Tag: Black Sabbath

Electric Fields Festival – Part 1

Previous subscribers to this blog will know that I was a major fan of the Wickerman Festival and had great fun at the 14 annual shindigs that were held. Since the last gathering in 2015, our gig crew have been hunting for a comparable event and the nearest we have achieved since was the Electric Fields Festival we attended in September 2018. With that historical context I thought this would be appropriate content for my 300th blog and as the words flowed it resulted in additionally being my 301st!

The festival slowly built from an initial friend gathering into a fully fledged event in 2016 and the chosen location was Drumnlarig Castle in Thornhill, Dumfries and Galloway, about a 90-minute drive from Glasgow, Edinburgh and Carlisle. It utilised the bonny grounds of the category A listed castle which was built in the late 16th century which carried the name of the ‘Pink Palace’ due to the finely hewed glinting red sandstone exterior.    

Drumnlarig Castle. Image Credit sobt.co.uk

It is apparently very grand and ornate on the interior with the small matter of its 120 rooms, 4 towers and 17 turrets. It also contains the Buccleuch Collection which houses a rare Rembrandt of ‘An Old Woman Reading’ and renowned 17th century French furniture and silver. They did also have a Leonardo Da Vinci painting that was stolen in 2003 but recovered in 2007 from an address in Glasgow.

There is also an old roman fort in the Southeast corner of the grounds which was featured in the Time Team programme, and it has been used as a filming location for the TV series Outlander. The estate is rarely opened to the public, but they did provide permission for the festival to be held there between 2016 and 2018.

The nearest conurbation to the site is the sleepy village of Thornhill with a vast population of around 1500 inhabitants which lies on the edge of the River Nith. It contains a couple of pubs and the seemingly obligatory Chinese takeaway alongside a small cottage hospital.

Famous ‘Thornhillians’ include the explorer Joseph Thomson who has the eminent Thomson’s gazelle named after him, which are also sometimes referred to as a ‘tommie’. Another is ex-professional golfer Andrew Coltart who is now a respected commentator on Sky Sports.

A ‘Tommie’. Image Credit animalcorner.org

Since 2012 the Thornhill Music Festival has been staged there, with the original event being instigated by the long-standing Scottish blues combo The Lewis Hamilton Band (not the Formula 1 driver!). That particular band are still active and are regularly on the road.

The festival is still on the roster and the 2025 version took place on the May Day Bank Holiday at the Farmer Arms in the village. One of the headliners was The Cherry Pinks who I saw in 2024 when they played the Wickerman Fringe event. The pub coincidentally won the Dumfries and Stewarty CAMRA branch pub of the year for 2025.  

Thornhill Music Festival flyer. Image Credit facebook.com

After three successful years in Drumnlarig, Electric Fields organisers made the ill-fated decision to relocate to SWG3 in Glasgow due to logistical challenges and increasing costs. However then due to complaints from attendees and ticketing issues, the festival folded, and the 2019 version never took place, and it has never been rebooted.

I could not attend the 2017 carnival as we were in the process of relocating to Manchester that very weekend. Nevertheless, in my absence the boys headed up there to make a debut appearance with Jesus and Mary Chain, Car Seat Headrest and Pins amongst others on the bill.

They lodged at ‘Dewhurst Towers’ in Kirkcudbright and utilised the old Wickerman nemesis of Mr Allen’s taxis for the commute to and from the site. The one downside they referenced was that it was a long way to travel as it was forty miles and over an hour each leg of the journey.   

I ensured there were no ‘life events’ disbarring me making a pilgrimage up to the 2018 gathering. Travel lessons were learnt from the previous year and lodgings were sought in the vibrant town of Dumfries.   

In 1306, Greyfriars Kirk in Dumfries was the location of Robert the Bruce, the future King of Scots, slaying his rival John Comyn III of Badenoch and during World War II the Norwegian armed forces in exile brigade was based there. Loreburn Hall, known locally as The Drill Hall has held concerts from Big Country, The Proclaimers and Black Sabbath.

Famous ‘Doonhamers’ include in their ranks Henry Duncan, founder of the world’s first commercial savings bank, J.M Barrie, author of Peter Pan, John Lawrie, Private Fraser in Dad’s Army, musicians Ray Wilson, once lead singer of Genesis and Calvin Harris. The final ex-resident is Kirsty Wark, the excellent broadcaster who undertook the heartbreaking interview of my favourite author Iain Banks shortly before his premature passing.

