GLASTONWICK Southwick Community Centre is a registered charity, mostly run by volunteers. In early 1996 I came up with the idea of a summer beer and music festival to raise much-needed funds for the place, featuring many of the performers I was putting on at my regular monthly events there. I’d performed at many music festivals where the only beer on offer was the undrinkable corporate urine of Satan (‘real ale is for old beardy blokes!) and many beer festivals where the usually dismissive nod towards ‘entertainment’ was – you guessed it – old, beardy blokes. Usually old, beardy blokes stuck in a corner playing mind-numbingly boring blues covers or whining ‘Scarborough Fayre’. HELP!! It doesn’t have to be like this, I thought. Why not have a beer festival with varied, invigorating, radical entertainment and a music festival with great real ale – simultaneously? Charles Porter, son of George, the doyen of the Centre, took up the idea with gusto and my great friend Roy Chuter came in to help. Next we needed someone to source and look after the beer: enter Alex Hall, cellarman at Brighton real ale mecca The Evening Star. Then we needed a name for the festival. I was a regular at Glastonbury and it was my favourite gig of the year. We wanted to bring a tiny bit of the old Glastonbury spirit to Southwick. It didn’t take long to come up with the name….. The same local dignitaries who had predicted drug orgies and ritual goat sacrifices at my music/poetry events were even more worried about the prospect of a full-on beer and music festival - but the more progressive elements in Southwick overruled them, and the first Glastonwick Beer Music, Poetry & More Beer Festival took place over 3 days between 24-26 May 1996, with 30 beers and John Otway, Blyth Power, The Fish Brothers (of whom more soon) and surreal folk poet Les Barker headlining. The people who wanted to listen to the entertainment gathered in the theatre, the ones who wanted to chat sat in the adjacent rooms or the lovely walled garden: a friendly, fun time was had by all, no animals were harmed in the process and the beer sold out so quickly we had to send to the Evening Star for emergency supplies! Loads of money was raised for the centre and Glastonwick became a regular annual event. I managed to get a grant from the Foundation for Sport and the Arts to get a new PA system for the Barn Theatre (the local theatre groups made sure it was a theatre one, of course, but it worked for us too, more or less) and everything carried on more or less harmoniously. Until a fateful day on December 12, 2002 when I read the headline in our local paper, the Evening Argus: ‘Beer festival is booted out!’ They hadn’t even told me.......... So what happened next? So how come we celebrate our 20th Anniversary this year? Its in the book! Published 8 Sept, 35th anniversary of my first gig. :)
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 10:06:51 +0000
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