As we are arriving at
the Last Hebden Bridge Blues Festival I was wondering if, in future
decades, there will be those who will bore the pants off their
children by going on about what it was like in The Good Old Days at
Hebden – when Festivals were Festivals and Fans were Fans and
Proper blues musicians played and sang Proper music. You know the
kind of thing...”I didn't get where I am today by not camping out
and surviving on a pie and three hours sleep in the pouring
rain”.....or “I was there when Banjo George brought the house
down and did eleven encores with bleeding fingers”....Yep, you're
ahead of me, as usual. And yes, there was always change from a
feckin' farthing....probably. If all the people who said they were in
The Bag o' Nails or the Speakeasy all those years ago, were actually
there, the Tardis would have been too small to accommodate them.
One of the great
(non-musical) side effects of the small but perfectly formed Hebden
Festival is that it has created its own Mythology, and for The Hat,
'there's nowt wrong with that, lad'. For some reason the festival has
delightfully blurred those fact/fantasy lines and is the better for
it. My hunch is that future generations are in for many, many years of
barn-storming, bar-stopping Ripping Hebden Yarns.
Take for example, the
brilliant notion, conjured by the charismatic Paddy Maguire, that we
should do something with all those wandering musicians who have time
on their hands at the end of a gig. Thus he Begat The Jam. There is
no question that in future years, Parents and Friends will, with
glazed eyes, reminiscently bore anyone passing with their version of
how everyone who was ever famous, lined up together and played till
dawn with Paddy. There will be a too tight 'I was There' T-Shirt' in
a drawer somewhere and a faded photo which will verify their
dewy-eyed recollection of something that may have happened, possibly.
Bravo to that.
Then there is the whole
graphic image and persona, crafted in the main in the brain of
co-organiser Jason Elliott. A continuing avalanche of smart fast
stuff, peppered with really rubbish but hilarious dodgy humour,
outrageous re-working of the familiar into an Own-Brand – and quite
probably it will make a point of mentioning You, your loved ones,
your favourite musician in a way that ensures you are signed on the
dotted 'Family' line. You will remember that. In the future you will
tell anyone who will listen that the Festival was the biggest in the
world, the best in the world, the most exciting in the world and that
you were one of the hand-picked few who were invited to be there,
personally, by the organisers. True? As a Leading Exponent and Fan of
Over-Stated Hyperbole - what do I know? Just look at all these clever
Festival T-shirts that I have saved in the bottom of the spare
bedroom cupboard. Of course it's true.
And what will all those
musicians who were actually there think, when the Festival is No
More? If you have ever sat at the feet of a hero, you will know that
they are often at their most fascinating when they talk of the good
old days. They will have played alongside World Famous Dead People,
they will have brought the ten thousand strong crowd to its feet,
knickers were thrown on stage, encores went on for another hour, six
bottles of JD were emptied and all the amplifiers exploded. Yep. All
true. Does anyone care if it isn't? If you were one of the young guns
who got the chance to play there, you will be punching the air right
there alongside all the heroes - and History, Legend and Myth will
remember you, well most of you, probably... Now that's a tale to
shut up the grandchildren...
Now I shall divert
myself. I do hope you are still paying attention....this could be important.
Many years ago, after
the first alimony scandal but before the sale of the piano, The Hat
owned a Lancia Fulvia S2. (Shut up petrol heads). It had a number of
attractions - apart from the usual babe-magnet nonsense. It had five
forward gears, in a day when that was not usual, but more importantly it had a very
cool Eight Track sound system. Amongst an eclectic mix of cartridges
The Hat had The Best of Santana. I am sure that it is not by accident
that The Hat discovered that if you put on 'Samba Pa Ti' as you set
off towards the motorway, you can, as the guitar progresses, change
slowly up through all five gears until your car, its top gear and
Santana's solo are in perfect harmony. Now it's just possible, maybe,
that's not all completely true. I wrote and told Santana but he didn't reply. I was there. I should know and I
don't care what you think. I have been telling people about this for
years.
Ergo, if you were at a
Hebden Bridge Blues Festival, any of them, you will know for sure about the
Legends and probably you will be contributing, as we speak, to the
forthcoming Myths. Now you have Two Things To Do. FIRST: make sure
you have tickets for this coming week-end so you can brag forever to the
generations to come. SECOND: go to the British Blues Awards website and
VOTE for Hebden as the Best Festival 2014.
That much will certainly
be true.
Pip Pip!
The Blues Man in The Hat