DJTees Blog — Johnny's History Of Rock

The Trans-Continental Pop Festival (better known as the Festival Express) set off on a warm summer’s day in 1970. The now legendary tour was unique in that rather than flying to each city, most of the acts travelled on a chartered train. Back then it was considered old school and quaint, today, we’d more rightfully call it green. The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin (with her Full-Tilt Boogie Band), The Band, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, The Flying Burrito Brothers and Buddy Guy Blues Band all jammed, drank, slept and rode the train in between playing shows in Toronto, Winnipeg, Saskatoon...

Held on Sat Jul 18, 1970, at Soldier Field, Chicago this was a one-day festival organised by the radio station WCFL which was, at the time, one of area's big rock stations but had an interesting past. WCFL was the nation's first and longest-surviving labour radio station. Created by the Chicago Federation of Labor in 1926, it initially was listener-supported. During its first decade it offered entertainment, labour, and public affairs programming designed to serve the labour movement and working-class communities. Sounds cool.  By the 1940s WCFL had become more commercially oriented. It featured sports in the 1950s and '60s and,...

Held on Saturday June 13th, 1970 at Atlanta Stadium, Atlanta, Georgia, home of the Atlanta Braves, with a promising line-up of Albert King, Frank Zappa, Grand Funk Railroad Ike & Tina Turner, It's a Beautiful Day, Sweetwater, Ten Years After, The Allman Brothers Band and Traffic, plus local bands. As it turned out Ike & Tina Turner, Sweetwater, Albert King, Love and Ten Years After did not play. Now, this was a big stadium holding over 50,000 with the band playing on the field and fans sitting in the stands. However, such a big gap between musicians and audience is...

This was a legendary German 2-day show.  Held on Fri Apr 03, 1970 - Sat Apr 04, 1970 at Sporthalle Bergischer Ring 40 Cologne North Rhine-Westphalia 51063 West Germany, this was a very early German show and one of the first highlighting largely British progressive acts, most of which were a year or less old in the Spring of ‘70. Indeed, that’s a remarkable aspect of festival gigs at this time, many names we all became so familiar with, were just starting out. Some bands like J.C. Heavy (great name) were English (from Manchester) but were based in Germany and...

On March 19, 1967, a Trips Festival was held in the Eagles Hall in Seattle. Promoted by the wonderfully named Trips Lansing and managed by Sid Clark, the event was a combination of live music, light shows, and a variety of other sensual experiences in the tradition that had been established at the Longshoreman’s Hall in San Francisco in 1966.  The Seattle Trips Festival began at noon. More than 6,000 attendees paid $3 each to get seriously wide and high. There was a large gold Buddha statue with emerald green eyes towering over the audience in the ballroom, of course...

Held on Boxing Day 26th December 1969 in the famous Cow Palace, in Daly City, California, it was a one-day show but one which showed just how strong and popular the San Francisco/Bay Area counterculture rock scene had become in the previous 18 months, evolving from literally a handful of bands who were not signed to any labels, to a mini-industry in itself, with everyone recording albums and singles.  This show was put on by local radio station KYA 1260. They had organised the San Francisco Pop Festival in late October at the Alameda Fairgrounds. KYA was home to Tom...

This festival was held between Thursday Jul 16, 1970 and Sat Jul 18, 1970. It was a remarkable gig which ended up inspiring one of the era's great southern rock songs.  The bill was headlined by the Allman Brothers Band and also featured Big Brother, Radar, Peace Core, Wet Willie, Johnny Jenkins, Tony Joe White, Hampton Grease Band, Donnydale, Catfish Freedom, Sundown, Chakra, Hot Rain, Kallabash, Warm Stone Blind, Captain John's Fishmarket. Ah yes, the CJF, whatever became of them?   Naturally it became known as “South’s Woodstock” (everyone had their own Woodstock for a year or two) was launched at...

Ohio’s student population was a hotbed of political activism in the late 60s into the early 70s. Fired up by the Kent State killings in 1970 (inspiring CSNY’s ‘Ohio’) the University put on a lot of shows for touring rock bands.  This was a two-day show held on Fri Apr 27, 1973 and Sat Apr 28, 1973 at the Convocation Center in Athens, itself very much a place of alternative living and general left-field faroutedness. The Convo Center was a new circular ‘UFO-style’ building, of which many were built in 1960s and early 70s America. It opened in December 1968...

Held on August 3, 1969, The Mount Clemens Pop Festival was the creation of promoter David Dubay. This event was held at Sportsman’s Park near New Haven, Michigan. This was a full-day event that started at noon and ran through to midnight.  The full line up was: Alice Cooper, Cat Mother, Charlie Latimer, Country Joe & The Fish, Frijid Pink, John Mayall, Mainline, MC5, Muddy Waters, Owen Love, Rush (not the Canuck prog trio), Savage Grace, T-Bone Walker, Ted Lucas, The All Night Newsboys, The Attack, The McCoys, The Pleasure Seekers, The Red, White and Blues Band, The Stooges, The...

This one can be filed in the ‘great festivals that never happened’ drawer. Promised on the posters to be a bucolic-sounding "6 Days of Harmony, Music, Workshops & Symposiums, Camp Fire Shows & Concerts”' to be held at Wallpack Center, New Jersey, a lovely small town in a very rural farming area. A year on from Woodstock the counterculture vibe was heavy in the air. The war between The Man and The Freaks was being fought everywhere from Kent State to DC. Vietnam protests were frequent and widespread. Into this frenetic culture and political situation came this 6-day proposition for...

This was one of Michigan’s biggest festival shows at the time with over 35 bands treading the boards over two days. The rock scene in Detroit orbited around the famous Grande Ballroom, home to the MC and The Stooges as well as the James Gang, Ted’s Amboy Dukes and many more. To ensure the gig got a good crowd, they shut the Ballroom that weekend. Clever move.  Produced by Russ Gibb who ran the Ballroom and would be the man behind several other festivals in the area, it was largely regarded as a huge success by which I mean, no-one...

Held at Hughes Stadium, 3835 Freeport Blvd, Sacramento on Sunday October 15th 1967. The line-up for this one-day festival was Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, Hamilton Streetcar, The Hour Glass, Jefferson Airplane, New Breed, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Spirit, Strawberry Alarm Clock, The Sunshine Company Because 1967’s Summer of Love became so associated with San Francisco, it’d be easy to assume the freaky and the deaky had not leaked out into the rest of the state just yet. But this wouldn’t be true. The focus was on the Haight Ashbury groovers, yes, but people were getting wide and experimenting with...

Held between Saturday May 30, 1970 and Mon Jun 01, 1970 at Thunderbird Beach, Thunderbird Place, Denham Springs Louisiana 70726. Confusingly, it’s not actually a beach. Looking at it today, it looks like some sort of camping leisure area, so I assume that’s what it was back in 1970 when promoter Jim Brown put the gig together. Obviously, what I like to call the Pleasant Valley Sunday types, were not too pleased with this, fearing the usual things: drugs, nudity and public grooving by freaks. Brown had gotten threatening phone calls from local residents and the city tried to shut...

Held in the Garden Auditorium of the Pacific National Exhibition grounds from July 29-31, 1966, the Trips Festival was a multimedia event spearheaded by artist Sam Perry, a pioneer of psychedelic light shows — which may explain why the event was promoted as a multimedia sensorium of music, film, slides, and moving liquid utilizing over fifty projectors and 25,000 square feet of screen. Performers included Big Brother and the Holding Company (with Janis Joplin), the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Daily Flash, and poet Michael McClure.  Perry was interested in the ability of such a psychedelic gig to transform...