About the Festival
This is the tenth Truck festival and in many ways, or at least in spirit, is unchanged from the first. It's hard not to be drawn back to that first one in 1998, a different century even. Remembering is not helped by the fact the each year's Truck seems to share a mental space with all the others so that they are inseparable. I think (I know) that I'm not alone in marking out major life changes in Truck festivals, indeed many of them happening here. The first one was meant to be around this date, on the basis that it hardly ever rains on my birthday. In my naivety I neglected to apply for a licence so a dutiful policeman told me there would be riots in Didcot and beyond and we would have to call it off. Some of us had already sat round a kitchen table composing a list of bands we'd like to see perform at the farm, even going so far as to write a letter to Grandaddy, putting sweets in it just in case (Jim from the band replied saying they'd love to play, only they lived 3000 miles away). So, the momentum couldn't be stopped; the earliest possible date was September, and someone whose birthday it was then said it hardly rained on the 20th September either. I got a friend who didn't have ill-advised blond hairdye and who was out of his teens to manage the, sadly deceased, council licensing officer, who held a low opinion of the effect of rock music on youth. Amazingly, and thanks to a concerted effort from an odd conglomerate of Steventonians and Oxford music lovers, a festival was staged. Youth were largely unharmed. Despite limitations (we forgot that when the sun went down it would most likely get dark, and stumbled around by the light of a lonely burger van), it seemed perfect immediately, and we were already anticipating the next one.
The elements were already there- the truck, the rotary club, the vicar, the cross-dressing barmen - just as you see them now. It was as if the village community was putting on a special show for the visitors, but the community was made of people from all over the place who would possibly not otherwise encounter one another.
The idea in 1998 came from a few sources; I had been to V96 and a local attempt, Oxstock, that were enjoyable enough but were seriously missing the joy, community and artistry I imagined to be behind Woodstock. Glastonbury had it but was already on a vast city-like scale. Major promoters today are cashing in on the trend for smaller 'boutique' festivals everywhere now but I didn't notice many in 1998. It seemed natural that we could book our favourite bands to play in a field and that people would want to come from miles around, and that we could have a great time and make it into a film and so on, though anyone sensible would have ridiculed the idea. This year the festival sold out in hour or two, we are making a film, and many of the artists on our original 1998 list are playing: Idlewild, Euros Childs of Gorky's, members of Mercury Rev, Emma Pollock of the Delgados and even Garth Hudson of The Band, a man who actually appeared at Woodstock first time round. He's also been in a pretty good film (The Last Waltz) and played on some of the greatest records ever.
Contrary to popular belief, the name Truck actually came from a compilation CD I picked up, 'Ten Trucking Greats', the soundtrack of the movie Convoy (still haven't seen it). In the film, the great Kris Kristofferson plays a rebel Trucker leading a convoy of independent Truckers against 'the man'. Trucking also has the R Crumb 60s sense of 'keep on trucking', as in, keep on ploughing your own furrow and getting on with things, in a groovy way of course! and, lest we forget, the stage was (and still is) made from a pair of flatbed trucks, though we have now gone up to three.
I recently read Smokey Robinson saying that Motown could have happened anywhere, it just happened that it was in Detroit that the right people were there to shape and support the raw talent. In the same way, Truck could have happened anywhere, but it was in Steventon that a supportive village community got behind an idea, united by the twin motivations of raising funds for important causes and celebrating the joys of summer (though for some the main motivation was defintely the ale), and joined with a diverse local music community looking for somewhere to play. A 'festival' should be more than just the formula it has become, it should be a celebration of people and their passions, which is why Truck is the real deal. As many of you have noticed, we organisers like to join in with the fun. It is a festival on, and of, the human scale, which is why we resist the temptation to make it larger (one estimate is that we could have sold out 5 times over). It is on a farm, and it feels natural, the way things should be all the time. Perhaps that is why we have fastened on it as something special.