2nd-4th August 1991: Club Dog, Free Party People, Fun-de-mental, Spiral Tribe, Sweat, and WDA at Torpedo Town Free Festival at Bramshott Common, Hampshire

Here’s an image from Travelling Daze, a wonderful tome that I suggest you get your hands on if photos and accounts of festivals are your thing: http://www.enablerpublications.co.uk/pages/travelling_daze.htm

From Alan Dearing with Traveller Friends, Travelling Daze. Eyemouth: Enabler Publications, 2nd Ed. 2015, p.147.

The following is a Spirals document written by Charly Hall of Drum Club fame:

TORPEDO TOWN REPORT

8.30 a.m 2nd Agust [sic] 1991 Notting Hill Gate, London.

Wake-up Call from Stika, Spiral D.J. and Fun-De-Mental Sound System.

We’re heading down the A3, Guildford way for the annual ‘TORPEDO TOWN FESTIVAL’. I imagine a field on a hill in the rain, mud, hard work, no shelter, danger (it’s MOD land that we’ll be borrowing, they won’t be happy…). But it’s a fanfastic [sic] morning, clear, skies, hot sun. The police tow away a car that ‘s parked (legally) blocking the exit for my (illegally) parked van, a good omen. We travel out of London against thesnarled traffic that’s piled up, stressed people hurrying to their wretched jobs. We’re always going against the flow. We’re alright.

11.00 a.m. We call our contact number. The site has had an injunction clapped on it banning the festival from taking place there. No Problem. Hundreds of police have cordoned off the area. That’s good. keep ‘em busy.

11.30 a.m. Meanwhile. Another good site has been found. A few miles away, still on MOD land. No police, just green meadows surrounded by magnificent beech forests, it’s perfect. Four or five lush spaces linked by a knackered asphalt track. Looking at the green grassy spaces it’s hard to imagine what will take place. The giant trees surround and protect us, birds tweet, dogs and children race about and we start setting up the Fun-De-Mental sound. The Spiral Tribe System is on the way from Wales and the Bala Free Festival. Fun-De-Mental is set up in a little glade and Spiral Tribe are staking out a large paddock.

9.00 p.m. The sun goes down for the first night at Torpedo Town, it is a town now, the convoy has been trailing its way onto the site all day, there’s more on the way, it’s unstoppable and when people arrive they camp up, forming villages, communities within the great Town and we’re all under the same banner, ravers and travellers alike, a true community.

12.00 Midnight. The Spiral Sound is in the area!!

Wires, speakers, plugs, generators; a mad electrical language, buzzing tweeting, booming, darkness and from the earthy gloom comes the groan of the bass. We’re off. Spiral Tribe have brought the Spiral City down from Wales, a crazy mess of Ultra-Violet sculptures somehow attached to a beat-up bus. It’s mad, fully effective. The police stay put. In the daylight a helicopter buzzes overhead and various officers appear on the site, but it is too late. There are too many people on the pitch , too many on the road, only peace, not even an excuse to raid it and they wisely stand aside and let us play. There are no organisers to cajole, or threaten, everyone turns up as individuals ; ravers in their Astras, Travellers in their …their… vehicles, unstoppable. There are no organisers, promoters, security. By Saturday morning there are about 25,000 people in Torpedo Town, a handful of relaxed police loiter by the entrance. It has been too late to get an injunction on the land, the MOD is a bureaucratic monster, easy to stroll around. No time now : Time has lost meaning, it’s just the passage of sun and moon now. We sleep when we feel ready, eat if we’re hungry 

This is Spiral Time.

Thousands of people are jacking to the Spiral sound, This is Bigger than anyone can have expected. It’s a huge Rave, it’s a massive Festival. All around are fire jugglers, camp fires, weird lights, the trees above the dancers, trees that are sent into manic convulsions with the giant strobes sending pure white and multicoloured stripes into the bubbling mass of leaves. Sirens, horns, whistles, yells, whoops and a booming sound. Underneath all this is the earth, usually only available for the hard boots of MOD forces but now battered Hi-tops, fucked-up Para boots, sandals, bare feet all stomp the ground in tribal ecstacy. The sun comes up again, what day is it? There’s more records lo be played, more petrol in the generators, more people flooding in. And they all want the same thing; they don’t want to make the world change, it is changing and thy [sic] want to be part of it and be free to do it their way.

25.000 people. No organizers. No security. No arrests. One ambulance. One fire truck. 72 hours non-stop.

CHARLY HALL

Please note: this covers the 1991 festival, here are links to the 1990 and 1992 festivals of the same name.

Here’s a picture and some quotes from Andy Brown’s wonderful but hard to find book ‘Rave: The Spiritual Dimension’. If anyone else has anything to add about this, please send it in 🙂

In 1991, the festival was 5 miles further north along the A3 and the turnout was even higher at a cool 12,000… Torpedo Town 1991 mushroomed into existence on a Friday night, grew at a phenomenal rate for all of Saturday, sustained itself through Sunday and then, on account of an M.O.D. injunction, had completely disappeared by Tuesday, except of course for the burned out wreck of a coach which looked like a crashed spaceship. The land itself was I think a M.O.D. common, mainly scrub trees and grass with broken, disused tarmac roads. When we first arrived on the Friday night things were a bit quiet so we took it easy. We parked up in a lane thing and pitched our tents right near. To start off with there were hardly any tents but things didn’t stay that way for long. As more people arrived, a right of way formed through our piece or real estate. What had been a hardly used path through the ferns when we arrived, was now one of the main routes for ravers collecting firewood from the forest. What had happened was that the quiet suburbs which were quite near to the dancefloors had turned into prime sites. Anyway, we had a good spot so we weren’t bothered. At its peak, the city had streets, all heaving with bright eyed happy people, so many that sometimes the paths were so completely rammed with bodies that you couldn’t move at all. This festival really was a city and it even had its own booming economy. I don’t think I need to say what were the main commodities but just as in any established city, you could buy anything you wanted from food to clothes- even a haircut. I was so happy, I cannot stress that too much, really, really, really good times. The totally awesome atmosphere generated at these festivals can be overwhelming… It no exaggeration that once experienced, these festivals can change your life.

We try and keep an eye out for broken links/deleted video/mixes etc but please let us know if anything seems wonky or missing 🙂

Re. the date: we have settled on 2nd to 4th. There are also posters on this page stating it started on the 7th (a Wednesday), that page also includes the information that it ran from 9th (Friday) to 12th (Monday) August. Let us know in the comments if you think we’re wrong 😛

Here is a link to the excellent History Is Made At Night blog’s tale on TT ’91:http://history-is-made-at-night.blogspot.com/2009/12/dinah-mcnicol-and-torpedo-town.html