Hank Wangford Band Jobs for a Change Festival, Jubilee Gardens Southbank London 1984-06-10 brand new transfer from aud cassette master



Sony mic/Sony Pro Walkman/Played on JVC TD-W718 to adobe audition CC>Tracks>phase correction>Fades> Flac

SBE check/Checksum file in Traders Little helper



Bobby Valentino:

�The most unfortunate of the GLC gigs was in Jubilee Gardens, next to the Thames and County Hall, again during the miners strike. Being slightly anti-establishment Ken Livingston and the Council refused to allow the police on site but hired unemployed people for backstage security - checking passes etc. It was quite a large festival type atmosphere; there were two or three stages and food stalls purveying the finger food of the world. The audience was about ten thousand strong and as we were on at about 4 o�clock on a perfect Sunday afternoon by the river, many of them were families.

Just before the start of our set both Ken and Arthur Scargill, the miner�s leader, made rabble rousing speeches. Ken�s, as usual, was great at persuading the crowd of miner�s cause with his humour and sarcasm, Arthur's speech was just a bunch of ultra-leftie slogans shouted at the top of his voice � I winced as I knew it wasn�t working with the London family audience.�

�At the beginning of the second number of the set (probably a pre-arranged signal) a gang of about fifteen skin�eads, from the National Front, surged out of the crowd, invading the stage, intent on aggression and attemped to ruin the afternoon. Apparently they had done the same to the Redskins, a well known very left leaning band of the time (who were part of the same management stable as Hank and Billy Bragg), about 15 minutes before on the second stage.�

�Well, the whole thing was a bit of a mess, Hank got fairly badly kicked and I saw an Ovation Acoustic Guitar being swung toward me. Automatically turning away to protect the violin, my back took the force of the blow. The guitar shattered against my shoulder blades. It was one of those classic cases of adrenaline dulling any pain because of the �flight or fight� syndrome type thing I suppose, because it didn�t hurt for at least ten minutes and then it hurt like hell as the bruises started to appear.

But I was very lucky. B.J. Cole, sitting behind his pedal steel had hardly noticed what was happening so he didn�t see the jagged remains of the Ovation Acoustic being swung at him. It was a splintered remnant, the end of the fingerboard and the remains of the body that had survived the impact with my back, that made contact with his face and went through the side of his nose and then through his top and bottom lip. He ended up needing about fifteen stitches and grew a beard to cover the scar for a couple of years.�

�One fantastic sight that I will never forget is that of a huge Rasta, with his dreadlocks steaming out behind him, swinging a lighting safety chain above his head and chasing the fascist idiots off the stage - they fled like sheep in the face of his single handed onslaught. Apparently certain elements in the crowd, inspired by the noble action of said Rastafarian, took it upon themselves to give the flock a good kicking. I was really pleased to hear, from BJ later, that the skin�eads were left waiting, bleeding and bruised, in the hospital corridor (they�d all ended up at the same one) for hours as nobody wanted to treat them as an emergency�

�It didn�t ruin the afternoon, if anything it bought the people more together. The police were allowed (or more probably they insisted) on to the festival site and they were wonderfully sensitive about it, being dressed in shirt sleeves with no ties or helmets, though there did seem be a certain sense of smugness about it. After that the GLC hired professional show security companies for all their big gigs.�

I think that says it all, the skin heads got their come uppance and the music was still great. It all happened so quickly that I couldn't see exactly what happened myself.

Brand new transfer done 2014-02-22



01 Banter
02 Cowboys stay on longer
03 Banter/Two time polka - fades out during skin head attack
04 Banter as band come back without BJ Cole/Angel flying too close to the ground
05 Ragmop
06 Jogging with Jesus


The Hank Wangford Band

Hank Wangford guitar/vocals
Melanie Harrold vocals
BJ Cole pedal steel
Bobby valentino fiddle
Steve Donelly lead guitar
Pete Dennis bass
Howard Tibble drums/vocals