(posted by paul evangelista on facebook)
The Futurama Festivals ran from 1979 – 1983, with an extra one in 1989, and were basically a who’s who of post punk and it’s many sub genres, as well as throwing a few curveballs at its audience by including the likes of Hawkwind, Bay City Rollers and, erm… Gary Glitter.
I was lucky enough to go to all six of them and they provided me with some of the best weekends in my life.
By the time the 4th festival came around it relocated to Deeside Leisure Centre, which converted to a gig venue by the simple expedience of rolling a carpet across the ice rink that covered the main hall, meaning that just a few centimetres underfoot was a layer of frozen water, resulting in cold feet for all attendees.
With it being so close to Liverpool, Futurama 4 featured many bands from there, including Dead Or Alive, China Crisis, Cook the Books and The Cherry Boys. One of the festival’s oddest sights was Dalek I Love You who, despite being a chance to play the main stage in front of thousands of people, opted instead to play in the foyer, behind a layer of camouflage netting.
For some reason, first day headliners New Order decided to go on before Blancmange and played a brilliant set. I thought this would mean that Blancmange would play to an emptying hall but instead kept a huge crowd entertained in an early glimpse of how likely their breakthrough was.
Day two gave space to the emerging goth scene, giving important exposure to Southern Death Cult, Sex Gang Children, Danse Society and March Violets. I remember the SDC crew puffing on a large peace pipe full of weed and emitting huge plumes of smoke thereafter, that, despite my asking nicely, they refused to let me sample.
Sitting on carpeted ice all day was a bit of a challenge and Saturday was spent in the sports hall, rolling out our sleeping bags onto the shiny wooden floor. One interesting sight on the Sunday morning was a very ‘alternative’ looking couple standing up completely naked and fashioning clothes for the day by folding a large piece of fabric around themselves to make harem trousers and a top. Well it beats breakfast TV by some distance I suppose.
On the Sunday night we were refused this accommodation and had to find somewhere outdoors to sleep. After wandering across fields for a while, we settled underneath a convenient bridge. Upon making our way to the train station the next morning, we noticed that we’d missed falling into a huge hole by a matter of feet.
Musically the weekend looks very much a game of two halves, but lineups featuring seemingly disparate bands were quite common back then, and all bands got a good reception and a large crowd to play to.
Our very own Marc Jones tried to bring the Futurama Festivals back a few years ago, but was scuppered by Covid and its after effects, which is a huge shame because they were wonderful weekends full of friends, music, drink and other mind altering substances and I miss events of this kind.
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