October 1970
A Minimum Security Bash
Liza Williams
Part I: The Pureshit Revolution Goose Lake, the 380 acre site of a three day pop festival, in Jackson, Michigan. It is a green countryside about 40 miles from Ann Arbor where the Blues Festival (scheduled the same weekend) draws a crowd of about 10,000.
Dear CREEM: I really don’t care if Ian Anderson does not display proper eating habits, Jeff Sherwood. The man proves that he is indeed not the introverted person he claims to be because of confidence in choosing salad dressing. Terrific logic from another arm-chair psychologist.
ROCK AND ROLL NEWS
NASHVILLE — Cetron Records is releasing a recording of Bobby Seale's contempt citation, a word for word documentation of Judge Julius Hoffman’s nova oven indictment of Seale for daring to desire to have his own choice of counsel. The double record set features a group of L.A. actors reading the relevant parts of the transcript and ends with a smuggled recording of Seale himself, recorded in jail in Connecticut two months ago.
The War Gomes Home
Dave Marsh
ROYAL OAK, Mich. - The war is all the way home now. The children of the suburbs have made their final break, unconsciously, have moved to fight in its very streets; as evidenced here in the last week of August. No blacks, no students, no commies . . . just long-haired dope-smoking high school students.
Sly, Stones, Rocks & Bottles
Eliot Wald
There we are at Grant Park — an hour late and no music yet? As we enter the bandshell area, we meet a friend who tells us that the audience has just rushed the stage, and that Sly won’t play until the stage is cleared. Within two minutes, we hear another story — Sly ain’t gonna show.
Dr. John in Babylon
Dave Marsh
THE GEOMETRY OF ROCK The true musical geniuses of our age are generally frustrating figures. By their very nature they refuse to figure in with the mass of musical muck that is constantly perpetrated by AM and FM top-forty heads. To attempt to explain any of them, it’s necessary to go beyond the rock mainstream but still remain aware of it, in order that there be some sort of reference point for the reader or the author.
It was a festival.
Lisa Robinson
We almost didn’t go to Powder Ridge on Thursday, July 30th, because the reports between the Blood, Sweat and Tears singles on the radio were ominous. 'There would be road blocks’, ‘there was a huge traffic jam’, ‘National Guardsmen were just waiting to.
Return of A2 Blues
Rich Mangelsdorff
Last year the Ann Arbor blues festival established itself as instant grandaddy of its line, especially by hipping everyone to the plethora of talent which makes every blues festival a sure artistic success. This year they decided to make a move in the direction of being a real biggie, which sounded too good to be true, until the closing feature acts got squashed out of form trying to meet the imposed ‘curfews’.
New York Pop Flops
Toby B. Mamis
Randalls Island’s New York Pop festival is over, but its meaning lingers on, haunting New York City, and affecting several rock festivals that have happened since. New York Pop was the festival where the radicals took over and were supposed to run the show but it didn’t work out; where Sly and the Family Stone didn’t play and there wasn’t a riot; where Vietcong and North Vietnamese flags flew from the stadium flagpoles, higher than the American flag; where nobdoy got paid in full; where one of the promoters' men got beat up at a ticket gate; where what a Grand Jury may soon decide was extortion, but really wasn’t, took place; and where there was one sixth the number of people expected yet four times the number of people than there were tickets sold.
Eagle Rock Bites the Dust
Ben Edmonds
BOSTON — The Boston College Eagle Rock Festival, scheduled for Friday, August 14, was among the most bizarre casualties of this summer festival season. On Wednesday the 12th, just two days before the festival was scheduled to take place, Boston Mayor Kevin White refused to issue the necessary permit for the festival, citing inadequate security and strongly implying paranoia as his reasons for the refusal.
An Editorial Festivals Suck
THE EDITORS
Festivals suck. Though that statement may seem harsh, it would seem the only tenable position anyone viewing our culture, and the rock and roll scene in particular, can hold at this time. Festivals are a near-deadly phenomenon that has assumed near-deadly Frankenstein proportions; they’re a monster that has youth culture backed against the wall.
WOOD STOCK
ABE PECK
An Interview with Johnny Winter And Rick Derringer
The very idea of Johnny Winter playing with the old McCoys is a little unnerving. All trite considerations (i.e., “Two guitarists?”, “Rock and roll?”) aside, the essential question remained: What the hell kind of music could they make? It turned out they could produce the most super-eclectic music in Amerika; like the Rolling Stones, they’re not afraid to attempt anything and, on record at least, they generally pull it off admirably.
Looney Toons
Dave Marsh
Some weeks it seems like all of hippiedom over-dopes and under-drinks. Contrast euphoria, generally non-productive, to depression, generally fruitful, if only as a way out. Listen to the music . . . depression music, if you can dig that, is the magic music, the music to put you deeper in and farther out, all at the same time.
Somebody's watchin' you
Tony Reay
So you go in at 6:30, and you notice first of all that there’s no sound check and you remember that Cocker and Leon spent five days practicing and you don’t know if even Leon is capable of putting an eight piece band together on Wednesday and playing the Eastown Friday and Saturday without so much as a soundcheck.
RECORDS
Dave Marsh
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN - DEVOTION - DOUGLAS 4 TONY WILLIAMS LIFETIME -TURN IT OVER - POLYDOR 24-4021 This is the real shit. John McLaughlin plays guitar with real self-assurance because he is a guitarist, not some half-assed replica thereof. Tony Williams is, perhaps, the greatest drummer presently tromping the planet.