h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Forty years ago, in August 1972, I got my A level results.
Forty years ago we had lots of parties and freaked out to weird music.
Actually, my best memories are of Maggie Mae by Rod Stewart.
Don't ask.

On the other side of the Channel in the little town where I now live, some of my contemporaries spent the summer of 1972 organising a pop festival. This was in the wake of Woodstock, the first Glastonbury festival etc etc.

Actually, it was at Whitsun, so they didn't spend summer doing it. They probably did a couple of weeks' work in April. It was all far less hassle in those days.

The town was even smaller then that it is today. And even further from civilisation than it is today. But these kids organised a festival - which they called the "2nd British Rock Festival" - which knocked the socks off anything before or since, by all accounts. I know a few people who actually went to it. Not my husband, although he fits the demographic perfectly, but he was not here at the time, - he was in France as part of his university studies. But my last boss but one was one of the organisers, and I have heard quite a few stories over the years. The local newspaper has been printing a few items about it, and this year they are organising a small festival to commemorate it.

70,000 people came. The headliners were Pink Floyd. Some of the names even quite far down the list were not to be sniffed at even then. Reading the poster even today makes my heart beat faster. The Faces, Status Quo, The Doors. Big names. Then some favourites of mine from those days: Incredible String Band, Strawbs, Lindisfarne, Rory Gallagher.

The tiny print includes Billy Joel, Spencer Davies, Nazareth.

http://www.germersheim.de/kultur/popfestival/poster.html

Of course, it rained. There was mud, drugs and very likely a helluva lot of gnats. Even these days, they are a plague in the town, but in those days, nothing was done to prevent them and the festival was held on an island amidst the still-standing waters of the oxbow lakes to the left and right of the Rhine. Gnat heaven.

When - I hear you wonder - was the first British Rock Festival? It was in Speyer - just up the road from here - in 1971. This blog, mainly on the Rory Gallagher theme, describes them quite well in English - and puts them right up there with Woodstock.

http://shadowplays.com/blog/?p=567#

I'm a wee bit younger than you, TC, but I remember August 1994.

Was that your school-leaving year?

In August 1994 I had three children and was probably sitting in a tent in the rain somewhere in France, trying to keep them occupied. I expect they remember it.

I left school in 1961-how I envy that rock festival!
40 years ago we were leaving Ethiopia with the 6 month old Spearcarrier. Because he was awake right through a sixteen hour travelling day, we read Fox in Socks so often that I can still recite every word - useful when reading it upside down to grandchildren

In 1994 I was teaching in a Polish university

In 1994, I was, uh, ten. And living on a farm in the middle of nowhere, USA. With no TV. So I probably had no idea what was going on in the world at the time.

Thirty one years ago today, I started working. I'm still working in the same company.

Forty years ago I was living where I am now, had one child, and was teaching guitar at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. I went to a lute summer school in Cheltenham and ordered a lute, to play in my renaissance band http://recumbentman.wordpress.com/2009/03/

Sorry, that was 1974. Forty years ago I was living where I am now, had one child, and was applying for a job teaching guitar at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. I was not a prize-winning guitarist, and only got a diploma (LRAM) a few years later, but they took me on. In those days nobody had guitar qualifications; I guess I was the only applicant with a Bachelor of Music degree.

I wouldn't make the cut now.

Forty years ago I lived in Windsor and hadn't yet had the pleasure of the 11+

Thirty years ago I got the results of my A-levels and my parents finally believed me when I said I wouldn't do any work for them unless they let me change schools. Didn't work out well, that one