In the days before the festival experience had corporate sponsorship and was
simply another line on a teenager's to do list between ASBO and gap year, it was
all local and about the music, man. In fact the only ones that travelled to them
were the absolute fringes of society - an outsider's day out.
So when beardy Steve Hillage headlined this festival in Rochdale in 1978, he was
exactly the act that punters would flock to - acknowledging that in the real
world [i.e. outside the two square miles where the rock journos worked in
London] a far higher percentage of punks were old hippies than ever let on.
Not that there has ever been any facial hair on one of the other main acts on
the bill [well, alright, one-time Fall drummer Mike Leigh had a dodgy 'tache but
he lasted three seconds], but this suitably primitive Deeply Vale recording has
enough Smithsonian charm to carry it through.
