Wikipedia:
The Atlantic City Pop Festival took place in 1969 on August 1, 2 and 3rd at the Atlantic City race track, two weeks before Woodstock Festival... [T]he stage the acts performed on was created by Buckminster Fuller...Let me be your "citation needed," Wikipedia. Joni Mitchell played "Real Good For Free" and stopped in the middle to lecture us about not paying attention. We were moving around and enjoying ourselves and each other in the manner she celebrated in her song "Woodstock" (about that festival that happened 2 weeks later and where she did not appear). Sorry, Joni, we were stardust, we were golden and we didn't want to feel like a cog in something turning. She hated the hippies in person, but loved them from the distance. Fine! Who wouldn't? And now the distance is 50 years.
Memorable performances included:
- Procol Harum performing "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and a series of songs from "A Salty Dog" while the wind whipped up the lake behind them.
- Iron Butterfly's extended set of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida".
- The Chambers Brothers followed Iron Butterfly with a memorable rendition of "Time Has Come Today" that had many in the crowd dancing on the huge speakers on the stage, some even with clothes on. They were the final Friday night act.
- Dr. John the Night Tripper performing "Gris-Gris" and "Walk on Gilded Splinters."
- Little Richard filled in for Johnny Winter playing a set on a white grand piano and rocked the track as he invited the audience to come up and dance on stage.
- Janis Joplin and her Kozmic Blues Band electrified the audience with "Try", a cover of The Chantels "Maybe" and "As Good As You've Been To This World". She joined Little Richard on stage for a few tunes as well.
- Joni Mitchell performed one song, complained that people were not listening, "I've just played the same verse twice and no one noticed," then left the stage.[citation needed]...
Ah! Here's a new article in the Philadelphia Inquirer from a few days ago, "Joni Mitchell ran offstage crying, Little Richard brought the house down: Why doesn’t anyone remember the Atlantic City Pop Festival?":
As another A.C. attendee, I would argue that the overall bill at our regional fest was more interesting, eclectic, sophisticated than [Woodstock]. Our lineup boasted global stars like Afro-jazz legend Hugh Masekela and B.B. King. It delivered the roaring Buddy Rich Big Band, and likewise horn-flecked but poppy Chicago and Lighthouse groups, plus envelope-pushing Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (serving a slab of “Uncle Meat”), soul-jamming Booker T. & the MGs and Buddy Miles, plus psychedelic sets by The Chambers Brothers, Lothar and the Hand People, Dr. John, Iron Butterfly, the Tex-Mex spiced Sir Douglas Quintet, quasi-classical Procol Harum and The Byrds.... The broodish folk/jazz poet Tim Buckley connected more fervently to the New Jersey crowd than did John Sebastian at Woodstock....Yeah, I stayed at a hotel — with my parents who didn't go to the show, but did whatever in Atlantic City while I (with a friend) took the bus to the race track.
A.C. Pop didn’t suffer the indignities that made Woodstock fodder for instant fame – with headlines about overcrowding and TV news footage of Army rescue helicopters flying in talent and much-needed food....
"For most show-goers A.C. Pop was a suburban commuter festival. You went home, took a shower and slept in your own bed," said Vitka, who lucked out with a hotel room near the beach and a dream-come-true after-show party where he shared a schmooze and a joint with the Jefferson Airplane’s Jorma Kaukonen. (They’re still friends.) “At Woodstock, we abandoned our car 10 miles away and started marching to who knows where, not knowing where our next meal or bath or anything was coming from.”
