‘We were left pondering the ritual we had just witnessed’
In the days before Shangri-La became the focus of late-night revelry at Glastonbury, festival goers were left to find their own entertainment in the relative quiet after the Pyramid Stage closed down. I could usually be found around midnight in the blues tent, an informal venue where, under dimmed lighting, you could buy a can of Red Stripe for a pound and listen to loud, heavy dub reggae.
Late one night walking back to my tent, I heard a distant rhythm carried on the wind, a primal beat: dot-dot-dash, dot-dot-dash. I thought little of it until I woke in the twilight before dawn to hear it again, but louder. Its insistence drew me from my tent and soon I found myself in a place where hundreds had gathered around the horned bus of the Mutoid Waste Company, banging out dot-dot-dash on whatever they had to hand. I grabbed a piece of rock and a discarded Coke can and joined in.
As sunrise approached, the tempo began to speed up, until it reached a feverish intensity as the sun appeared on the horizon. At that moment, the horned bus sprang to life, careering off towards the Pyramid Stage. In an instant, the spell was broken and, as if waking from a trance, we were left to ponder the nature of the ritual we had just witnessed. Billy Bragg, singer-songwriter and activist
