♪♫ Band No.1 - GREED ♫♪

vocals - Paul Thompson, guitar - Rory Feeney,

bass - Alex Street, drums - Craig Jackson.

Although being woefully under-billed, having such a tight and solid band open the show certainly eased the nerves for the rest of us. Well, aside from making us aware we could be in for a difficult day with TC the sound man (no shit), when at the end of their first number, we heard "Think you'll have to turn everything up, Simon, coz no one can hear a fucking thing." Simon, eh? So, we have a name. Nah, I'll stick with TC. Just for the sake of continuity, you understand. Greed, as we'd all expected, played well, having no trouble getting the attention of an already sizeable crowd which had been a pleasant surprise to us all. They played a brand of hard rock with a distinct 80's edge to it, topped by a strong vocal, not unlike Phil Oakey ("OK, pop music, let's go! Anyone here like the Human League?"), very no nonsense heads down jeans and t-shirts. Unfortunately, my attempts to track down the band members came to nothing, so no memories to share, no word of what became of them. At least we have the nice photo, ta kissy kissy to Pippi.

♪♫ Band No.3 -

THE VISIONARIES ♫♪

vocals - Kym Wright, guitar - John Way

bass - Pete Burgess, drums - Shaun Jackson

L-R: Pete Burgess, Shaun Jackson and John Wey. Kym Wright wasn't on the generation of promo photos I had access to, but Pippi saved the day again (hooray!) with a picture of her actual performance at the festival...

Our second guest band came courtesy of Martin Crook of Slack Bladder, with whom Shaun Jackson was also involved, performing what I believe was their debut gig. I don't remember an awful lot, I had only just come offstage myself. So stick me in a pointy hat and stand me in a corner, I've talked to two of them and they don't remember much either! There's not even a surviving recording (or so they tell me) to serve as aural regression therapy. They were definitely a touch on the goth side (and we made them play in daylight, how cruel was that?) and I remember thinking Kym had a nice voice, but the rest is lost to the annals of the eighties. Except, of course, from the brief extract of their music that forms part of Ehrlich Bullet's "We At Grain Festival"...

♪♫ Band No.2 -

AT TWILIGHT TIME ♫♪

guitar / keyboards - Mick Magic, vocals - Shona Moments,

spoken word / synths - Kate Twilight, bass / synths - Jay Time

guest poet - Mal Cieslak

Through 99% of the time we spent organising the festival, there had only been four bands involved, so the plan had always been that we'd start by doing an extra set, courtesy of our 'experimental wing', just to boost the playing roster a bit, as well as avoiding any arguments about who went on first. At Twilight Time wasn't a band as such, it was just us doing things that didn't fit into the Magic Moments universe, be that collaborations, special projects, whatever. Mal Cieslak, dear old friend and a huge fan of the band, appeared as a guest, reading some of his poetry, while we made noises and/or music behind him. For our own part, we played some of our electronic stuff, a space age bossa nova and jammed a bit. The set also served as the chance to highlight the talents of the female members of our band. Shona and Kate had been working on a conceptual piece called "R.E.M.", which utilised famous quotations from human history, and to which the only contribution I made in its 15 minute duration was the realisation of the 'heartbeat' bass sequence, e.g. press 'Start' and fuck off for a nice cup of tea. On the later studio version of the track (released as the flipside of our "The Whydoeseverybodydoaxmas Single?"), the festival performance of it was included in the mix, albeit inversely. Oh, and one of the quotation readers was none other than The Charles' bass player, Ian Merrick. One small step for man, one giant leap for Jacob.   

o

The At Twilight Time set, L-R: Mal (getting in the groove there), Shona (with crib sheet, this was a one-off performance after all), Jay (left of keyboard table), Kate (partially obscured) and myself (looking annoyingly thin...)

o