“The race track had turnstiles, fencing, even private security guys on horses, guarding the perimeter,” said Herb Spivak, the senior partner of Electric Factory Concerts (now part of the Live Nation empire), who shepherded the project and cooled out potential incidents. “When a gang of Hell’s Angels-style cyclists loudly stormed the place, I calmly showed them where to safely park their bikes,” Spivak said. “But I didn’t let them in for free.”..."Cactus Tree"? I remember it as "Real Good For Free." Ah, well. There are no recordings of the performances. I was very interested in hearing Joni Mitchell and quite close to the stage when this happened. It seemed so unjust to blame us for not communicating if we noticed that she did one verse twice. The most polite and reverential thing to do if we noticed would be to trust that she did it for some unknowable good reason, and the second-most reverential thing would be to think she'd forgotten where she was in the song and made a mistake and that's okay, Joni, we love you in all your greatness and with all your flaws. But she interpreted us: We were louts who were not paying attention. We didn't deserve you. We were not worthy.
While Electric Factory Concerts, like other regional promoters) had been shopping for a festival site “ever since Monterey Pop in ‘67” had jump-started the new counterculture rock revolution, Spivak said the original hook-up with the Atlantic City Race Track was almost accidental. “I was driving down the White Horse Pike in January or February of ’69 to look for a summer rental property for the family, saw the track, and just spontaneously drove in. I found the office and asked, ‘Is the owner around?’... We made a handshake deal for the three-day festival, there and then...”...
[Joni Mitchell] freaked out when people wouldn’t stop talking, a beach ball kept flying around in front of her, and no one bothered to shout out during song four (“Cactus Tree”) that “you just repeated a verse.” Had it been a test? Mitchell ran off stage mid-song in tears.
"Nobody stopped to hear him/Though he played so sweet and high/They knew he had never been on their TV/So they passed his music by...."
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78 comments:
Blues guitarist Johnny Winter was present but unable to perform because of equipment trouble.
He's got a song about that, which ends with a solution -
Got my T.V. working
My old tube is like brand new and now I got my tv workin'
My old tube is like brandnew, yes, come over baby and I show my tube to you
Heh heh
How do you like my tube?
Very cool, great lineup.
There weren't many festivals that I can recall during my mid-teen years (1970's). Aerosmith played at my high school (1972 or so?). I saw Boz Scaggs, Fleetwood Mac, and the Eagles at Schaefer Stadium in Foxboro MA. As I recall all the music was delivered in big stadium venues. Maybe I just wasn't tuned in the festival thing.
Speaking of wealth, retirement and death: I'm trying to figure out who is now actually retired on that bill rather than dead or still on the road.
Grace Slick?
Any others?
I was working 10 hour night shifts at a textile plant in Jefferson, Wisconsin to pay for college. White privilege had not yet been implemented in my neck of the woods.
I was still pooping my diaper. What a great line up. No Sha Na Na like at Woodstock though. Only one of the people I've met who claimed to be at Woodstock said they enjoyed Sha Na Na. The rest are liars, in one way or another...
As a metalhead, I love those harder edged "Acid Rock" bands like Iron Butterfly. Bands like them, Steppenwolf, Blue Cheer, and Vanilla Fudge were basically proto-metal.
Tim Buckley was the father of Jeff Buckley, who is well known for his cover of Leonard Cohen's song "Hallelujah". Both Tim and Jeff died early. Tim OD'ed on heroin and Jeff drowned.
The Chambers Brothers followed Iron Butterfly with a memorable rendition of "Time Has Come Today" that had many in the crowd dancing on the huge speakers on the stage, some even with clothes on.
And were you one of those people dancing on the speakers with your clothes on?
My daughter is camping over at the Gorge Amphitheater with friends. I looked at the line-up of performances, but I failed to recognize any of the names.
I'm reading your poster from the Atlantic City Pop Festival, and it's like somebody pressing the car radio buttons in my head. I'm seeing faces, and hearing the music, and then I read the next name.
Car radio buttons.......shit......even my analogies are old. Do cars still have radios with pre-programmed buttons??
I know these performers save for The American Dream. Who? What? Todd Rundgren produced their first album?
"As a metalhead, I love those harder edged "Acid Rock" bands like Iron Butterfly."
Iron Butterfly played one of the most ridiculous sets I ever heard. I don't know if they had a song other than "Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida." They just kept playing it over and over. And it's already a very minimal song. It rivals "Bird is the word" for low literary effort. These are the lyrics in their entirety:
In-a-gadda-da-vida, honey
Don't you know that I love you?
