tldr; I had to rearrange some piles of books due to an electrical safety inspection and I came across my now OOP copy of "TRAVELLERS" published in 1993, I'm claiming "fair use" but others may regard this as copyright violation ( chatGPT is an excellent OCR ), a slice of alternative history, primary source:
TRAVELLERS p166 - 169
MARK:
It's spiral. It has no beginning, but the major day was probably the day we took the sound system out of London, where we were doing warehouse parties, to go to the festivals. It wasn't a conscious decision, decisions are not part of this process. The moment is ever manifesting.
The first we went to was the summer solstice in 1991, which in this day and age is not at Stonehenge, but as close as you can get. That year it was down at Longstock. I was a sceptical soul up until that point, but something happened to me there that's never happened before. The pennies dropped. I haven't felt energy like it. We were totally enchanted by the whole thing. As a sound system we walked out the front door and we haven't come back yet.
The police were there in force of course and the helicopters were hovering overhead. A dramatic stage was set. The weekend after that we went to the next festival, and then the next festival... That summer we went out it was non-stop. The weekends overlapped into weeks.
In those days we just had a Luton box van which didn't work very well. We'd pack it up with the sound system and then borrow somebody's AA or RAC card and phone them up. This helped us to get into sites that were blocked by the police, as well as out of them. Sound system relayed out of the area!
There are a few people who moan and they do moan very loudly and they whine and they whinge. Maybe they have a point from their own personal point of view but as far as we know, free festivals are about playing music non-stop. Techno is folk music. Never before has folk music been so accessible or so loud. It’s always been down to the tin whistles or whatever.
There was a guy there, at that first solstice, who came up on Sunday morning asking us to turn the music down. These people may have been travelling for years, but we’ve just come through hell and high water to bring them this sound system for nothing, and to keep it going. In that situation we’re very polite about it all, but no fucking way. There’s been so many people trying to hold this thing together for so long and we would never be there in the first place if we weren’t there by popular demand. We play the people’s music.
The music has an amazing effect karmically on each and every person who comes into contact with it. It goes into the realms of shamanism. You can call us techno-pagans, whatever, but these are very fundamental energies. Spiral Tribe are a concept that is trying to de-label itself by being the Spiral Tribe, everybody, everything, interconnecting. Now is a great time. Technology has speeded up quite incredibly, but also, it’s coupled with a global process of self-realisation.
There was no real divide between us and the older travellers until Castlemorton. It was a thing made by the press. It was only after Castlemorton, after the arrests and prosecutions of Spiral Tribe, that we began to witness any story in the press that there was any kind of difference between ravers and travellers. Up till then things were going very nicely.
We left Castlemorton on the Friday and got ambushed by the police. The guys say, ‘We are just doing our job,’ and it takes you a while to realise that they are telling the truth. They are the soldier ants on the anthill of the establishment. They confiscated all our vehicles, about seven or eight of them, so it left us without not just without our sound systems and without our livelihoods. They had us in cells overnight then up in court the next day before they released us on the most stringent bail conditions. We had to report to our home address three times a week, no matter where that was. Then we were thrown out into this pouring rain, no money, no means of transport, no clothes. We camped out on the police station door almost two weeks, much to their embarrassment. It escalated the whole situation into a protest about the whole thing, and the local community brought down tarpaulins and sleeping bags. This wasn’t just the hardcore geezers, there were kids there and families.
The police are holding us responsible for Castlemorton. Seven of us have got to go to court in two months on a charge of causing a public nuisance. We prefer to call it causing a public new sense. I know that some of our critics accuse us of bringing it on top and allowing the government to bring in legislation that they wouldn’t have bothered with beforehand, but this is a catalyst. There are great injustices and great wrongs and we are standing up and being counted. Apparently the sentences could be heavy. We don’t know. I could turn up there and be locked up for a couple of years. The way we see this, any kind of negative polarity is going to generate its own positive.
Castlemorton we were going six days non-stop. Camelford in August ’91 we were going fourteen days, twenty-four hours. To experience that you experience a world you didn’t know existed. The sun goes down, the moon comes up and you see the world spinning. My record is nine days without sleep. It’s a shamanic thing.
