk back to my house (still fully tripping and still hearing the festi like it was right there around me – “Acid… to my wife!” HA HA HA HA, “Acid, Hash for Cash, Ecstacy, you name it we got it!”, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseam). Eventually we got home (still hearing the festi) and made it up to my room (still hearing the festi) and got into bed (still hearing the festi). Trying to get to sleep was quite an experience I can tell you, what with that fuckin’ noise going on! However, I think I did experience all of creation from the perspective of both an electron and a universe simultaneously, so every cloud…!
The next day I was still on another planet for most of the day trying to make sense of my mental experience, but eventually I went home and got some sleep.
The next day again (Sunday I guess) I had heard that my brother had been spotted at the festi (he and some mates had come down from Sheffield where he was at Uni) so I thought I would try to get back down there to see him. He was not there, but Spiral Tribe were.
There I was, standing in front of the Spiral Sound System hearing these driving beats come out of the speakers, watching the world go by when somebody walked past selling mushies (I had done these before and knew I liked them) so I bought some, ate some and started to come up (here we go again!).
No adventures into “The Pit of Eternal Laughter” tonight, but I did spend a long time watching the sounds pour out of the speakers, just standing there in a state of complete amazement dying to go up and ask if they had a tape of this amazing music that I could have, but never quite getting it together. It was like some kind of marching beat, but with a really heavy kick to it, so heavy that the ground was literally shaking. The system was so loud that I thought I had to move closer a little bit at a time to let my ears adjust while I was dancing (ah the naivety of youth! I have seen much bigger rigs since then and I generally walk straight up to the front to check it out properly).
It wasn’t just a relentless hard techno sound though – there were plenty of wishy-washy bleepy trippy techy sounds fluttering about above the system too. An altogether driving, up-beat, tranced out, hypnotic sound that just didn’t let up but never made you feel unwelcome. My only regret was that I didn’t find this on the Friday.I love techno and always will and this was my first introduction to a sound that has captivated me ever since.
TECHNO, TEKNO, TECHNO, TEKNO, TECHNO, TEKNO, TECHNO, TEKNO, Hardcore will never die… etc.
Wales again- another marathon drive. Waiting around with a massive crowd of other ravers at a service station as people took it in
turns calling the info line on one payphone. Must have looked quite a sight.. Eventually found out where it was and set off. It must have been an overnight journey as I remember it being light when we got there. We saw a police roadblock ahead. There was gravel piled across the road. I remember some kind of pantomime with the cops where they couldn’t explicitly tell us not to go down the other road. So we went down the other road and found the party
We parked up outside the fence. I think that’s when my mate took this picture:
We were quite high up, right on top of a hill, and the site was quite small and muddy compared to Lechlade, the only other festival I’d been to at this stage. There were a couple of rigs there, though apparently there had been some confiscations which dampened the mood a bit. Luckily the people who took us to the party had brought a tent. A bit of lifesaver on this occasion, we spent a lot of time there.
Somewhere on this newspaper clipping taken from the front page of the local paper is our tent and the white Fiesta ravemobile
A friend of ours had walked from his hometown, and somehow managed to find us when he arrived on site. He said that he’d thought the party was ‘just over the hill’ but it turned out to be a longer expedition than he’d expected.
Once we were all ready we swallowed some huge browny grey biscuits. They were about the size of one of those big vitamin C tablets, and they supposedly contained mescaline. I know, it sounds like sales patter, but there was definitely something special in them. Things get a bit blurry for the next few hours.
One of our friends, who was quite tall, as it goes, was scared silly because a group of 3 or 4 even taller blokes appeared out of nowhere and proceeded to dance under the low canopy suspended over the sound system, their heads bobbing up and down and making random lumps and bumps in the makeshift tent. Although this isn’t scary in itself, add a liberal helping of bass-heavy gabba with samples such as ‘there is no planet earth, there is no planet earth’ and you have a severely frightened raver who is convinced that the aliens have come.
UPDATE 08/03/09: It was this track:
Shout outs to wheezer for id’ing it
At some stage the ground turned into bouncy muddy techno foam rubber.
I saw hidden codes written in the barcode on a Ribena packet.
There were, I think, 2 rigs but I think we were only hanging about at the Spiral affiliated one. I don’t even know if it was their own rig but I remember it was little.
Thinking about the music at that party, there were two things, or rather people- that really stood out, MC Scallywag and DJ Aztek. Aztek was playing a style I’d never heard before. Still not sure what it was (any ideas?) but it was hard and fast and gabberish. Scallywag on the other hand was just making up daft rhymes about ravers not leaving their turds all over the place (good point).
At some stage day turned to night and back to day and we were back in our tent drifting in and out of consciousness. The whole cycle started again on the Monday morning.
We bumped into someone we knew from Dorset who had enlisted in the brew crew. I had a half lucid conversation with him and then when I saw him in town a few weeks later he denied he had even been at the festival.
Halfway through the festival we wandered to the gate. There were a few journalists and cameramen hanging about and being berated by some angry travellers. When we finally reached home we made some tea, sat down, and turned the TV on. The party we had just been to was on the news. Not only that but we could be seen ambling around in the background. This festival was mentioned in the media because the DHSS had actually showed up to the festival to allow people to sign on on site. And at that time I expect there was a Daily Mail/Express/some politician expressing ‘outrage’ about mediaeval brigands &c &c
On the Tuesday (???? my memory’s not infallible you know!), the music was still going and there was a police helicopter circling. Some cop was blathering away over a megaphone, some nonsense about leaving the site, er, which we did.
Not long after we left the site we saw a police checkpoint up ahead. The driver decided that maybe we had to stop (maybe he had a guilty conscience!), but we urged him to drive on.