In-a-gadda-da-vida, baby
Don't you know that I'll always be true?
Oh, won't you come with me
And a-take my hand?
Oh, won't you come with me
And a-walk this land?
Please take my hand
Wow. Just WOW!
How fabulous that you got to go to this concert. Green with envy :-)
Do cars still have radios with pre-programmed buttons??
Sort of. You get satellite radio capable recievers that don't have buttons per say, but touch screens with icons for channel presets.
Wow, what a great line-up of music! Well, except for the ever-boring Joni Mitchell's, that is.
Wikipedia: "According to drummer Ron Bushy, organist-vocalist Doug Ingle wrote the song one evening while drinking an entire gallon of Red Mountain wine. When the inebriated Ingle then played the song for Bushy, who wrote down the lyrics for him, he was slurring his words so badly that what was supposed to be "in the Garden of Eden" was interpreted by Bushy as "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida."
"How fabulous that you got to go to this concert. Green with envy :-)"
To help you with that, let me add that I was forced to miss the third day.
Althouse said...
But she interpreted us: We were louts who were not paying attention. We didn't deserve you. We were not worthy.
"We're not worthy... We're scum. We suck."
Atlantic City Pop Festival included Iron Butterfly. Iron Butterfly was nothing more than testosterone fueled cacophony, and I was a big fan. Their hit song "In-a-gawd-adda-vida", included an extended drum solo which was re-interpreted on junior high lunch room tables throughout the county.
Ya know....if I saw something marketed as a Pop festival today. I would think it was aimed at 14-year-old girls.
I still love listening to Joni Mitchell.
Wow, what a great line-up of musicians !!!
At the risk of sounding like an old fart, is there any lineup of contemporary pop musicians that could come anywhere near the quality of that lineup? I no longer pay attention to pop music, partly because my tastes have changed, but mainly because the quality seems so bad.
What a lineup!
I’m looking at the price. Today, that’s about $105 for three days of that music. Wow. Likely today, that area where Anne stood would be roped off for those paying huge prices.
I look back at my younger years, when I didn’t have a lot of $$ in college and my 20s, but I could go to concerts. One of my favorite Day On the Green concerts (man, I should have gone to more of those...) was Loggins & Messina, Linda Ronstadt and Eagles. 1976. Each did a full set list. In today’s money, it was under $40 a ticket. And we were set up decently close to the stage, sitting on the green.
I look at the Day in the Green database, and I missed a lot of good music in high school....
They just kept playing it over and over.
If I recall correctly, it was the entire 'B' side of their hit album, and a 15 minute recording.
It's a Seinfeld episode. A song about nothing.
I recognize most of the names and cherish many of them, but the bet here is that they are as obscure to most current concert goers as Helen Morgan or Gene Austin are to our generation......Somebody missed a sure bet by not recording those sets. When did recording concerts become a thing? Harry Belafonte and Judy Garland had some best selling concert albums, but maybe the contract rights of all the different artists was intimidating.
Tommy Duncan said...
"I was working … "
I had the same reaction but I worked during the day. You could work at age 15 then. And the nights were occupied with playing basketball. Ahh, summer times of our youth.
A couple months ago, TCM broadcast the "editor's cut" of the Woodstock movie -- almost four hours long. I recorded it at that time, but I didn't finish watching it until a week ago.
The additional stuff in the editor's cut is not worth the extra hour of watching.
Re-watching the movie now, the one performance that has stood the test of time best for me is Ten Years After performing I'm Going Home.
Chambers Brothers at 10 meters, backline of SUNN 200s, my soul was Psychedelicised! They began in the 50s still a few around on facebook an such. That album had Uptown, Like Romeo Said to Juliet and Time Has Come Today. Cooked all the way through! YouTube "Uptown" and hold on tight.
I think I should have written "director's cut".
Wow, I doubt 1% of the population of any age could identify Helen Morgan and Gene Austin.
