Festival 2000

World Mad Pride Week 2000! July 8th-15th

Yes, sisters and brothers, user/survivors, consumers, ex-patients and recipients of psychiatry, it happened! Thank you for your support and thank you for coming.

London Festival Report - July 15th

Clissold Park in Hackney was venue on July 15th for the first Mad Pride festival to be held in London. This was to be the largest event ever put on purely by survivors of the mental health system in the UK.The stress levels - for the organisers - were very high - before the event. Would it rain? (This had been the worst midsummer in years). Would the bands turn up? Would the organisers keep out of the bin? Were we crazy to try and run two stages with fifteen hours of solid music? Would any people turn up?	Festival in full-swing
We would have been pleased with 1000 - that would be a success. Would Mad Pride the company be plunged into bankruptcy like so many festival initiatives had done before now? Mad Pride 2000 in London turned out to be a resounding success. There was not a drop of rain and even some sporadic sunshine. Though the Festival was spread out over a large area, and numbers were difficult to tell. By four o'clock when the two stages were in full swing, it was estimated that 3000 people (three times what we hoped for) had come along. No doubt good publicity in the press and on radio had contributed to high public awareness of the event.
Many people thought the Festival was worth coming to for the music alone. People seemed to enjoy the artists and the bands. On the larger - Mad Pride - stage, highlights included songs about psychiatry by Tony Loosely, as well as newcomers - all-girl band PINK - who punched out a gutsy set like veterans - not bad for sixteen years of age. It was shame that metal rocksters Leviant had changed their name from Section 3. The highly-rated all-women combo Gertrude lived up to their reputation and were well-received by the growing crowd for their intelligent and varied set, which featured electric cello and clarinet.	PINK - a young all-girl combo
	Spiky hair and studded leather jackets were much in evidence for the Stratford Mercenaries with their honest hi-energy punk. And, established favourites of the alternative festival circuit P.A.I.N. delivered a crescendo of ska, power roots reggae, sprinkled in with a few fast thrashes - all in all which rounded off the evening admirably.
The avant-guarde Gertrude
A few hundred yards away, the smaller Reclaim Bedlam stage offered festival-goers a gentler style of music. The folksy Long Decline with their oh-so accessible numbers who had performed at Mad Pride's first gig last year, did not disappoint. One of the Festival highlights was former Swell Maps frontman Nicky Sudden who breezed through a simple set backed by an ultra-tight rhythm section.	The Long Decline
Festival favourites the Fish Brothers from Brighton were next up with their unique brand of music hall and punk rock. As at the last Mad Pride gig they played back in October 99, they featured their anthem "24 hour drinking". Weird that a few days after they last played the Government announced the introduction of er, well….24 Hour Drinking. Seems like the Fish Brothers win their campaigns.
Fish Brothers - neo music hall comedy
The oddest Mad Pride group Ceramic Hobs from Blackpool had journeyed down and set new standards in weirdness. Frontman Simon Morris's dayglo wig had grown to enormous beehive proportions - his only other item of clothing being Mickey Mouse underpants. And a large electric sign had appeared simply saying "Cheese." It was thought that the Hobs had not been taking their medication and the result was glorious.
At the end of the evening, we were graced by the presence of Acid-House Country and Western Rock stars - the er…Memphis Seven. They in their own words have nothing to do with the legendary Brixton-based combo Alabama 3, but curiously their line-up appeared to be identical. (They do the theme music for the Anglo-US TV series The Sopranos). Laid-back as ever they started with the electricity on, but only for about four minutes. Meanwhile behind the scenes the hard-working Hackney Festival Support Group had arrived to clear up - and said "Right the Festival stops now." And whereas we could see their point - they work from 8am to midnight, and they had warned us that we had to pack up by 7.30pm, well…..we were having a good time. So off went the power, and the stage and the marquee came down. Unphased by this the Memphis Seven continued their momentous set of classic country entirely acoustically. This was truly and genuinely unplugged. They included the anthem "We Don't Dance the Techno No More" which was heard to waft across the darkening Hackney park. The bands played for expenses only, and have to be thanked for doing this. The reason that there were so many people there is because there was so much high-quality music on offer. Most of the bands have a survivor link and all support the aims of Mad Pride. So - some of us at Mad Pride have learned how to put a Festival together - and an enormous amount of work goes into such an event. We were lucky to have on board the experience and know-how of Hackney Patients Council's Deb McNamara who has organised festivals before and worked tirelessly on this one. Also Southwark MIND's Robert Dellar gave invaluable assistance - as a veteran gig promoter. Simon Barnett and Pete Shaughnessy did much organising, stewarding and introducing the music. And thanks go out to many more - who stewarded, ran stalls, the chill-out tent and fetched and carried and cleared up litter. And people who attended donated £370 towards the cost of the festival. And numerous user groups and local MINDs had donated money which meant that the cost of the Festival was met - about £2200, without Mad Pride going into the red. Also some 70 Mad Pride books were sold on the day.
Raw power of P.A.I.N.