THE JOUNEY IS THE GOAL

Well that was a funny weekend. I got picked up for Bearded Theory about 9ish, we loaded all the equipment in Hackney Wick and set off up the A11. Stopping for petrol our driver/guru checked the tyre pressure and a valve blew out. Luckily the spare was under the vehicle rather than under all the equipment. Unluckily it was the wrong size.

We drove very slowly down the road at a very weird angle to a tyre shop a taxi driver had pointed us toward and bought a new valve for three quid. We were on the road again in half an hour. Almost all of the way up the A1(M) we lost power on a big flyover and a couple of us had to run down the road and direct traffic past our halted van whilst it was fixed.

We had a bit of a debate about the attitude we were expecting from Bearded Theory to our lateness. Our sound guy was saying we would probably be cancelled. I reckoned things would be more mellow up north but none of us knew what time we would actually arrive.

The van still wasn't running right and we stopped again just outside Derby. I was wishing we had set off the night before. We rocked up at the site at 4.30 chucked everything out on the grass, loaded it all onto the stage and started playing. As we are a totally improvising totally live act straying into mostly DJ territory we usually have to sort our own sound out into two phonos for a DJ Mixer, pre- sound checking in the studio but the guys at the Magical Sounds tent were totally ready for us, relaxed and totally pro.

Everything went just great and I think the Bearded Theory guys were pleased. We had a few older heads who had taken too much acid come up and congratulate us after which I think is a good sign. We pitched our tents and had a good look round the site.

I was really surprised at how established the festival was. Psytrance is only a small part of what goes on. The whole thing was an inexpensive, really family friendly event with the profits going to charity and I am not surprised it is doing so well. I woke up Sunday and saw The Cheeky Girls in one of the tents before they joined everyone on the mainstage for the Guiness record attempt at the number of fake beards in one place. Derbyshire was a beautiful place to drive back through and it only started raining when we were coming close to the M25. A really sucessful weekend.

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