Concert 10 - Pocono International Raceway, Long Pond, Pennsylvania, July 8 & 9, 1972

This was a successful festival held at Pocono International Raceway in Long Pond, Pennsylvania, on July 8 and 9, 1972. Over 200,000 rock and roll people showed up. It was wet and cold and the whole place became a big churn of mud. Yay! It's just like Woodstock, man. 

By 1972, more concert promoters were getting the hang on putin on festival and making money from them Concert production was handled by Concert 10, Inc. Rookie concert producers Irving Reiss, vice president of the Candygram Company, and attorney George Charak put US$250,000 in escrow to avoid problems paying the artists faced by previous festivals. That meant bands were confident of getting paid.

Better still, these people also hired 66 people from Bill Graham's team  to make sure the sound was good. 

300 security people backed by University karate clubs maintained order - I can't see people raging on acid would be put off by someone doing karate moves, somehow! The raceway's hospital was staffed by six physicians and eight nurses. 65 people from the Lackawanna County Drug Council were on site to handle adverse drug reactions. The concert was promoted with radio commercials on rock music radio stations in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Ticket prices were set at $11, with 90,000 tickets sold in advance of the show. Nice bread.

The July 8 concert was scheduled from 1:00 to 11:00 p.m., but due to intermittent weather-related delays, ended at 8:45 a.m. on July 9.

Black Sabbath and Badfinger were scheduled to appear, but canceled. According to Don Heckman of the New York Times, Edgar Winter's band received the greatest reaction from the audience, with long, bluesy rock jams like "Tobacco Road" which is also on his excellent 'Roadworks' album, isn't it?

The full line up was really good - plenty of superb blues rock and a smattering of boogie and prog. 

July 8
Mother Night 
Claire Hamill (from far away Middlesbrough)
The Groundhogs
Ramatam (Mitch Mitchell played with them) 
Bull Angus
Cactus
Edgar Winter 
LACE PAVEMENT .(who were Lace Pavement and why were they called Lace Pavement?)

July 9
Emerson, Lake & Palmer – The entire ELP performance was recorded and released on CD box set in 2017.
Faces w/ Rod Stewart
Humble Pie
The J. Geils Band
Three Dog Night 

This was a festival at which everyone got paid, everyone got wet and no-one minded. The dysfunction that had characterised festivals just a couple of years earlier was being ironed out and we start to see how festivals would develop into massive money-making events in later years..