DJTees Blog — Rock Festivals

There is a genuine mystery about this festival. It’s another for the ‘it never happened’ file and in that, no so unusual. As we know, The Man was always trying to fend off the freaks with legislation, sometimes successfully, mostly not. But the Mid Winter Pop Festival doesn’t fall into that category.  Blythe is a wee town on the border between California and Arizona, right out in the desert. Basically head east from Palm Desert on the 10 and you end up there. I love that road, it’s so elemental and wild out there. You feel so tiny and transient...

The Toronto Rock and Roll Revival was held at Varsity Stadium, at the University of Toronto, to an audience of over 20,000. The originally listed performers for the festival were local band Whiskey Howl, Bo Diddley, Chicago, Junior Walker and the All Stars, Tony Joe White, Alice Cooper, Chuck Berry, Cat Mother and the All Night News Boys, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent, Little Richard, Doug Kershaw and The Doors. Kim Fowley was listed as the Master of Ceremonies. Screaming Lord Sutch was later added to the bill, as was the Toronto area band Flapping. What sort of a name...

What interests me about this show is that, by any usual definition, it wasn’t a ‘festival.’ Rather, it was a regular gig. Three bands played Tim Buckley headlined, supported by Iron Butterfly, Blood Sweat And Tears. It was held indoors at the 3,000 capacity Cleveland Public Hall on April 18, 1969. Tickets $5.50 in advance $6.50 on the door. Now, the fact that it was christened a ‘festival’ shows, I think, how the word was becoming even in 1969 as a kind of dog whistle for rock fans, freaks and hippies. This would normally have just been ‘a concert’ but...

Sky River was unusual, if not unique, in that it was held for three consecutive years from 1968-70. 1970’s was held between Fri Aug 28, 1970 and Tue Sep 08, 1970 at the Edwin Tate ranch, Clark County, Lehr Road, Washougal, Washington. Yes it was 10 days long!  All Sky River fests were very hippie affairs and sound brilliant. With over 10,000 there each day and 40 bands performing across the 10 days, there were also a lot of alternative lifestyle events. At one point 15 couples got married on the stage and then, on the last day of the...

The second Sky RiverFestival was held on from Sat Aug 30, 1969 - Mon Sep 01, 1969 at Rainier Hereford Ranch, Tenino, Washington. The promoters said Sky River II was meant to “combat racism, hatred, violence, and poverty” which sounds cool. Did the locals want such altruism on the doorstep? What do you think?   For most of the month preceding the festival, it looked as if the event would never take place. Under intense pressure from a local leader of the John Birch Society, police, conservatives, and the Catholic Archdiocese, virtually every county in the area passed laws prohibiting or severely...

The Day on the Green gigs were legendary. They took place in Oakland Coliseum across from San Francisco and were put on by Bill Graham of Fillmore fame. They ran from 1973 through to 1992, a year after Bill’s tragic early death in that 1991 helicopter crash, but their peak years were mid70s to early 80s when he would compile some truly amazing bills, often featuring local SF bands like Steve Miller, Sammy Hagar, Journey, 415 and many more.  Perhaps the peak years for people of our tastes were 1976-78. Look at these bills.  Day On The Green # 1...

It's 1968 and we're on Betty Nelson's organic raspberry farm just outside of Sultan, Washington, about an hour's drive from Seattle. The fact that it was an organic raspberry farm, should give you a clue that it was run by someone sympathetic to the burgeoning counterculture revolution. An organisation called The New American Community was a liberal sort of aggregation headed up by a local college professor, who I imagine, looked like a cross between Jerry Garcia and an owl. He was John Chambless, he got a lease off Betty and set about convincing Mr and Mrs Straight that Freaksville...

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...