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The Weeley Festival.
Clacton On Sea . Essex.
August 27th-29th 1971.


  Weeley program

Gringo.

GRINGO Is: CASEY . . . Lead Vocals; SIMON BYRNE . . . Drums, Vocals , HENRY MARSH . . . Guitar, Keyboards Vocal; JOHN PERRY . . . Bass Guitar, Vocal.

    While pop music searches for a dominant style, and is divided by want of a firm sense of direction, GRINGO Is a refreshingly direct new group with a very clear idea ot what it wants to do. Casey, Irish born but resident in London for three years, had been working for a year as a solo singer prior to her meeting with the newly born Gringo last autumn. Her distinctive voice and wide range fitted in perfectly, giving Gringo the extra richness and balance that characterise their style. And on stage she is an impressive sight fronting the band, demanding attention from her audience.

    Musically, Gringo work as a compact and tightly integrated unit. They write and arrange all their own material, each of them freely contributing ideas. Their songs are strongly melodic, with powerful, precise backing, and they make ex tensive use of swelling three part and four part harmonies and striking time changes, all three instrumentalists also sing solo. The three musicians in Gringo formerly worked to gether as Toast, a three piece put together In the West Country In 1967. They worked solidly, with a packed date sheet, for three year, but finally outgrew this incarnation in favour of the musically challenging new Gringo identity last autumn. Gringo's first concert dates came in April, 1971, supporting Caravan on a 10 day tour of Britain, and preceding by two months their first NCA album titled Simply " Gringo."

Received this from Henry Marsh the lead guitarist of Gringo


I was so pleased to be put on to this website and recall all the Weeley memories.
I was the lead guitarist of Gringo at the time and remember the band was scared enough about doing a gig that was so massive.
The fear turned to paranoia , probably enhanced by what we'd been smoking, when the Hells Angels appeared.
It became so ridiculous that at the point we were due to go on stage , the self appointed security guard, a massive guy with club and full Angel attire
, refused to let us on stage and we had to point out our roadie and prove that we knew him in order to get on.
The sound was pretty bad on stage , but I think we played OK. In those days there were few fold-back monitors , which meant that you could n't really hear what the rest of the band was playing!
I remember we had a song in the repertoire called "Murder In the Nursery" (!!) which seemed to reflect the activity at the back of the enclosure , where the Angels were setting a car alight.
I had a beaten up Morris Traveller at the time and as we left the gig an Angel scraped the side of the car with his bike. He was very apologetic and offered his name and address if I needed to get it fixed. Quite in contrast to the activities witnessed the rest of the day.
All The Best
Henry

Fairfield Parlour.

  No information was included in the program about Fairfield Parlour but go here to follow links to the band and obtain info about their Isle Of Wight Festival performance.

Weeley program menu

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Updated Jan 2021

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Weeley Menu.

 

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