♪♫ Band No.7 -

THE CHARLES ♫♪

vocals - Count Five, guitar - Benedik Charles

bass / synth - Jacob, drums - Tarquin Experiment?

It was completely dark by the time The Charles took to the stage and, there in the woods, complete with rural backdrop, they somehow seemed to be in their element. I so wish we'd managed to find some photos of their performance that night (oh, Pippi, where were you?), but it was a different time. Which, ironically, is where they seemed to have come from, looking as they did like 19th century psychedelic gentlemen, Adam Adamant on magic mushrooms. 'Tick tick tick tick' went their introductory tape, filled with manifold timepieces, each recording our march towards infinity in its own fashion. "Start your stopwatches!" Shouted Chris, who remains one of the most naturally charismatic front men I ever saw. As we were all done now (and particular respect to Jay and Kate who had played three full sets through the day!), we could just sit back, relax and enjoy the show. And what a show it was, a fitting climax to a successfully climbed metaphorical mountain, in spite of TC's incessant nagging about us going past the booked finish time. It would have been perfect if we could have gone back on and performed "The Grain" with them, but I think we rather considered ourselves fortunate that TC allowed them to finish their set at all. Having said that, I'd love to have seen him try to turn off and pack up beforehand. Although we could find no pictures of their act (which is an inappropriate word, it wasn't an act, that's really how they lived their lives), I did come across a cassette copy of the final part of it that day, 18½ minutes that really took me back. So I gave it a little clean up and I've put it up on The Grain's Soundcloud page, where you can stream or download as you desire...   R O L L   U P !   R O L L   U P !

And then it was over, and we were all on something of a high, so much so that we nearly didn't spot a couple of guys trying to liberate one of the generators. Luckily, some of the beefy bikers did. We had been warned by the trader we'd hired them from, "Watch them, they walk." He'd said ominously. The day saved, we sat down and counted up all the money collected throughout the day, something in the region of £180, as I recall. Yes, I think we were a bit disappointed. There was something like 400 people had passed through that audience, that works out at less than 50p from each of them on average. Didn't exactly fill your heart with joy when you considered all the hard work put in by so many people. But let's look at it in a positive light; it was £180 raised by ourselves, without any professional help whatsoever. Okay, the P.A. man was paid (in a bag of the lowest denomination coins we'd collected), but he was a fucking amateur, so doesn't really count. After that and a few out of pocket expenses that needed to be reimbursed (hiring the generators, petrol and a myriad of other such minor unavoidables), we were left with the grand total of £31.44 to send to Greenpeace. It worked out that the 24 of us who performed on the day could simply each have put £1.31 in a collection box and saved ourselves a lot of hard work. But where would the fun have been in that? So... was it worth it? FUCK, YES!