Gig 028 Aswad

Aswad
28 May
Oxford Mayfly Festival

The Mayfly Festival was a free event held annually during the 1970s in Oxpens fields, a green space by the river, close to the city centre. It had begun as an ‘alternative’ event and still had something of a hippy vibe in 1977. The winter had been long, every day I was on my moped at 7.30am to clock on at 8am at a job which I didn’t much enjoy. I’d never known cold like it; Spring arrived like a blessing that year and by the end of May the weather was glorious, perfect for a festival in fact.

By this time punk was happening big time and I was well into it. The Sex Pistols’ second single God Save the Queen had just been released and while musically it followed the fairly classic rock format of Anarchy in the UK, it had a genuine swagger and subversive rage about it, spearing both the monarchy and the hippies: ‘We mean it, maaaaaan!’ The first Clash album was also out, I liked tunes such as Janie Jones and 48 Hours where they channelled Eddie Cochrane, though elsewhere the agitprop lyrics spotwelded onto cloddish three-chord thrash felt a bit hamfisted, and would go on to have an unfortunate influence on less talented acts. There was a neo-Stalinist aspect to punk, whereby certain types of music, e.g. prog and anything hippy-associated, were off-limits. It wasn’t enough to not like this stuff, you had to have never liked it. By contrast reggae was acceptable, musically the polar opposite of the punk thrash but sharing a notional outsider anger against the downpresser man. The Clash’s clunkily charming adoption of Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves was a nod to this cross-genre solidarity, as was Bob Marley’s Punky Reggae Party, which I remember John Peel accurately describing as ‘interesting but awful’.

The biggest name of the 1977 Mayfly Festival were UK reggae group Aswad, who I had heard on the Peel show and liked very much. Most evenings Peel played reggae and such punk as existed, challenging his listeners’ prejudices, and while I could appreciate the dub stylings of Big Youth, U-Roy and the like, the low frequency tended to get lost on my parents’ portable transistor radio. Aswad made an impression because their songs were strong enough to work in this tinny audio format, and along with other Brit reggae acts like Matumbi they had a particular character which was distinct from the Jamaican acts. I liked the space in the music, the endlessly inventive drum fills, the Stevie Wonder-esque keyboard riffs, and the tunes were good. Another connection for a Brit audience was the fact that frontman Brinsley Forde had featured as a child actor in the popular kids’ TV show The Double Deckers.

I attended Mayfly with a bunch of friends and we spent the day happily glugging from a flagon of cheap cider and swimming in the river (I know, I know, not a good idea) with some girls from Abingdon, that was fun. Occasionally we’d check the mainly local bands on stage during the afternoon. Probably by virtue of being free, attracting a diverse audience, and profiting from the glorious weather it was a much nicer atmosphere than Reading Festival, and by the time Aswad appeared everyone was agreeably blissed out. Oxford was and is a much more multicultural town than its public image would suggest, and the West-Indian-origin community from working-class Cowley and East Oxford were represented, Oxford Caribbean Club being just across the road in what had been a Victorian primary school. There were a few students but this was definitely a town-not-gown event, the two communities didn’t have much to do with each other. The majority of the crowd seemed to be music fans, curious outsiders and loved up hippies, several of the latter attempting a flailing skank which only sporadically synchronised with the bass-heavy rhythms. Aswad were serious in their craft, seemingly content if a little bemused, their loping grooves and sweet harmonies perfect for a warm Spring evening. Rather jarringly they were followed by Rocky Ricketts and the Jet Pilots of Jive, a pastiche retro rock’n’roll act in the style of ShaNaNa, who didn’t really fit the vibe for a crowd who had spent the day boozing and smoking pot in the sun. By that time it didn’t seem to matter too much.