Long Haired Giants and Beautific Pop Kids

The fourth in Miwsig's summer festival series takes in Port Talbot's Tapestry Goes West

Margam Country Park, Friday 10th to Saturday 11th of August

Margam Park, Port Talbot, on the South Wales coast. Cabaret and pink shirts under the Corus flame - not a bit of it...

Port Talbot is as schizophrenic a place as you’ll come across, its seafront a long expanse that stretches out past rugged council estates, old-fashioned fish shops, state of the art restaurants and a re-developer’s haven of high rent apartments. It’s a place of stark contrasts, alternate murk and unlikely beauty, a tourist ghost town of unique character, and a logical choice for a festival that boasts a clientele as outlandish as a monkey’s arm.

Some strange things have happened in Port Talbot’s recent past, not least a man flying through the roof of the local pub after the wind caught his beach buggy parachute sail (oh yes), and last year’s inaugural Welsh Tapestry event was certainly one of them. Re-located from its original home at a Wild West theme park in Newquay, Cornwall and embracing local history with a medieval theme, it defied conventions in a way that the people here could probably relate to more than anyone else, and this year comes back for another deserved shot.

From Saturday, August the 8th through to Sunday the 9th, people will rain in from all over the country and the old Margam Park will turn into a seething cultural metropolis. A huge expanse of countryside that sprawls out around a ruined abbey, the grounds of Margam Park boast of Hawthorn and Blackthorn, fallow and red deer, maybe bank robbers and murderers, but all will take a back seat as long-haired giants come out to play with beatific Pop kids.

The Tapestry line-up smiles out at me with an outlandish strut that makes me laugh, cry and rejoice all at once. The acts range from old style country troubadour Alan Tyler to hi-fi Pop heroes Radio Luxembourg, with a hundred things in between giving a further sense of outr・ fun. Archery, jousting, a mead tent, and aggh! - fancy dress, is all in the mix, and I can see myself getting my favourite, epically coloured knitted shirt out just for the occasion.

Red-hot retro-rock-poppers The Cherrybombers (“suffer’n’roll”), Wolf People (whom the following nugget from their Myspace account eloquently sums up – “last summer I managed to salvage a 60s Grundig home tape recorder, and since then I’ve been experimenting with how loud you can record onto it before it becomes unlistenable”), avant-garde electro hipsters Chrome Hoof, wired folk-pop maniacs The Threatmantics and a whole lot more currently dance before my eyes like little explosions in the sky, and every time I go back to look there’s another immaculately loony addition.

Things are looking up for August then, so leave all your C.O.R.G.I Registered friends at home, catch some sun under the flame, and have some fun.

© 2007 Neil Jones

http://www.myspace.com/tapestrygoeswest

© Miwsig