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This site is dedicated in the memory of

Roger Hutchinson,

who inspired me to delve deep into the magic of the free festival and who passed away Sept 3rd 2010.

R.I.P. Roger .....

Sunday June 20 1976

I was much more heavily involved in the 1976 Domefest, helping to book bands and setting up the event overall. We hired (at a very good rate) the stage from a local scaffolding company and this made handling bands a lot easier. We had a stripy plastic covering made for the stage, but had not made the edge of it strong enough where it attached to the scaffolding and it began to tear in the wind (which was not particularly strong). So a fair bit of the time early in the day was spent trying to ensure the covering did not rip further and did not flap so much as to distract from the music. I remember the air gun pellet issue and think that it was my friend Bruce who took to the microphone to ask the culprits to desist. I can remember North Star (the band) well as they had played at the Students Union previously – they came from Robin Hoods Bay in North Yorkshire and I had called in by to see them when I was walking that coast earlier in the year.

in order of appearance).
Srewf
Dexter
Mushroom
Cancer Moon
Deja Vu
Village
Steve Brown Band
Arbre
Dave
Preacher
Guy
North Star
Raw Spirit

Srewf featured my band mates George Maddison and Kevin Heard from the Carpettes. During their set someone shot at George with an air rifle. He missed and the organiser came running on stage to shout at the culprit who was up the hill!

Dexter were an ace jazz rock band a la Isotope. I'd seen them (with Dave), six weeks earlier, do a freebie at Durham Fowler's yard. Pity they never released any recordings.

Arbre were signed to DJM at the time and had an album out (acoustic guitar, Lindisfarne type group) Raw Spirit had been gigging for a while. I saw them supporting Man at Newcastle city hall June 21 1973.

Can't remember anything about the other bands, sorry (Dave was a bloke with an acoutic guitar, he was really good, did his own songs)

Durham Dome Festival 20 June 1976. I actually played in the band Neil refers to with George and Kevin (actually spelt Strewf, our first and only gig if I recall). Highlight of the day was watching the antics of the Hell's Angels who were present. When George was fired at with an airgun from across the river (Wear), the announcer interrupted the set to warn the culprits that if they didn't desist the police would be called, then paused and said 'Oh... there's the 'police' on their way now..' referring to a posse of Angels heading over a nearby bridge to 'remonstrate'. They (the Angels) also threw our 'roadie' (really a mate pressed into service) in the river for touching one of their bikes with his mini van. Luckily it's only about three feet deep there. But they had a certain style - I remember they sat in a group on the grass, shredded leathers and other undiscernible garments covered in oil and one with a skinned cat over his helmet, sipping sherry from immaculately cut glasses. Incidentally, I agree Dexter were great jazz-rock players but the times being what they were I saw the guitarist some months later in a decidely non-twiddly new-wave band (don't remember the name).

Mike

Strewf
all images this section © Mark Tasker

view from inside the Dome

Bindu dome in background

Maurice from North Star

Arbre

Bruce from North Star.

Village.

Hi,
I was a student at Durham University (Engineering) from 1973-76, and I inherited the building of the domes, sometime after the first festival - presumably in 1975 and again in 1976. So I learnt about geodesic domes and repaired the damaged wooden structures, which were stored at Fowler's Yard in Durham, for the second & third festivals. There were three domes - the stage was an elliptical dome with a cutaway front about 60ft wide, and then there were two smaller domes amongst the audience, a Bindu dome - (an onion or Taj Mahal-shaped dome) and a standard hemispherical dome, each about 30ft in diameter. Someone else built the stage. I just built the two smaller domes and then enjoyed the two festivals! The events were for one day only and I remember them with great affection!

The (beside the-) audience domes were uncovered, just wooden frameworks, and the interior space was mostly used as a play area by the younger children, with a few climbing up the outside! That worked out fine in 1975, but in 1976 the bindu (onion-shaped) dome (which, because of it's shape had less inherent strength than the round one), had more than 20 larger children/teenagers climbing all over it at once and partially collapsed on one side! I don't think anyone was hurt but the structure was rather badly damaged!
I imagine something similar must have happened at the first festival in 1973, as I had quite a lot of struts to replace and hubs to rebuild to make the domes serviceable for the 1975 fest.

The struts were about 2" x 2" square timber, with hexagonal & pentagonal 3/4" thick plywood hubs, and with long metal bolts securing the struts to the hubs.

I am pleased to see that the entire Domebook 2 is now free to download. (I still have the original (and indeed my rucksack dome!) somewhere in the loft). That was my main guide to constructing them.

Me and my friends wore big round badges (which were all the rage at the time) home-made, with a picture of a dome and "I'm dome-esticated" on them to the festival!
Kind Regards,
Steve Sutherland