(in depth blog on the Beautiful Days festival)
The Levellers are set to release their new album ‘Static on the Airwaves’ on the 25th June 2012, prior to this we asked Mark Chadwick about his own favourite albums.
Mark Chadwick was in 1988 a founding member of The Levellers who at the time were based in Brighton, the bands musical direction was said to based upon traditional English music combined with a love of punk rock. Even the bands name is shrouded in mystery – It is unclear whether the band took the name from the democratic faction of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army; or as a reference to ‘The Level’, an area of Brighton around a flat triangular green in the centre of hilly Brighton, where members of the band lived, or whether, according to guitarist Simon Friend, it was chosen from a dictionary. Their first recordings were released on cassette ‘An Agreement of the People’ and ‘All the Free Commons of England’ and had an immediate impact – A group of fans known as the “happy hitchers” would hitch-hike around the country, following the band while they were on tour. From such humble beginings they grew rapidly, in 1990 the band released the album ‘A Weapon Called The Word’ – it went platinum!!
The Levellers became live and festival favourites appearring at Glastonbury, Isle Of Wight and many European events; however in 2003 they successfully created their own Beautiful Days Festival – The Levellers headlined the event alongside Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, also appearring were Goldblade, Dreadzone and Miles Hunt. The 2012 festival see’s PIL, New Model Army, Inspiral Carpets, Billy Bragg and The Waterboys take to the stage – tickets for the 2012 event have already sold out
the band release their greatest hits album this week…
For number one in Mark’s top 10 albums please go here
