Mournblade_rock'n'roll

Stroud town hall, 1985: ''there were three bands on the bill; Hawkwind's Huw Lloyd Langton, us, and a local act. Additionally, the local BBC station had set up a live broadcast. The show went quite well, until a load of neo-mod types decided to start a riot. It spilled out into the street and got rapidly worse…police cordoned off the building so the bands and the Beeb were trapped inside! Next day the local rag's headlines screamed of 'riots at rock concert'!''

Another festival 'near-death' experience occurred at the Bulldog Bash in the same year; just before Mournblade went on stage it had rained very heavily. The stage 'roof' was a huge tarpaulin which was now (very) full of water. Moments before they went on, some bright spark of a festival-hand prodded the underneath of this huge bulge with a long stick…gallons of water poured over mikes, amps, leads, guitars…did that stop them playing?....naahh!

Bir

Lowestoft Pier, 'Alice-in-Wonderland Magical Mystery Tour' - all nighter with Zodiac Mindwarp, Voodoo Chile, The Wonder Stuff amongst many more. Mournblade played last, going on stage at about 5 am. Everyone was alseep by then...coming back to London the next day the van broke down on the North Circular. That was the day of Wham's final concert at Wembley.

mingham, the Mermaid, 1986: ''we'd been double-booked with Discharge...it was a punk

''...Oxford New Age Fayre, 1986 - this was actually the Stonehenge festival, diverted at the last minute to a common outside Oxford. Peace Convoy buses, band vans and cars littered the suburbs of Oxford for hours before we got onto the site. Due to Hawkwind's non-appearance, we had a prime slot on the pyramid stage on the first night. Trouble was, Martin, our pyrotechnics man, had set things up in a hurry. The gerbs (huge roman-candle type pyros that flame for ages) were directed onto the stage instead of up into the sky. Timed to go off with the opening crash chords of 'Morpheus', these things nuked the stage with spark and flame for ages. True rock'n'roll spirit prevailed, though - we just played on. Dunken's spandex leggings were full of holes, Rich's hands were covered in blisters...later on we chucked Martin into a nearby ditch...''

night but there were some skins in the audience too. A fight kicked off mid-set, the next song was Titanium Heroes which didn't exactly calm things down. In the end the trouble-makers were turfed out by fans''

June 1984...the band's van lumbered into the Stonehenge Free Festival site with a flat tyre, steam pouring from the radiator and a gaggle of hitch-hiking hippies in the back...

''we played two sets, one late that night on a makeshift stage between two buses, chucking cans of blagged out-of-date beer into the audience. It was wild! Next day we played the main stage, where we were joined by a naked dancing girl''