Field Music: Babyhead

A new intermittent series of posts about the music that fuels our festivals.

Music history, like most history, follows those that make the most noise. But this has only ever been a way to keep power structures intact. For example, Glastonbury’s story has largely been told through its various headliners but anyone who has felt the true magic of those fields knows that it’s found amongst the smaller stages. Away from the major labels and the corporate agents, outside of the mainstream glare and the BBC cameras are bands, DJs, rappers, singers and solo musicians that speak to the people in a way that is raw and unfiltered, but connects straight to the heart and soul and can pull huge crowds by word of mouth alone. For me these acts are the lifeblood of British festivals. More than anyone you might see on your TV, or hear on daytime radio.

I want to cover a few of these bands in this ‘Field Music’ series, along with some of the programmers that have helped to support their growth and inspired me over the years. I don’t want to make this too formal so much of it will be through my own personal lens. I promised to tell you about one of my favourite bands that I caught performing at a secret set after last Saturday’s St Paul’s Carnival, so what better place to start.

I first met Babyhead in 2004 when Dregz and I performed on the Dance stage at Glastonbury with the band Dark Chunk. That same year we also performed in the Theatre & Circus tent, with a contemporary dance group called Re:Form. We’d been brought in as guest vocalists by our friend Hannah from Cardiff but there was a local Glastonbury town connection through another dancer in the group, Josie George, our brazen and beautiful sister who heart breakingly left this life back in 2022.

We met many wonderful souls through Re:form and it was lovely to see a number of them, either in person or streaming in through people’s phones, at The Plough for Bobby Newman’s 50th Birthday. He’s a very close friend of Babyhead’s and had been at nearly every gig of theirs from the beginning until they finally called it a day in 2016. They’d agreed to get back together one last time as a special surprise for him and it was a beautiful, tear filled moment when he realised what was happening.

The band started under the name Geek in the mid 90s. They were all family and friends from Glastonbury and the clues to their early sound are in the first gig they played, supporting ska punk rebels Citizen Fish and Alex Gordon’s somewhat dubbier project Bender.

Turns out the name Geek was already taken so Babyhead were born around the same time that they all moved to Bristol together. They’d already been putting on shows in the city, creating the Monsterpiece Productions promotional collective alongside another Glastonbury band called Think. Then in 1999 they signed with Continental Drifts, the pioneering festival agency spearheaded by Chris Tofu, that had scooped up many of the country’s most exciting ska, swing, polka, cowpunk and cabaret aligned bands such as Los Albertos, Baghdaddies, Top Cats, Pronghorn, Tragic Roundabout, Tarantism, Headmix Collective and the 2 Tone group The Beat. I’ll definitely be covering a number of these bands in this series, along with Chris Tofu himself.

Babyhead’s first gig with Continental Drifts was the ill fated Total Eclipse Festival, a 6 day affair in Devon, put together to mark a rare eclipse of the sun that happened at 11:11am on the 11th August 1999.Not the most auspicious of occasions it turned out, as only a third of the expected attendees turned up causing the main organisers Megadog, Essential Festival and Harvey Goldsmith to put it into receivership. Still the stage that Babyhead played, programmed largely by Tofu, was put together by an even more colourful character by the name of Roy Gurvitz, under the banner of Lost Vagueness.

I’ve never actually known Roy personally and remarkably I don’t remember ever making it to the Lost Vagueness area of Glastonbury (though my memories of 2004 and 2005 are incredibly hazy), but their impact on Boomtown and my own personal journey through the festival world cannot be understated.

I will cover this breeding ground of anarchic, ironic mischief (in smart evening wear) another time but the “naughty corner” of Glastonbury in the early 2000s perfectly matched Babyhead’s sense of rebellion and playfulness, as well as their theatrical undertones. Both began to spread their influence into the rest of the festival world, playing the first few Secret Gardens and then pretty much any worth the price of a ticket.

Babyhead also began to make moves across the rest of Glastonbury, playing multiple stages and opening the Jazz World stage (now West Holts) on at least one occasion. I remember seeing them at least 4 times one year. Their music further embraced the sounds around them in Bristol. Keith Allen once called them, the”bastard child of Ian Dury and Iggy Pop” but you could hear ska, reggae (Toots Hibbert also gave them a nod of appreciation) and hip hop especially. Bristol in turn embraced them further and they had incredible packed out shows at St Paul’s Carnival and the main stage of Ashton Court Festival. Their energy on stage was through the roof and Mancub on vocals held the crowd masterfully in his hand.

After a couple of initial 4 track EPs, they released their first album The Geek Show in 2004, followed by Babyboomtown in 2007 which featured local collaborators such as Jakes, Stepchild, Bubber Lucifer from Aspects, Zen Hussies and Lou Drezla. The title track inspired the organisers of the Recydrate The West festival in their next venture - Boomtown.

If I remember rightly there wasn’t one year that Babyhead didn’t grace the Town Centre stage at Boomtown until they eventually split in 2016 (check the video above from 5:03 for a taste). We tried everything to convince them to come back and there was at least one year they played as a side project Babydub in the Hidden Woods, but their time had eventually drawn to a close. I did manage to get them back together for my wedding in 2019, which Mancub also so perfectly officiated, but that was it until last Saturday night. It really was a special occasion, made more so by the fact it was in The Plough, which Mancub is also now the co-publican of.

For various reasons it felt like dancing with the ghosts of my past lives and it was only the sheer power of the band and Mancub’s impassioned rants against corporate, military and political abuse of power that kept me present. Babyhead did leave a couple more great albums in their wake which you should definitely go and check out, but their main legacy for me is tied up in the memories of their countless live shows and the festival fields that will always carry the memory of them, even when their name begins to fade and new generations of revellers grow up without experiencing what we were once so lucky to be a part of.

I have been fortunate enough to hear a fantastic forthcoming project from Mancub, now under his everyday name Tom Quarrelle. But I’ll tell you all about that when it’s finally ready to drop. If there’s any groups you would especially like me to cover in this ‘Field Music’ series then please do leave their names below.