Cil-y-Bryn isn’t Glastonbury, but to us that night it might as well have been. Tucked away in a fold of the hills between Llanefydd and Betws-yn-Rhos, Chris Godfrey’s farm had become an unlikely stronghold of rural rebellion. Chris lived off the land and ran the farm like a commune outpost: cows in one field, sheep in another, and a couple of Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs wandering about like they owned the place. Once a year, despite the grumbles and protests of neighbouring farmers, Chris turned his barns and paddocks into a miniature festival site, where friends of friends of friends gathered to swap smoke, drink home-brew, and forget that Wales was supposed to be quiet.
On 16th July 1994, a bit of history slipped into that picturesque valley. At 10:15pm, in the main barn — its rafters strung with fairy lights and the air thick with spliffs and the smell of livestock — the Sons of Selina played live for the very first time. It was also the first time Neil, Cumi and Robin had shared a stage together since the messy demise of 4Q almost four years earlier. Whatever happened from then on, this was a crossing point: the birth of one band on the ashes of another.
The line-up that night was patched together with instinct and necessity. Steve Sync was away at the Phoenix Festival, so the set was heavy on guitars. Neil took vocals, Robin shouldered one guitar, Martin another, Bonehead a third, and Ken Maynardis anchored it on bass. Cumi, behind the kit, drove the whole thing from the back with his off-kilter precision.
Neil later admitted he was “extremely pissed” — the free-flowing vats of farm-brewed beer saw to that — and the set lurched with cock-ups galore. But somehow, the mess and the energy only fed into the spirit of the night. The Sons weren’t about polish; they were about atmosphere, about making noise that seemed to warp and bend the barn walls. At one point, Neil grabbed a beam and sang half a song hanging upside down from the rafters, belting out
On A Promise as if gravity itself had become part of the performance.
The crowd — a shifting blend of hippies, punks, locals and out-of-town heads — cheered it all along. Nobody cared if the notes were right. It was about being there, about seeing something that hadn’t existed yesterday suddenly take form in front of them.
The festival had started earlier with Babakin, a Colwyn Bay outfit who churned out a punky-indie set. Their frontman had sparks of talent on guitar and voice, though the rhythm section left something to be desired. After the Sons, Clan Morrigan took the stage, still trying to carry the torch left behind when You Slosh disbanded. By then, Neil and the rest of the Selinas had drifted off towards The Bistro in Rhyl, chasing beer and conversation rather than smoke and drum circles.
But it didn’t matter what came after. The night belonged to that first Sons of Selina performance: drunk, frantic, teetering on collapse, but alive. As the sheep grazed outside, oblivious to the din, the barn in Cil-y-Bryn became the unlikely birthplace of a band that would carry the torch of space punk noise and mischief into the next chapter.