Other British Gigs – Part 8

In the 1970’s and 1980’s, our family holidays utilised locations across the length and breadth of Britain and I did not catch a flight abroad until 1986 when Rick Clegg and I made our debut sojourn to Majorca. Many Pontins and Butlins camps were visited including trips to the Middleton Towers complex, which was situated on the outskirts of Heysham, near Morecambe. I have fond memories of the area and days playing on Middleton Sands.

Heysham dates back to Viking times and was originally a quiet farming community before it was transformed in 1904 by the opening of the port which began to provide ferries over to Ireland and the Isle of Man. The ferries then connect up with the next travel leg of trains from Heysham Port through to Lancaster. Additional local job opportunities were introduced by two nuclear power stations being located there and my father in law worked at one of the sites for a few years.

One historical aspect in the coastal village is that it contains stone hewn graves, carved from solid rock which are located in the ruins of St Patricks Chapel, which date back to the 11th century. A picture of the graves was chosen to adorn the CD cover of ‘The Best of Black Sabbath’. There is also the tale of the one of the ships of the defeated Spanish Armada that shipwrecked in the bay in 1588. It is said that many of the dispersed crew settled there and there are apparently Spanish surnames remaining to this day in the village.

Black Sabbath album cover. Image Credit rockemetal.forumfree.it

A few years ago, I happened to be walking those streets on a clear still day and began to hear the unmistakable sounds of rock music bouncing off the walls of the nearby houses. Obviously, in a Scooby Doo gang style I had to go and solve the mystery of the source of the racket and upon investigation I identified it was emanating from the Heysham Strawberry Gardens pub.  

The Strawberry Gardens was originally a pleasure park containing an entertainment complex, formal gardens and fruit picking and was located at the then end point of the tramway. It closed just prior to the Second World War being replaced by housing and the aforementioned pub. It is a traditional Greene King brewery hostelry occasionally having live music, on this occasion a local band called Moon Rising were playing.

Strawberry Gardens back in the day. Image Credit redrosecollections.lancashire.gov.uk

Telford is a town in Shropshire and was born in the same year as me in 1968 and was designed as polycentric under the New Town Acts, reflected in the originally intended name as Dawley New Town. It is based around a shopping arcade and a public park and intentionally has no specific centre and as a result it is an unsightly concrete jungle with a plethora of roundabouts!

It was named after the local civil engineer Thomas Telford, and it is nearby to Ironbridge which I recall from history lessons at school as it pertained directly to the Industrial Revolution. In 1983, the town was linked up to the M6 with the construction of the M54 link and a train station was built on the Wolverhampton to Shrewsbury line. Thankfully, in 2007 the centre was regenerated with the addition of cafés, bars and a cinema.

There is the Telford International Centre, which for a few years was the home of the UK Snooker Championship. Nearby is the ice-skating rink that has periodically hosted gigs, including Status Quo and T’Pau. Telford were also a famous non-league giant killing team, especially in the 1980’s and once battered my Preston team 4-1 in a humbling FA Cup tie, before going on to lose narrowly to Everton in the Fifth Round.

Famous Telford alumni include Jeremy Corbyn, comedian Stewart Lee, footballer Billy Wright, horse racing’s Sir Gordon Richards who won a record 26 champion jockey titles, the previously mentioned T’Pau, Babybird’s lead singer Stephen Jones and the quaintly titled death metal band Cancer. There are also some bonny local towns not too far away, namely Shifnal, Shrewsbury and Wem.

Telford’s Albert Shed Southwater. Image Credit albertsshed.co.uk

I have attended many work meetings and overnight stays in the town, a couple of times on my own which was astoundingly dull. Though I must say during the lowest points of Covid where a trip to Tesco was a highlight, I rather worryingly stated I would even take an all-day workshop in Telford just to be able to leave the house!

On one such trip in 2023, we discovered a new bar where live music takes place 4 nights a week, and on the night of our visit, the Jam Band were performing. The venue was Telford Alberts Shed Southwater, which is a sister venue to their Shrewsbury branch. They were both opened in 2017 by an elderly chap who was remarkably called Albert who when reminiscing about the London music scene of his youth decide to create a couple of live music spots on his doorstep.