Anyone comes down there and asks us to turn it down, I’m sorry, we’re not going to. Turn it up if anything. If you’ve got a voice, shout. Our attitude is, ‘Make some fucking noise.’
edit: p170 -175 is BEDLAM, if you want me to scan let me know...
TRAVELLERS p166 - 169
MARK:
It's spiral. It has no beginning, but the major day was probably the day we took the sound system out of London, where we were doing warehouse parties, to go to the festivals. It wasn't a conscious decision, decisions are not part of this process. The moment is ever manifesting.
The first we went to was the summer solstice in 1991, which in this day and age is not at Stonehenge, but as close as you can get. That year it was down at Longstock. I was a sceptical soul up until that point, but something happened to me there that's never happened before. The pennies dropped. I haven't felt energy like it. We were totally enchanted by the whole thing. As a sound system we walked out the front door and we haven't come back yet.
The police were there in force of course and the helicopters were hovering overhead. A dramatic stage was set. The weekend after that we went to the next festival, and then the next festival... That summer we went out it was non-stop. The weekends overlapped into weeks.
In those days we just had a Luton box van which didn't work very well. We'd pack it up with the sound system and then borrow somebody's AA or RAC card and phone them up. This helped us to get into sites that were blocked by the police, as well as out of them. Sound system relayed out of the area!
There are a few people who moan and they do moan very loudly and they whine and they whinge. Maybe they have a point from their own personal point of view but as far as we know, free festivals are about playing music non-stop. Techno is folk music. Never before has folk music been so accessible or so loud. It’s always been down to the tin whistles or whatever.
There was a guy there, at that first solstice, who came up on Sunday morning asking us to turn the music down. These people may have been travelling for years, but we’ve just come through hell and high water to bring them this sound system for nothing, and to keep it going. In that situation we’re very polite about it all, but no fucking way. There’s been so many people trying to hold this thing together for so long and we would never be there in the first place if we weren’t there by popular demand. We play the people’s music.
The music has an amazing effect karmically on each and every person who comes into contact with it. It goes into the realms of shamanism. You can call us techno-pagans, whatever, but these are very fundamental energies. Spiral Tribe are a concept that is trying to de-label itself by being the Spiral Tribe, everybody, everything, interconnecting. Now is a great time. Technology has speeded up quite incredibly, but also, it’s coupled with a global process of self-realisation.
There was no real divide between us and the older travellers until Castlemorton. It was a thing made by the press. It was only after Castlemorton, after the arrests and prosecutions of Spiral Tribe, that we began to witness any story in the press that there was any kind of difference between ravers and travellers. Up till then things were going very nicely.
We left Castlemorton on the Friday and got ambushed by the police. The guys say, ‘We are just doing our job,’ and it takes you a while to realise that they are telling the truth. They are the soldier ants on the anthill of the establishment. They confiscated all our vehicles, about seven or eight of them, so it left us without not just without our sound systems and without our livelihoods. They had us in cells overnight then up in court the next day before they released us on the most stringent bail conditions. We had to report to our home address three times a week, no matter where that was. Then we were thrown out into this pouring rain, no money, no means of transport, no clothes. We camped out on the police station door almost two weeks, much to their embarrassment. It escalated the whole situation into a protest about the whole thing, and the local community brought down tarpaulins and sleeping bags. This wasn’t just the hardcore geezers, there were kids there and families.
The police are holding us responsible for Castlemorton. Seven of us have got to go to court in two months on a charge of causing a public nuisance. We prefer to call it causing a public new sense. I know that some of our critics accuse us of bringing it on top and allowing the government to bring in legislation that they wouldn’t have bothered with beforehand, but this is a catalyst. There are great injustices and great wrongs and we are standing up and being counted. Apparently the sentences could be heavy. We don’t know. I could turn up there and be locked up for a couple of years. The way we see this, any kind of negative polarity is going to generate its own positive.
Castlemorton we were going six days non-stop. Camelford in August ’91 we were going fourteen days, twenty-four hours. To experience that you experience a world you didn’t know existed. The sun goes down, the moon comes up and you see the world spinning. My record is nine days without sleep. It’s a shamanic thing.
Anyone comes down there and asks us to turn it down, I’m sorry, we’re not going to. Turn it up if anything. If you’ve got a voice, shout. Our attitude is, ‘Make some fucking noise.’
edit: p170 -175 is BEDLAM, if you want me to scan let me know...
