Saturday 28 June 2014

Scarfolk Music & Indoctrination Festival (1970s)

Scarfolk Council did not approve of popular music unless it could be utilised as an indoctrination tool. In fact, most music was banned unless it contained subliminal messages which had been approved by the council's department of social education.

Scarfolk's first music festival in 1973 was only given the go ahead with the stipulation that all bands play songs which contain backmasked content. Additionally, they had to perform the songs backwards so that the subliminal messages could clearly be heard and understood by the audience.

Infamously, local prog-group Beige's* performance of their 3-hour epic song-cycle about a school gym teacher with missing-personality disorder contained subliminal elements that triggered mass hysteria. Many audience members hallucinated seeing in the sky the shape of satan with a trident, though others argued that it looked more like an intercontinental travel plug.


*For more information about Beige go here.

13 comments:

  1. Not too different a bill from many local festivals today judging by the acts' ungainly-cum-wacky names (eg 'The 1975' - one of your's?)

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  2. I like to think I am as tolerant as the next guy, but i think we all agree, at least the majority of us, single personality freaks really should be in detention centres... - AD

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  3. I was actually a roadie for The Crucifixion Pyjamas at this gig. The mass hysteria to which you refer was thankfully (almost) successfully erased from my memory by a year-long course of Alzheimerological Treatment and a constant supply of Dementiaflumothyozide tablets, which I take to this day. I think. Or was it the Second Hand Puddings? Anyway, normality was soon restored. And as I say, bless the baby Jesus for that. And his brother. Amen.

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    1. A lucky roadie, I have to say ! Like all people who escaped Scarfolk through a hand-made space-time continuum machine, all the band members was erased at a Jonestown, Guyana concert in 1978.

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  4. Not sure anyone would get "The Gay Cows" in 78. Sounds way too 1996

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  5. Any of the posters for this still around? I'd love one for my wall. Sausage Warfare were amazing! My hair caught fire after lighting up my chipolata for the ballad.

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  6. Fondlebum were a great band - never sold out. Of course, it's hard to sell out when you're never off the sex offenders register...

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  7. Is this the one where there was a warning on the brown ale ?

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  8. I saw the Amiable Poos - they were shit. In a likeable sort of way.

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  9. Hitler likes Twix !!great band names

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  10. Still cracks me up. A festival t shirt would be a winner.

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  11. If you haven't heard 'Stool Pigeon', the seminal second album by The Amiable Poos, you haven't lived.

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  12. If you haven't heard 'Stool Pigeon', the seminal second album by The Amiable Poos, you haven't lived.

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