Helen Morgan was from my home town, and I know of Gene Austin because I like music from that era (1920s-30s).
I’m sorry you missed the third day which, with Janis Joplin on the bill, would’ve been the highlight of the festival for me. There were great performers scheduled every day but if I had to miss one day, it would be day one since the two bands I would consider absolute must-see material are Jefferson Airplane on day 2 and Janis Joplin on day 3.
Of course, since I was only 7 on the dates of the festival, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed any of it all that much.
Say what you will about InnaGadda..., but lotsa nookie was happenin to that song!!
I've never heard of the A.C. pop fest and I'll bet few have heard of SE Michigan 's version: Goose Lake.
I saw Joni play outdoors on the Boston Common in 1983 and she did the same thing, walking off after a few songs complaining about the crowd (she works best in a dark, quiet theater, I guess). After a break she came back and finished the show and it appeared she had had a few drinks backstage to give her the courage to continue.
Sounds EXACTLY like the Miami Pop Festival I attended in January 1969. It was even put on by Michael Lang. The Flatt and Scruggs band sandwiched in between Terry Reid and Stepenwolf were beloved by the crowd of hippies. I was sitting close to the stage and you could see them turning and looking at each other in happy amused bewilderment at the love they were recieving from the hippies. The crowd made those suit wearing cowboy hatted musicians play "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" twice. Standing extended ovations. Even at this 50 year remove I still get choked up. It was indeed a peace, love and understanding festival.
>>Blogger BUMBLE BEE said...
Say what you will about InnaGadda..., but lotsa nookie was happenin to that song!!<<
Not so sure about the nookie, but whole lotsa acid trippin' was happenin to that song. (The two didn't usually work so well together. A friend told me.)
That music was fun back in the day, and I enjoyed it (mostly on the radio). Listening to it on the radio then, usually while driving or doing something else (in Boston, there was a top-40 station everyone listened to, forget what it was now), meant that the songs and groups cycled through the air, generating memories of chords and refrains and groups only loosely connected together. It was just nice stuff to listen, party and dance to, without making demands for much actual attention. Never saw much point in learning all the lyrics to any of the songs, though. Didn't seen good enough to warrant it and, anyway, there was always another good one coming along, pushing yesterday's hit down the top-40 list.
The songs are as fun and familiar now as they ever were, and in the same chopped-up way, while still not demanding much attention. But I don't go looking for it very much any more. What that music didn't do then, and doesn't do today, is pull me into its own universe of feelings and sounds.
In my blog about the movie Dirty Dancing, I have published an article titled The Change in Popular Music Between 1963 and 1987.
The movie includes music from two periods:
1) 1956-1963
2) 1987
In other words, the movie does not include any music from the interval 1964-1986.
The popular music that dominated that interval featured distorted electric guitar. That sound dominates the music in, for example, the Atlantic City Pop Festival and in the Woodstock Festival. If you would hear such music in a movie that takes place in 1963, you would feel that the music is wrong.
Likewise, such music sounds wrong in a movie that takes place after 1987.
Music featuring distorted electric guitar evokes in most people the period 1964-1986.
istening to it on the radio then, usually while driving or doing something else (in Boston, there was a top-40 station everyone listened to, forget what it was now)
It was WBZ (AM). In Chicago we could get it late at night, when the atmospherics were just right.
Too bad more sixties era artists didn't fly Buddy Holly Airlines.
I am Laslo.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the use the electric guitar as a pop music band's centerpiece, and the cult of the lead guitarist, was still in its early stages in 1963. Before 1963 you had Dick Dale and surf music; and blues guitar, which most white had yet to discover. I remember that the Yardbirds as the first really cool rock band to focus attention on the lead guitarist.
If I recall correctly, it was the entire 'B' side of their hit album, and a 15 minute recording.
It was a hit song because of the radio airplay it got.
