14 Hour Super Weird Happening – The Dingle Be-In
11:00
Gong Bath with Suzie Price (Earth Chant)
Placing everyone on a level with each other, the Earth Chant Gong Bath courtesy of Suzie Price will set the tone for the Dingle Be-In and act as a focal point in the first part of the Happening.
11:30
Gavin Kendrick‘s Cosmic Sound
Gavin Kendrick’s Cosmic Sound will pick up where the Gong Bath left off. Gavin has amassed a collection of exotic and esoteric instruments that he skillfully manipulates with echo effects to create a soothing ambience.
12:00
1967 Panel
with… Bryan Biggs, Melinda Gebbie, Norman Killon
Fifty years on from the huge countercultural explosion of 1967 we’ll be looking back at that heady time, celebrating some of the aspects whilst also looking to find out what went wrong in the end. Bryan Biggs is the Artistic Director at The Bluecoat with a knowledgeable fascination with psychedelic counterculture, Melinda Gebbie is an artist and illustrator who found herself at the heart of the countercultural explosion, living in Haight Ashbury during the late sixties and Norman Killon is a DJ who’s career stretches back to Liverpool’s Sink Club that decade, having been a regular at The Cavern in its heyday.
13:10
John Row Poetry
With it falling on his twentieth birthday, The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream provided John Row the perfect place to celebrate. Fifty years on, John Row has written a poem recounting his experiences at that fluorescent countercultural event.
13:30
Mathew Street Panel
with… Jayne Casey, Bernie Connor, John Higgs
Inspired by Carl Jung’s dream about Liverpool, a scene blossomed out of Mathew Street in the mid-late seventies. Based around the Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream & Pun, Eric’s and Probe Records this scene of creative misfits inspired a wave of creativity in the city, seeing many of its members rise to national and sometimes international fame. Although only young herself, Jayne Casey assumed a maternal role in this scene and was in Big In Japan, Bernie Connor was an even younger lad who was absorbing the collosal influences presented before him and John Higgs, who’s seminal KLF book built a mythology around Mathew Street.
14:45
Nadia Drews Poetry
Born in San Francisco and brought up in Greater Manchester, Nadia Drews draws from her socialist mother, singing and writing songs about changing the world first in the bedroom and then on stage. Thirty years of repressed rhymes mean she writes long poems…but she reads them fast.
15:00
David Bramwell Talk
Dr. Bramwell is the author of ‘The Haunted Moustache’ and ‘The Odditorium’. He’s presenting an entertaining and insightful April Fool’s day slide-show lecture on pranks, explaining how tricksters helps shape culture and society, from Bugs Bunny to Bart Simpson; Chris Morris to Trump. Question is, can we trust Bramwell to tell the whole truth? And is he really a doctor?
15:45
John Higgs Talk
John Higgs is the insightful countercultural author behind enlightening books on Timothy Leary, The KLF and The Twentieth Century’ – teasing a narrative out of complex events and taking lofty ideas off their pedestal. He’s currently working on ‘Watling Street’, a book about a British road ‘older than history’, looking to the past to see how it informs today.
16:30
Salena Godden Poetry
Salena Godden has been described as ‘the doyenne of the spoken word scene’, ‘the Mae West madam of the salon’ and as ‘everything the Daily Mail is terrified of’. She writes and performs poetry, fiction, memoir, radio drama and lyrics.
17:00
Black Music Panel
with… Levi Tafari, Laurence Westgaph, Les Spaine
Liverpool’s relationship with black American music is completely unique; from the records that seeped into the city via the nearby US air-base and the NYC-bound Cunard Yanks, feeding into the Merseybeat scene and laying the foundations for Liverpool to plough its own path – opting for funk in a Northern soul dominated seventies. Levi Tafari was born to Jamaican parents in a less enlightened time in Liverpool, which he succinctly highlighted in his poetry, Laurence Westgaph is a local historian with a focus on black history and the slave trade, whilst Les Spaine was the DJ fuelling the dancefloor at Liverpool’s own slice of Soul Train, The Timepiece.
18:10
Levi Tafari Duboetry
Levi Tafari is a poet and actor who draws from his Jamaican heritage. Rising to prominence in the late eighties, coining the term ‘duboetry’ for his rhythmic poetry, he’s worked with the British Council and made a film about Rastafarianism for the BBC.
18:30
RandomEra Poetry/Hip Hop
With Ash Nugent on vocals and his band comprised of guitar and backing vox, a bass player a conga / percussionist, RandomEra make introspective poetry that calls into question the oddities of the modern world with dry wit and mellow grooves.
19:00
No Fakin’ DJs & DJ 2Kind
No Fakin’ have been the leading purveyors of hip-hop in Liverpool since the 1990s, following on from pioneers like Bantu and First In Command. DJ 2Kind was the production and writing force in First In Command, working on their ‘Pest Control’ LP.
20:30
Richie Vegas
Part of the Beaten Tracks collective, who champion the rare, the dusty and the forgotten… expect funk, soul, reggae, afrobeat, latin, hiphop, blues and jazz; leftfield beats and soulful enlightenment from Richie Vegas.
22:00
Bernie Connor
Bernie Connor is a DJ who’s absorbed all of the music that’s passed through his city since the 1970s, drawing direct influence from the pioneering Roger Eagle. Bernie’s ‘Sound Of Music’ shows have become a staple on Liverpool’s airways and its recently found a new home on IWFM Radio.