On the way back we stopped a couple of times for food- the first time was a little old ladies’ tearoom where we felt completely out of place after spending a weekend in another dimension. The second place was one of those fucking abysmal overpriced motorway service stations. We made the most of it though. Again we felt a little out of place. The most wrecked of us all spent some time transfixed by the weird spiral shaped Cumberland sausage on his plate.
I could post a well embarrassing pic of 2 of my fellow passengers, heads right back, gobs wide open, dead to the world leaning against each other all e-sleepy in the back of the car but A) I can’t find it, and B) it would only be amusing to about 10 people
UPDATE: Amino Clang, who walked from his hometown and spent the weekend raving with us, just sent me this account, THANKS LOADS!
This weekend all starts on the Saturday night when my Mum had decided that she would like to come along to a rave to see what all the fuss was about. Unfortunately, our dog had “done a runner” and he didn’t get home until quite late so it was decided that we would not go to the rave tonight. I was supposed to be meeting up with some friends of mine who were going to give me a lift down to visit my Dad in Dorset and there was going to be a big bunch of my mates from Wales going too so I was not impressed with this decision but I was promised that we would go down there the next day instead. I didn’t sleep well that night. I just couldn’t wait to get there and meet up with my mates and get munted in front of a spirally sound system.
Sunday morning came and we all piled into the car to drive off to the festi. It was supposed to be in Kerry in South Wales and we lived in North Wales so we made an early start. Kerry was awash with coppers and the road up to the site was blocked. Not even my mum could persuade them to let us through, but when I explained that I had to “get up there to get a lift home” the copper in question said “I can’t just let you go through here, but if you walk around that way you might find another way though.”
I put my big backpack on my back, I had another bag in one hand (full of juggling equipment and water probably!) and I had another big bottle of water in my other hand. I said my goodbyes and off I went, on my own into the unknown!
An hour or so later I found myself on top a welsh mountain asking a group of dog-walking locals where the rave was because I needed to get there to catch my lift home. They pointed to the top of the hill on the other side of the valley and there, running across the horizon I caught my first glimpse of Happy Daze Free Festival, Kerry. With a new spring in my step I started the long walk down into the valley, through the woods and up the other side.
I-don’t-know-how-many-hours later I finally made it onto the site. Yeeeee Haw! My shoulders were killing me from carrying all my stuff, I had narrowly avoided a confrontation with a local farmer and his angry looking son, I was so fucked that a night of raving was the last thing I needed, but I had made it! Now I had to find my friends.
I did a couple of rounds of the site looking for somebody I recognised. I later discovered that all of my mates from Wales had gone home already and I guess everybody else was asleep following a hard night on the turf. Eventually I saw a car that I thought I recognised so I went closer to investigate. I was looking in the windows of the car to see if I recognised any of the stuff in it when this crusty came over. I am still not sure if he was serious or if he was checking me out but he was saying “Yea, go on mate, just smash the window and grab what you want. We could take it for a spin if you like…” etc. He wierded me out enough to walk away from the car and I was about to give up when one of my friends poked his head out of the tent next to the car and called me back. He said that he thought he had recognised my voice, but wasn’t sure. Yipeeeee! I had made it to the rave AND found my lift home – Happy Days!
Later that night our other friend (the driver) found us all some “Disco Biscuits” (they looked like somebody had drizzled chemicals into small biscuit shapes about the size of a penny and we were told that they were MDMA and mescalin, later experiments have lead me to believe that it was probably MDA – allow me to elaborate…) so we all dropped them together in the tent – the driver, his missus, two other close friends and me…
The next thing I remember is coming up like a demon had just jumped on my head and was beating my brain into submission. It was all I could do to clamp my jaw down on my wallet and scream my little head off! I was in the tent with just one of my friends (I guess the other three had gone for a stomp) and we were both beside ourselves with rushes.
A short while later the others came back into the tent (they had assumed we would be in a bit of a pickle if their state was anything to go by) and asked if we were OK – what with all the screaming and shouting and all that! We started to come round, but I asked the driver’s missus for a hug because I was so far gone (nothing funny like, just a friendly hug from a friend, please), and y’know what, it made things a bit easier. I strongly recommended my mate do the same so we all had hugs in the tent and then walked over to the Spiral Tribe Sound System for some dancing.
Dancing! Ha! Don’t make me laugh, I could barely stand up straight, never mind dance. Squishy field, wonky pills, gnarly techno, happy people. I think I went up and gave a dealer a hug at one point because she was doing such a service to society by spreading so much happiness (a view I still firmly believe – I mean, can you imagine a world where dealers didn’t provide some much needed escapism from the mundane modern world of working to pay the bills?). I also remember getting into quite a discussion with somebody who had lost their mate “Billy” and was asking if I had seen any of him – I just didn’t get it!
Later the next morning I was still awake with some other friends who I had met up with and I think we were talking with some Tribers because one of them was saying how the spiral is the best shape for a festi. “If all the vehicles,” he was saying “would park up in a big spiral with the rave in the centre, the police would never get in. You just park the last one in front of the entrance and leave them there – what could they do?”. He was not impressed with my suggestion that “It would be horrible if you were the first one here, but you had work on Monday morning though wouldn’t it?”
Well, later that day we had to start the long drive back to Dorset so we did another round of the site (stopping at the entrance, where there was now huge water containers) to fill up some bottles for the journey, and off we went.
A relatively uneventful drive home later and we were back home again (in my Dad’s place in Dorset) regaling my Dad with tales of the rave with the telly on in the background… when suddenly somebody shouted “OHMYGOD! It’s us on the news!”
We all turned to see the TV and there we were – leaning against the fence by the entrance to the festi, looking distinctly worse for wares, but right there on the national news! Funny how these things happen like that innit!
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