"A Day in the Country"

The Knighton Festival

Radnorshire

August 23rd 1970

The Move

Pete Brown and Piblokto

Roger Bunn's Enjin

Forever More

Clark Hutchinson

James Litherland Brotherhood, Alexis Korner

Killing Floor

Paper Bubble

Persian War

Magi.

DJ Pete Drummond

    The whole plan at times seemed to be likely to come to nought until an accident of fate put it into overdrive. David Moore, another school friend, had been doing some building work in a nearby village for a guy named Neil Bond. Neil had acquired a house guest when this person broke down in their car near his house, came in to use the phone… and, as I remember it, seemed to have moved in. This person had been bassist with poet Pete Brown’s band Piblokto, a well known underground act, and his name was Roger Bunn. Dave Moore told him about our plans, he liked what he heard… and he told us he could involve some people he knew who would give us a great line-up.
All of this was, to state the obvious, a long time ago, but as I recall it, this was the real kick-start point.

    We now started holding regular meetings as Knighton Contemporary Arts Society aiming to raise money through the festival to set up an Arts Lab in the town. The group’s numbers had now swelled considerably and we had a town councillor on board to add clout. With his help we acquired the site where the town’s Community Centre now stands and persuaded a local haulage firm to give us free use of two articulated trailers as the stage.

    The meetings were, as I recall, fairly anarchic affairs which usually concluded with a session in a local pub. On one memorable occasion we were in one inn upcountry when a group of hairy individuals came across to us, admitted they’d been eavesdropping on our talk about festival plans, announced that they were a band from South Wales who were “getting it together” in a nearby cottage and asked if we’d like to come and hear them. We did just that and, yes, they were good, but no, we couldn’t fit them into a by now crowded bill. We promised to get in touch if a space became available but never did. As for them, they named themselves Racing Cars and had a Top Ten hit with a song called "They Shoot Horses Don’t They?".

The line-up was now pretty well fixed. Via Roger Bunn we now contracted Pete Brown and Piblokto (Pete was a well known poet and lyricist for supergroup Cream), Forevermore (members of which went on to form The Average White Band), James Litherland’s Brotherhood and Roger Bunn’s own band Enjin. As compere we now had Pete Drummond, a well known Radio One DJ.

    There were now practical things to sort and I seemed to have become secretary of the committee so it fell to me to do some serious organising. Mobile toilet units, tents, perimeter fences, a caterer, back stage bar, sound equipment…. I was busily organising the lot when I should have been revising for my A Levels. At about this time we did a bit of fund raising in the time honoured form of a jumble sale. Nothing very memorable about that you might say…. except that one customer was none other than Paul Rogers of rock legends Free, brought along to meet us by his mate Stuart Macdonald. Paul took away a pretty floral design dress for his girlfriend. We didn’t charge him.
Many things went stunningly right for us in our preparations, largely thanks to the help of many people in the town, not to mention our long suffering parents. One thing went badly wrong.

     At quite a late stage The Strawbs, a happening band featuring superstar Rick Wakeman, responded positively to a much earlier enquiry of mine. It was too late to fit them on the bill but they were keen to offer their services for a minimal figure. We decided to put them on at the Music Hall, Shrewsbury the week before the festival. This was probably a mistake considering the pressure we were by now under. We booked Roger Ruskin Spear and his Giant Kinetic Wardrobe (an ex-Bonzo Dogs Doo Dah Band member with a support band of robots!!!) as support, got the tickets and posters printed, and then turned back to organising the festival. On the night disaster struck when the band’s van broke down on the way ( this being long before mobile phones, we did not know this until much later) and the heroically generous duo Paper Bubbly filled in gamely until we finally had to admit to the audience that the Strawbs had been waylaid. Hardly had the hall cleared when the Strawbs screeched to a halt outside and offered their humble apologies. I wonder if Rick Wakeman still recalls being berated by an angry teenage girl (now my wife) for dropping us in it… The audience, or as much of it as we could round up from local alehouses, was reassembled and the stars of the night played their hearts out to a half-empty hall.

     And so to the big day. Sad to say I remember virtually nothing of it, having been awake through the night before and probably having reached something like breaking point anyway. I remember Clark Hutchinson being a very spaced set of individuals who never got to play as they wanted to go on late once they saw that we had a strobe light. I remember the caterer threatening me with legal action because the public was using the back stage bar. I remember the Move arriving in a wave of arrogance and demanding immediate payment or they would leave. I remember giving in to sleep well before headliners Piblokto and The Move took the stage. I remember waking to find the stage being dismantled and the audience having long gone. In short, I remember the build up to the festival as one of the most exciting and eventful periods of my life but the day itself as a blur of exhaustion.

    The Melody Maker review estimated the crowd as 2000 strong and noted that there was "a relaxed atmosphere that brought out the best in the bands". Forevermore and Piblokto were particularly raved over but Roger Bunn, whose drug intake by the time he took the stage would have put most of us out cold, was dismissed with the words "ran very roughly". The conclusion quoted Pete Brown as saying "This festival, compared with the others, was like a patch of ointment on a big festering sore" and suggested the reader "forget the biggie events". Within days I was off to college in London and though I continued gig and festival going, I never again took part in the organisation of one. The Arts Lab never happened… but then we only just broke even.

    I continue to be a music-obsessive and when I lived in Hong Kong, for many years I wrote music reviews for the South China Morning Post. When World Music happened I had a regular radio spot on RTHK playing anything from African to Indian to Japanese records. While I was in Hong Kong, a teaching colleague one day mentioned her DJ brother Pete and, knowing that my colleague’s maiden name was Drummond-Hay, I put two and two together and was right. I’ve since met Pete on numerous occasions and sadly have to report that he doesn’t even remember being at Knighton. Something about if you remember the Sixties you weren’t there….?
Christopher Plant