I am listening to Orbital’s ‘Sad but True’ from the deep buried vault of my musical streaming subconscious. Stretched out, chilling, on the make-shift pallet bench, in the evening shadows of the bricked-up perimeter wall.
When randomly, from out of nowhere, the seed lands in my lap, from a rogue dandelion head growing in the wild garden beyond.
The lawn needs mowing, the weeds need weeding, and the garden needs a little TLC.
I pick it up, give it a twirl, then throw it back into the ether, on its journey into time and space.
The ’Snivilisation’ joint is taking me on a trip up Jacob’s Ladder, up to the heady, dizzying heights, of a field in Glastonbury back in 1994…
…The Hartnoll brothers, from M25 rave fame, had just hijacked the festival, and were playing out the criminal block rocking beats, which had ultimately led to a corrupt clampdown order on the sound-system surge sweeping the island.
As I gaze into the heavens, the seed is floating in the breeze, over the brick wall, into the warm hazy glow of the sunset, and I am mesmerised with the memories of the legendary night of the Hartnoll take-over…
…I had just accessed the festival – through a scouse hole in the wonderwall of the Eavis fence – armed with a swag bag of chemical highs. And I strolled off in the crowds in search of the nearest repetitive beat – as classified by the powers-that-be responsible for impounding sound-systems, decks, vinyl, and the beating heart of the rave.
The sun is burning its final pink hues, going down beside the streaky purple clouds, before disappearing behind the million-pound homes of Mill Hill.
The retrospective revisionism of the rave is going deep, deeper into the hardcore fusion of Orbital’s ‘Impact’, as the world burns, boils, and blisters. All the time tilting precariously on its axis.
And, dreaming of a reefer-to-go, I reflect on the night in question, when the underground finally found its way. A headline subplot. Onto the greatest festival stage in the world…
…The Doves were flying high, the Mitsubishi’s racing, and if you wanted to Getafix, no problem. So it was, night fell on the legalised overground rave, in the celebrity farmer’s field bursting at the seams with real humanity.
All races, all faces. All classes, all masses.
And as the Hartnoll’s mashed-up ‘Halcyon’, wearing their trademark light headsets in the darkness, the ecstasy descended on a generation fixed in time on a synth loop.
The blanket of night is falling into every corner, shadows stretching across the sleepy estate, as I lock the back door on the day. I unplug myself from the phone. And wonder where the seed might land and spawn for the next generation, in the better days, nights and rising suns to come.
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