Flop pop festival

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33932, 27 August 1975, Page 15

Flop pop festival

(N.Z.P.A -Reuter—Copyright)

LONDON, August 26.

The three-day August Bank Holiday pop festival at Watchfield, Oxfordshire, the subject of a controversy over the site, the sotfnd, and the fans, has been nicknamed “the flop festival.” Its big brother, the nine-day Reading, Berkshire, festival, has however, proved a hit. Only one-fifth of the predicted 20,000 fans turned up at the “free" festival at Watchfield, while more than 30,000 arrived at Reading. Watchfield was chosen as the site of this year’s nineday “free” festival after clashes between the police and fans at the Windsor Great Park site last year had brought howls of protest from local residents.

Watchfield fans made complaints, not about the presence of drugs, but about their absence. A news-sheet, “Freek Press,” was headlined: “Send urgent messages out—the acid must get through.” A brief consumer report in the news-sheet said that there was some extremely doubtful “blue stuff” around, and, worse still, chopped-up spaghetti was being pushed as L.S.D. “One dose and you’re relatively normal" was the comment.

The “Daily Mail” music critic, Bart Mills, who attended the Reading festival, wrote today: “The only way to enjoy music at an outdoor rock festival is to get so drunk you can’t tell a guitar lick from microphone feedback. All you can do is squat on your very own damp square yard and beat time on a pair of empty beer cans.

“The whole event appears to be an exercise in mass masochism that would shock a lemming.”