A late night DJ (like i was); could put it on, go to the john, and still have time for a quick smoke
This is THE REASON the song got airplay
My mentor was vagabonding down the west coast in the late 1960s and ended up in Monterey, California at the time of the Monterey Pop Festival. His most distinct memory from the concert was Janis Joplin singing in a mini skirt while swigging from a Jack Daniels bottle.
@Mike Sylvester:
Music featuring distorted electric guitar evokes in most people the period 1964-1986.
Are you familiar with Rick Beato's YouTube channel, Everything Music? There is tons of good content there, including a four-part history of the guitar that covers the periods from 1929-1969, 1970-1979, 1980-1989, and 1990-1999.
This is THE REASON the song got airplay
It's been discussed here before, but this was also the advent of FM. Radio stations without any serious advertisers, lots of air time to fill, AND DJ's looking for a smoke.
Chambers Brothers: Time Has Come Today
My father has that on a record and used to occasionally play it LOUD. I remember him telling me he remembered first hearing the long instrumental part that starts towards psychedelic and feeling that it was something new and important--some sort of departure. He had pretty long hair for a while back then but I don't think he was really a hippie.
My memory comports with madAsHell's: IAGDV was the entire side of that album and other tracks (listened to once, perhaps) were on the other side. I imagine that my poor parents must have thought that I had gone insane, repeating IAGDV so often; to their credit, I don't recall ever having been warned off of it, though. My infatuation with 'pop music' didn't much survive Iron Butterly.
It's been discussed here before, but this was also the advent of FM.
The beginning of "underground" (rock) FM..and the beginning of the end for anything else on FM except on public radio stations.
Bleah...
That is an incredible lineup. I would have hated getting Little Richard instead of Johnny Winter, at least at that time.
I remember getting that Iron Butterfly album with IAGDV. Listened to it once. I was done with it and them.
J. Farmer, thanks for the tip.
Not worthy of Joni Mitchell is low indeed.
Sounds like a much better concert than Woodstock. Less screwing though I suppose.
49 years ago I went to a one-day music festival in Minneapolis. Six groups, I've forgotten four of them. Richie Havens opened, and was excellent. Sly and the Family Stone was the closer. They were at least an hour late, and when they finally came on Sly was so drunk his "singing" was awful.
Still, the day was worth the money.
" They were at least an hour late, and when they finally came on Sly was so drunk his "singing" was awful."
I saw Sly and the Family Stone at the first Summerfest concert in Milwaukee. An inebriated Sly fell off the stage.
Did the original poster say Buddy Miles instead of Buddy Rich?
Too bad you didn't get to hear Johnny Winter, but that's a festival I would have enjoyed. A few legends in that line up...
“Car radio buttons.......shit......even my analogies are old.”
Well, Microsoft Windows has radio buttons but I’d bet very few people younger than 55 or so know they’re called that because only one of them can be pushed in at a time.
Car radio buttons were awesome—pull them out to set them or push them in to select them. “Clunk.”
Now there’s some complex method for setting their electronic equivalents that nobody ever remembers. Maybe hold it down for 5 seconds? Shit, that didn’t work and now I’ve lost the station.
Oh, and get off my lawn.
I've been lucky enough to see many great acts (admittedly some in the twilight of they careers) including
Al Stewart
B.B King
Blondie
Bob Dylan
Boz Scaggs
Bruce Springsteen
Count Basie
Dick Dale
Elton John
Fleetwood Mac ("classic" lineup)
Foreigner
George Thoroughgood
Lionel Hampton
Paul McCartney
Paul Simon
Prince
Roger Whittaker
Slam Stewart
Steve Miller
The Beach Boys (several lineups including the "classic" one)
The Doobie Brothers
The Eagles
The Everly Brothers
The Explorers Club
The Swimming Pool Qs
Tony Bennett
Van Morrison
Very few of those at "festivals" though. I always have the feeling that with regular rock acts routinely running hours behind, putting together a gaggle is always a potential disaster. Had the chance to go to "Farm Aid" locally several times and always passed. Also with age comes the desire for nice seats..
