Battersea Park. July 7th 1985
Third day in a row of live music after having seen Jonathan Richman and Broooce. Another GLC Jobs For a Change Festival. Big event. Usual stalls and collecting buckets. This was about the time of Red Wedge where people like Paul Weller did a UK tour drumming up support amongst young voters to go and vote Labour and kick the Tories out. Labour MPs actually spoke at these gigs. Mobilise the Yoof. ‘Cept they didn’t really. People did genuinely have conversations about the overthrow of Capitalism and the righteousness of Socialism though. South Africa was the other big grievance. Apart from a bit of Glastonbury you don’t see such activism attached to music festivals now. Or anything really. Have we really won the war? iTwats.
We stayed by one of the 4 stages for most of the day. The Beat Farmers were jokey RnB. The Men They Couldn’t Hang were nu-country. Wreckless Eric seemed very bitter. He did a song about AIDS, which was the big News story of the day. Government adverts with collapsing tomb stones warning of the perils of unprotected sex. It was still seen mainly as a gay plague. The gist of Eric’s song was that he wished someone he knew would get AIDS and die. Nasty. He looked a bit pissed too. Bit of Boot Hill Foot-Tappers and Hank Wangford, which was pleasant enough. I wouldn’t cross the road to hear them now. Saw some of The Pogues moighty craic thing but it seemed lost in an open space. You have to be in the mood as well.
By this time we were knackered. 3 days in a row. I ended up walking to Waterloo with sister Leah and her friend Louise to get the last train back to Andover. We missed it and sat on a milk-train for hours before it set off. Didn’t get any sleep and got a cold. I rang in sick the next day. That week’s NME covered all the gigs I’d been to, on one page.
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