Sustain pedal: Bike-powered music in Hackney

Yesterday the Bicycle Music Festival came to London.

A collective of San Francisco musicians called Pleasant Revolution started their bike-based European tour, in which the electricity powering their PAs is pedal-generated by members of the audience.

(The show went on despite one of their number coming a cropper on a Surrey hill en route to the gig.)


We caught them in a hot and sunny London Fields, the Hackney park just north of Broadway Market.

This short video of the occasion shows one of them, CelloJoe, in action. And no, I've no idea why one of the cyclists is pedalling backwards.

They're in Regents Park until 7pm today, and further 'guerrilla gigs' are threatened round the capital too.



I quite like this idea of audience control over power supply in gigs. Especially if the guitar solo is starting to go on a bit.