For
information on today's festivals see eFestivals.co.uk
The Archive
|
|
For
information on today's festivals see eFestivals.co.uk |
Last update Jan 2012 .
|
East Anglia Rock and Blues Festival Speedway Stadium Mildenhall. Bury St Edmonds Suffolk . 1981-91. |
|
The Speedway stadium © Copyright Bob Jones and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence. |
A fairly long running , largely forgotten blues rock festival held at the non-picturesque arena of Mildenhall Speedway , that appears to have had the odd year or two off, but which managed to exist intermittently through the 80s . The nearby US air base no doubt provided the event with a large local following as servicemen are more often than not hard rock fans . The bands playing at Mildenhall were always at the more pointed end of the rock spectrum , headliners such as Dr Feelgood and Rory Gallagher alternated with the likes of Uriah Heep and Hawkwind . The only shots we have seen of the event shows a fairly small audience watching the Welsh glam rock outfit Tigertailz, who understandably bombed as they were completely out of their element. However, there is also video of Rory Gallagher playing at the event in 1989 and there are a fair number of hard rock/metal boots circulating out there ,as well as a couple of official live releases for those of you who are interested in hearing just what this obscure but long lived event sounded like on the day. |
The Festivals
September 20 1981
Ist East Anglia Rock and Blues Festival, Mildenhall Stadium, Cambs.
24th July 1982
2nd East Anglia Rock and Blues Festival, Mildenhall,Cambs.
Angelwitch, Magnum,Sampson, Bernie Marsdens S.O.S. Stampede.Caroline Road Show -DJ Bell Stevens
Headliner: Saxon
the following year i went to Mildenhall speedway track to a gig on that bill there was, Angelwitch, Magnum,Sampson, Bernie Marsdens s.o.s. and Saxon headlined (Hawkwind pulled out) there was loads of Yanks from a nearby air base almost all of them wore dungerees they looked odd, it was the wheel of steel light show, pretty poor though, just a white light eagle, but the bands were fantastic, i slept on a bench in Cambridge that night ....Brrr !?
East Anglia Rock Festival 9th July 1988
Stan Webb's Chicken Shack, Climax Blues Band.
Headliner: Dr Feelgood
Mildenhall Rock and Blues Festival 5th August 1989
Rory Gallagher (headliner) Uriah Heep Dumpy's Rusty Nuts Stan Webb's Chicken Shack Tigertailz Buster James Band Engine The Hamsters, |
courtesy Jim Burke |
April 16th, The Naff Band, No Nonsense, Forced Entry, Euphoria.
Was pleased
to find a website devoted to the old Mildenhall Rock Festeval, I often speak
of it when remanising & nobody's ever heard of it!
Myself & a group of mates went there three years running from 1989 I think,
we took a boot full of beer & a good stock of other music enhancing substances
to make sure we had a good time & put up a cpouple of tents in the car park!
One of my favorite bands at that time was Dumpys Rusty Nuts & as usual they didn't dissapoint, the Hamsters were also a good live band, I seem to remember another really good band, the Mean Red Spiders being there the same year, they had trouble with the PA system for them & the Hamsters it kept cutting out & did the same thing the following year. I'd never even heard of Uriah Heep, let alone seen them, that day started a lifelong love of their music for me. Saxon were another band I saw live for the first time, seen them many times since. A band that stuck in my mind was Tigertailz only because I hated em!
There was a bloke who sold to sell barbequed burgers that used to be raw in the middle. Another funny thing that sticks in my mind was getting up with an oil patch on my back, I'd been laying down on the grass & had managed to lay where an engine had dumped it's oil, great!
I can't really remember which years I saw who, it was a long time ago & we were very drunk!!!!!!! I wasn't into Rory Gallagher stuff at all then, but remember enjoying it (love his stuff now, would love to get a copy of the recording) thing was he must have done about eight encores, & I was thinking at the end, just f**k off!! ;-)
The last
year I think there was only four of us, & it was pretty dead, there was
less than half the crowd of previous years, don't know if it ever happened again,
I did me bike test & started doing bike rallies. Some good memories of that
place!
Happy times.
Mark - Colchester
( Thanks to Engine for
the info .For more information on ENGINE and the festivals at which they played,
please visit their Wikipedia
site:
You can also visit their Flickr
site and Facebook
site
The East
Anglia Rock Festival was actually called The Mildenhall Rock and Blues Festival
from at least 1989. I went there to see Rory Gallagher and Uriah Heep and again
to see Hawkwind. It was often advertised on the north sea pirate 'Radio Caroline'
and I think one of their current presenters, Barry James, was involved in running
it.
Great site.
All the best
Jim
I found
your site after listening to the live Angel Witch album on Spotify and then
trying to find out what the line up was for the second festival.
I went to the first two and as far as I remember the first one was just local
bands, vague recollection of a band called Thumper(?) from Thetford(?).
The second one was a great day and I seem to remember Saxon coming on late so
my dad got to hear the whole set in his car several miles down the road while
he waited to pick me and my other 17 year old mates up. I have a album by Stampede
called Live Bootleg record at Reading and Mildenhall. Am I right in thinking
Saxons eagle light display came up out of the pits as it was too big for the
stage?!
Steve
Mildenhall Rock and Blues Festival 5th August 1990
Courtesy Neil Williamson. |
|
Mildenhall
Rock and Blues Festival 3rd August 1991
Hawkwind, Mamas Boys, Atom Seed, Lisa Dominique
,Engine , New England,Marshall Law, Blue Blood, The Hamsters, Mean Red Spiders.
Recordings and setlists .
 |
Angelwitch 24th July 1982. Speedway Mildenhall
Official
release which is still available , also contains three studio tracks not
shown here. |
 |
Samson 24th July 1982. Speedway
Mildenhall
1982 UK limited edition 4-track 7" vinyl doublepack |
 |
Uriah Heep August 5th 1989. Speedway
Mildenhall
|
 |
Uriah Heep August 5th 1989. Speedway
Mildenhall |
 |
Tigertailz August 5th 1990. ( date may be inaccurate) Speedway Mildenhall Video
contains two tracks from Mildenhall , Audience video , length 55 mins
of poor quality is in circulation . |
| Hawkwinds set was cut short due to support band Atom Seed overunning their time slot. The weather was fine , but many in the crowd were disappointed at the short set as they had only come to see the Hawks . I
remember the final support band (Atom Seed / Atom Kraft?) being rather
shite and running over. "Do you want another song?" they asked
"No fu*k off!" we shouted in reply. "Ok. We'll do one
more!" The end result was we only got about 50-60 minutes of Hawkwind;
they were half way through a song when the stage light went on . There was a midight curfew at the event. I think Hawkwind were halfway through Master of the Universe when the stadium lights were switched on - I remember Alan checking his watch as he played with a confused look on his face. They played a shortened Golden Void with the lights up and that was it .... |
Hawkwind August 3rd 1991. Speedway
Mildenhall
Dave Brock ,Bridgett Wishart, Alan Davey, Richard Chadwick |
|
We
are looking for eyewitness accounts, posters ,info and photos of these
events
Please feel free to contact us and contribute towards building pages about each festival by Contacting us . We try to reply to all messages, but sometimes it takes a while .Usually we wait until we have enough new material to warrant a page upgrade , so posts may take quite a while to emerge on the page . Return to Archive |
