I can still remember the first time I encountered The Prisoner. The seminal 1984 album, The Number of the Beast, from NWOBHM legends Iron Maiden, uses a sample from the introduction of this famous mind-bending TV show to launch their blazing freedom anthem named after it into orbit. I then had to wait ten years to see my first episode – The Girl Who Was Death – on a TV recap night in the 1990s. I have always been fascinated by the surreal and mysterious, and at the time I fell in love with this show I was also a huge advocate of paranoia, which is a central theme running through the production – it seemed to be saying something about the human mind, our condition, our society and what’s more, it appeared to promise answers to eternal questions that we as a society didn’t even realise we were asking.
Latest Festival No. 6 line up, venue and ticket details here »
So what has this got to do with Festival Number 6? Well Number 6, a character played by Patrick McGoohan, is the hero from the TV show. All we know about this good-looking bastard, who’s got a rather natty taste in piped sports jackets, is that he once drove a Lotus 7 to work every day as some kind of spy and then got fed up with the gig, so he decided to resign. However, it seems that no-one is actually allowed to resign from his agency, and so the powers that be send him off to a strange place known as the Village, where every week they send in a new Number 2, who is tasked with trying to find out why Number 6 resigned. The whole show is shot in the picturesque Welsh location of Portmeirion, designed and built by Sir William Clough Ellis between 1925 and 1975.
With modern life taking it’s toll, The Prisoner and its strange myriad pleasures had taken a back seat in mind until I saw a review of Festival Number 6, whilst at a restaurant last year. As soon as I saw this event I knew I had to go, imagining a party entirely filled with educated conspiracy theorists and slightly schizophrenic artistic types. Apparently New Order played the best set of 2012 there and Primal Scream equally blew the lid off the place. Where else could the organisers put on such an event other than Portmeirion, giving visitors a chance to visit all the cult locations from the show, including the town square that features a game of human chess, and the beach where Number Six is chased by a giant inflatable white ball that’s used to prevent escape from this geographical prison.
Musically I’ve always been all about the dance. In the 1990s I loved to lose myself on the dancefloor and find myself again, but now I’ve moved on from all that and everything that goes with it, so I’m quite inspired to hear something new. Horse Meat Disco are top of my list as the London cool that flashes into my life from time to time has informed me that I’d be mad to miss this act. Andrew Weatherall is a legend of the scene without compare, entrenched deeply enough in the music business to give it all up due to personal politics, attracting me to this character long before I have to even hear him drop one beat. And of course there’s Frankie Knuckles, a man who knows how to pour the one-time spirit of love, which was carefully fashioned on a thousand dance-floors, out in a baptising flood of audio redemption.
In addition to the music, there’s plenty more that I want to see, including a bunch of stuff in the literary tent where my attentions will be turned to drug addict turned author, Dirty But Clean Pierre, who has always struck me as someone I should be interested in – maybe someday I’ll even get as far as reading his book. I’m also quite tempted to get my toe into Shane Meadow’s Made of Stone, which will be playing at the festival, but I am questioning whether or not I want to waste my valuable time away from the computer watching an even bigger box in a field. However, I do love everything to do with The Roses, so it is a tough one.
So what’s the plan? JC and myself are going to be getting in the car the moment he finishes work at 5.30 on the Thursday. I’m going to be packed up with as little as possible, intending to wear the same pair of trousers for the entire weekend to keep it slim. Then it’s going to be a Roy Orbison style trip at high velocity towards the Welsh coast, so that we can get it on for the splendid late high summer activity of wild and unfettered abandon, drinking down the last drop of sunshine in a glorious fandango of white light.
Festival No 6 takes place over the weekend of 13-15 September, 2013 in the eccentric surrounds of Portmeirion, Wales, home of the cult TV series The Prisoner.
For more coverage and tickets, check our Festival No 6 Guide.
