DJTees Blog — Johnny's History Of Rock

Big Rock Pow-Wow '69 took place on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, May 23, 24, and 25, 1969, at the Hollywood Seminole Indian Reservation in West Hollywood, Florida. Other artists who performed at the festival included Grateful Dead, Johnny Winter, Sweetwater, Joe South, Aum, NRBQ, Rhinoceros, Muddy Waters, and the Youngbloods. A band called Sun Country played as NRBQ. They were started by brothers Lee & Stephen Tiger, sons of Buffalo Tiger, a chief of the Floridian Miccosukee Tribe. As teens they gigged in Miami garage bands including the Renegades and a brief incarnation of NRBQ which was how they were...

This was held in Rome and was intended to rival the USA's 1967 Monterey Pop, Miami Pop and Newport Pop festivals of 1968. It was arranged amidst campus occupation by students at the University of Rome and riots as students were stopped from storming the US Embassy in an anti-war protest. Many artists took part, including Pink Floyd. the Byrds, Captain Beefheart and Donovan. However, when The Move set fire to the stage with their pyrotechnics at the end of their set, they were arrested by the police for doing so. Dude, it’s just some pyro, it’s not a war, which...

This festival is one that belongs in the ‘It never happened’ file. However, unlike many that languish there, this one had real scale and ambition. Booked to happen on Sat Sep 06, 1969 - Sun Sep 07, 1969 on the Capilano Indian Reserve, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the Thunderbird Peace Festival was set to be a really high profile affair. If it had happened it would have had a genuine claim to have been Canada’s Woodstock.  The lineup for the show was Class A rock and psychedelic bands. Jimi Hendrix, Steppenwolf, The Steve Miller Blues Band, Country Joe & the...

The Texxas World Music Festival, which was held annually in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas from 1978 until 1987, showcased the best in hard rock at that time. The inaugural event in 1978 was a massive bill for top bands and great up and comers. The Texxas Jam was created by Louis Messina, promoter of Pace Concerts in Houston, and David Krebs, manager at the time of Ted Nugent and Aerosmith. The promoters wanted to emulate Cal Jam II also held that summer, not least because it had been so profitable. So they put together an absolutely irresistible roster of...

This was a gathering of the tribes in St Louis on Saturday Mar 07, 1970 sold as 'An Indoor Woodstock' (of course it was!!!) and 8,000 hippies and freaks turned up at the Convention Hall for a nine hour show which featured Aardvark, Alvin Pivil, Blue Magoos, Chuck Berry, Country Joe & The Fish, Cradle, Frijid Pink, Jay Barry, Murge, Pax, Rotary Connection, Spur, Steam Stop, The Amboy Dukes, The Frost, The Pleasure Seekers, The Stooges, Touch A lot of those were local bands, of course. You’ve got to wonder what Chuck Berry thought of gigs like this. He really played...

Super Concert '70 was a one-day music festival held at the Deutschlandhalle in Berlin, Germany, on September 4, 1970. It went down in history for one reason; it was to be Jimi Hendrix’s penultimate live show. And as it happened it was not a happy experience because he was booed. Robin Trower, then the guitarist in Procol Harum remembers it well.  “We opened up the show for him. He was huge. Obviously, he was a phenomenal player, but it wasn't a good night for him, unfortunately. The band wasn't really cooking, the audience started booing and it was a bit...

No, not that Hollywood. This is the one in Staffordshire, England which was about as far away from the counter culture movement in USA as you were likely to find. The Hollywood Music Festival was held on a pig farm near Newcastle-under-Lyme on 23 and 24 May 1970. It was notable for the first ever performance of Grateful Dead in the UK. It was also one of the first gatherings of British progressive bands. Held across two days these were the proposed line-ups. SATURDAY, May 23Afternoon: Lord Sutch And His Heavy Friends Pete Townshend and Jimmy Page(yeah, right), Radha Krishna...

The Seattle Pop Festival was held 25-27 July at Gold Creek Park, Woodenville, Washington. It was $6 for one day, $15 for all three.  70,000 attended and it was promoted by Boyd Grafmyre, who had previously worked with the New American Community at the successful and highly groovy not-for-profit Sky River Festival in '68, also in Washington. This was one of the first not to use any regular or off-duty Police officers as security. He brought in 150 youth volunteers from Seattle's Head Start programme. Well at least he didn't get the Hells Angels in! They were ticket collectors, maintenance...

This festival turned out to be a heavy scene, but the first thing we need to establish here is that it was not held at Newport, it was held in Northridge, in the San Fernando Valley, near LA. Famous for being miles of tract homes set in a really hot valley. The event was organized by Mark Robinson who was then aged just 25. He was one of the three promoters of the original Newport Pop Festival in 1968 held, again, not in Newport, but in Costa Mesa. The other two promoters of the '68 event were Gary R. Schmidt...

If you live in New York and are of a certain age, you will likely fondly remember the Schaefer Music Festival gigs which ran from 1967 to 1976 and were held at Wollman Rink in Central Park. The first was held in 1967, sponsored by Rheingold Breweries and was just two shows. July 5: The Young Rascals; The Jimi Hendrix Experience; Len Chandler and July 7 when Phil Oches played. But in 1968 the F. & M. Schaefer Brewing Company took over the sponsorship, guaranteed to make up the $200,000 difference between costs and $1 ticket sales  This was the...

This went down in history for one very good reason. It was Jimi Hendrix's last gig. Three young Germans had a dream: Helmut Ferdinand, Christian Berthold and Tim Sievers planned a European answer to Woodstock. Inspired by the Isle of Wight, they liked the idea of having the festival on an island, which quickly led to the isle of Fehmarn, a well connected small island between West Germany and Denmark. What could go wrong? Oh, just about everything. The date was set for 4th-6th of September, 1970. They planned for 30 to 40 bands and an audience of about 60,000...

In the first half of 1970, plans were afoot for a festival in Middlefield, Connecticut. So here's a quiz question: what was so special about the festival at Powder Ridge Ski Area, which was attended by around 30,000 people? Answer: it never happened. Or rather, it did. But no bands played. Even so, everyone got real high, which is the important thing.  The establishment got pretty wise, pretty quickly after Woodstock and all the festival fun of 1969. Local communities mobilised to prevent 30 of 48 planned festivals in 1970. Boo. Festivals were seen as political events, which sometimes they...

Festivals had been held for many years in the jazz world but the rock festival as we would come to know it had its seeds in the Trips Festivals put on by Fillmore impresario Bill Graham in January 1966 at the Longshoreman's Hall in San Francisco. The house band for these events was the Grateful Dead and they were billed as an attempt to achieve the psychedelic experience without drugs (yeah right), though acid, still legal at the time, was available and widely consumed. Big Brother And The Holding Company played along with other local bands and the events were...