'At the risk of sounding like an old fart, is there any lineup of contemporary pop musicians that could come anywhere near the quality of that lineup?'
You know how much I enjoy recorded and live music - from the sixties to today - and I guarantee you the answer is no, James K.
Joni Mitchell was the Marianne Williams of the 1960s .She was more sensitive than... than anyone else ever.
I had no idea you were that old, Ann. Me I rounded out the decade at Altamont. You Altantic City Late for Woodstock Poppers were pussies.
What a great post, about a great story. I wondered why I had never seen video or film of this, and it seems that precious little was recorded at the time, although there are soundless tidbits on YouTube and still images elsewhere.
{#19}
A few weeks before Woodstock (which I also attended) I went to the Newport Jazz Festival. That year they went big with rock bands. The two I remember as being particularly good were Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull. Not as famous or as much of a scene as Woodstock. But in many ways more fun.
Yeah, there was some good music 50 years ago. OK. So what? If you didn't personally create it, you got nothing to be proud of.
Craziest thing is going on you-tube and seeing comments on old Rock and Roll music that start with "Wish I could live back then" and "They really had music back in those days".
No dude. You have their music. And you have the music of today. You're much better off.
Extended version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida? How many suicides were there?
Sorry, Ann, but Joni's version of "Woodstock" isn't CSN's. Hers is mournful, plaintive, built on the awareness that this was all transitory and possibly illusory. I'd be pissed, too, if I were her, playing a song like that in front of a raucous rock crowd. Which is why she should've never been there.
I have never heard of this festival but I’ve heard about Woodstock and Altamont about a billion times.
Lineup here seems better than either of the other two.
Why IS Woodstock so famous?! I’ve never questioned this ... is it due to the movie? That doesn’t seem likely.
I have no idea really.
and when they finally came on Sly was so drunk his "singing" was awful.
Sly was notorious for being late, and stoned. It might explain why he doesn't have any gigs at the Indian casinos.
Some people are really attached to the music of their youth. Its "Their music". I can understand that, if you were a MUSICIAN. But most people aren't. To most people "their music" was just crap they listened to when they were 15-19. They danced to. They fucked to it. And it became "their music".
Memories..wispy corners of my mind.
But it somehow gets imprinted on their brain. And its the Greatest music ever.
That's a nice memory to have Althouse.
I didn’t go to Woodstock because it cost $17. Didn’t know it would end up being free. Had a ride. The person I would have gone with assured me afterward that I was better off. He said, and I remember the quote, “You had to be part pig to enjoy it” (referring to the mud and rain).
Wow that's pretty cool.
Many thanks for bringing back the memories. I drove up from Marylandn with my brother and one of his friends with orders from my parents to keep an eye on them. The set of acts was marvelous, but sleeping the back of a Volkswagon was real uncomfortable.
I wonder how many of the performers are dead? I wonder how many died from drugs or booze? I bet a lot - and they are SO revered. They were sort of like the first clown pioneers marching out into unknown clown-world frontier. If not for them where would we be today?? Thank you clown pioneers!! Thank you!!!
I was there and wonder whether our hostess and I ever brushed elbows in the scrum. Was with a biker guy who stood on the railing on the upper tier and pretended to falloff, to the screams of the crowd. Chambers Brothers triggered a big snake dance. Procol lHarum first brought the crowd alive with Also Strachey Zarathustra from 2001 a space oddessey.
I was spoiled in college with the acts that were on campus, including the Supremes, the Shirelles, the Four Seasons, the Temptations and Barbara Streisand. The most ever paid at the time was 35K for Streisand’s appearance.
Ann, Like you I went to Atlantic City and not Woodstock. I had also been to Newport and in both cases they announced from the stage "See you at Woodstock!". I knew it was going to be a cluster and didn't go even though I lived just a few hours away. I also remember at Atlantic City Hugh Masekala getting all pissed off at the audience not giving him their rapt attention.
Frank......
Wiped the sweat off bb kings forehead he came off stage.....grace slick gave me her ac official badge.......
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