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Ducati 999
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Issue 125 : October - November 2002Stormin' The Castle
The weather didn't seem to have put too many people off though as they were arriving in droves and the overflow campsite looked about one-third full by the time it was dark.
Friday's bands Otway opened his set with his "hit" "Cor Baby, that's really free" which most people appeared to know. There were a lot of stunned looks on faces in the crowd as Otway continued his set, but then soon warmed to his madness as was shown by the amazing applause following each song. Stunts including forward rolls off step ladders & summersaults across the stage kept all well amused. The end of the set saw John, his band & crew, all on stage doing a disco dance to his soon to be hit "Bunsen burner". The band had earlier been somewhat reluctant to do a disco dance in front of thousands of bikers but I had witnessed John telling them "all would be fine". It was rather amazing to see how many bikers had joined in with the disco dance routine themselves.
Saturday night saw four bands on the main stage, starting early on at 6.50pm just after the bike show presentations. First up -Shovelmouth, rock/punk band from South Shields. This band first played Stormin' two years ago and filled the marquee in minutes, and guess what, they did it again. By the time Shovelmouth were into the third or fourth song there must have been a 3000 strong crowd in the big tent. This band has so much energy, fronted by local band promoter Colin, who must have sweated buckets during this very lively performance, excellent! Next up Big Day, Yorkshire band who played a much varied set of covers, quite different to the normal run of the mill rock covers you hear so often. They started slow, the crowd not sure, but after the first couple of songs, were well rocking the place. Songs from the likes of Blur, Blink 182 & Pulp "nice change" I heard a lot of people comment. The third band up were a last minute stand in as Big Ray & the Hipthrusters had let Stormin' down & did not even have the decency to tell us they were not gonna turn up. Anyhow Erik & the Vikings filled the slot well, keeping this year's superb crowd entertained before the headliners. Eddie & the Hot Rods were there to cap the night off, playing their hits from the 70's and many others to keep the best Stormin' crowd yet, happy until the early hours.
Saturday morning A second change this year was the venue for the guest speaker, Newcastle's Tele West Arena were very accommodating and extremely PRO- bike with the supply of both staging and the use of nice clean porcelain toilets. Our guest speaker this year was MAG's new kid on the block, Liz Needham, who stood in at extremely short notice and did a fantastic job. A very good time was had by all and a congratulation from Northumbria police force on the professionalism of MAG's outriders/marshals was received.
Earliest entries were waiting at 8:30 am ! when the show opened, and kept turning up until just before the show closed at 4 pm, keeping the volunteer marshalls busy throughout the day and the punters coming back to see what new machinery had turned up. All of the winners were suitably happy, and the best part of the day for Robin was telling the young owner of a nicely rebuilt GP100 that he had won Best Learner Legal and finding out that he had bought it as a £40 wreck and rebuilt it himself; good to see the youth of today so eager.
Since the event we have had lots of positive comments from people who were there. Thanks to all those who attended, please come back next year and tell everyone what a good time you had, word of mouth is still the best form of advertising. Finally, sorry but we can't miss this opportunity to let readers know that next year cars will be strictly pre-book only. If you trash your bike, or yourself the day before the event give us a call, but please don't just turn up in a car as there will be no car-passes on sale at the gate. Words: Pete Davison, Bill Wilson, Robin Straughan and Jim Coxon
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All the indications were that Stormin' 2002 was going to be a lot bigger that 2001. Pre-book sales were up, attendance at The Farmyard had been high, there was no foot and mouth problem to worry about. The only potential problem was going to be the weather as the forecast for the weekend was not very promising. Sure enough after a dry start it did rain fairly heavily on Friday. In fact by early afternoon we decided to open up the overflow campsite as the main sites were fairly full and due to the increasingly slippery conditions we thought it better to give people more space to drop their bikes in.
Headlining Friday night, Queen tribute band The Royal Family (well it is Jubilee year isn't it), love Queen or hate them, everybody knows the words, so everybody can sing along, that was the idea and it worked. In all the years at Stormin' I don't think I've seen any band that has kept the crowd singing & cheering as much as TRF did, amazing.
Bike Show