Festival Chronicle

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I last saw The Levellers live in 1992. Now here was a band that walked the walk: named after an English civil war proto-communist sect, they despised The Man and his capitalist regime, and championed every man and woman’s right to grow dreadlocks and live in a camper van with a neckerchief-wearing mongrel.

Belting out their Number 51 sort-of-hit single One Way (“There’s only one way of life and that’s yer own, yer own, yer own …”), that night in Cardiff the band inspired a venue full of university students to smash the system.

So we did, and by the time the band’s poppy Beautiful Day had charted at the the dizzy heights of Number 13 in August 1997 we’d thrown out the Conservatives and elected Tony Blair and his New Labour party. Go us. Continue reading →

Tags: Avebury Rocks, Cy Curnin, Jamie West-Oram, Love Hope Strength Foundation, Mike Peters, Nick Harper, The Jess Hall Band, The Levellers