Hay, a Spiegel Sunrise and the ghost of a sheep.

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Created on Thursday, 09 June 2011 16:50

Yep, the summer has begun. We know this, because on Saturday we wound up sleeping on Dartmoor...

4 festivals into the season’s first run, and that kind of thing doesn’t happen unless it’s Summer. Snow can fall, sleet can slant; doesn’t matter. Summer has started and it’ll drive on all the way to Septmember. It’s a determined opening of things.

Thank you to everyone who came to see Dizraeli and the Small Gods over our week of madness. Here’s what way it went:

Wednesday – extracting the hire van from Shambles Tours dot Comedy (not their real name) and filling it with Gods to roll us to Bath down the heat of the M4. Arriving at the Spiegeltent to find a stage humming with a weird electrical noise that couldn’t be erased. Witnessing the Boxettes mesmerize the crowd. Playing our set to the same people, pure West Country limb-wagglers and a broad grin of an audience. After, having to almost hammer the windows of our hostel in before someone staggered out to let us in. Staggering out ourselves to find chips. Clambering a wall to a park by a river where a perfectly synchronized herd of ducks assaulted us.

Thursday – Up at ten, over the Severn. Drives don’t get better than the route up the Wye Valley. Hay On Wye: a glut of Radio 4 listeners and a 14-hour soundcheck. A gig that tore everyone’s roofs off, almost including ours: we finished the evening battered on top of the hire van, bumping Jam Baxter out the stereo with our doors hanging from the hinges.

Friday – Hay On Wye has a castle in the middle that’s made of second-hand books. Lush. The sun beat down on us like an affectionate dad, and we left clutching clutches of volumes, Jules with a book about plants. Sunrise Festival next… A sense of ‘here we go again’ when we arrived, probably we were just hungry. Somerset spread itself around us and the Chai Wallah temple was waiting- it filled with 1500 people for our set, fuck me what a sea of faces. My brother was in the crowd for his stag do, and we got him onstage and put a wedding dress on him. It was a journey, with that crowd. We farted ourselves out into the night and didn’t land till six am, Jules with only one flip flop.

Saturday – A not-too-long drive to Launceston, but most of us were suffering a little bit now (except for Cate and Lee, who’re made of fresh cherries and restraint). I was nurturing the knowledge that I had to give a workshop for the young people of Cornwall in a matter of hours, and I spooled in the last threads of poetry left in me. Launceston arrived. The Conservative Club was buzzing with life. The hall we were set to play in was empty. But a small circle of faces came to learn about rap nonetheless, and we cooked up a healthy little storm together. Later, although the hall wasn’t full, the small crowd filled it with themselves. It was heavy: one of my favourite gigs of recent times.

After, we had a plan to camp wild on the Moors: someone told us about a quarry and a lake we could sleep by. Following the tom-tom, we left the A30 and hoofed down a disappearing lane that called itself a bridleway. Really, a used-to-be-asphalted road that was returning to the days of the dinosaurs one bramble at a time. No, not dinosaurs; aliens. Bursting out at the top, we found ourselves in a strange world of shadows and glowsticks, faces swimming into our headlights striped with UV warpaint. Ah. Beth did mention – this is where the yoot dem gather for free parties. I was half tempted to join them, but after 3 solid nights of ducks and stagger we all felt Bed. So we drove through and onwards, upwards, over and down again into the kind of true darkness only the countryside can do. We stopped in an earthen car park where just a distant pulse of techno and a discarded trickle of UV acknowledged the party over the hill. Just as we unloaded our stuff from the van a set of headlights swung our space. Bollocks, police. We were fully braced for citypig narkiness, but the two half-lit men in the seats were sound as willow: “long as you’re tidy, you can camp here, fine. Not supposed to really, don’t say I said you could…” and they were off again. Mental!

Cue a search through utter darkness for a place to camp, into woodlands and out again, over barbed fences and finally to a perfect spot, a dip in the hill where our tents fitted like outdoor jigsaws. We congratulated ourselves round a fire with Morgan’s Spiced, the ghost of a sheep floating nearby.

Yep yep. The summer has begun.

We’re at an endless stream of festivals this summer – check our Gigs page for where and what.

Next week though – a collaboration with Shlomo in Islington and a hiphop PA with Downlow and Wireless at Beachbreak… Join us.

Peace
Dizraeli

P.S. On Sunday I went on to Cheltenham to perform at the Wychwood Festival with Transglobal Underground. Walking through the rain alone with my popup tent, remembering clearly why I love the company of the Small Gods… But the gig was dope and TGU were lovely.