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Anniversary, Festivals, Music et al, Music of the 60s

Atlantic City Pop Festival

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Atlantic City Pop Festival

August 1, 2, & 3, 1969
Atlantic City Racetrack

1969 festival #30

1969 Atlantic City Pop Festival

Atlantic City Pop Festival

Atlantic City

The Atlantic City Pop Festival of 1969. The penultimate festival. This was 1969’s 30th festival, the first occurring back in May with the Aquarian Family Festival. On my list of festivals for that summer, Atlantic City’s was the last before THE Woodstock Music and Art Fair in mid-August.

Herb, Allen and Jerry Spivak, Shelley Kaplan and Larry Magid produced the event and not unlike Woodstock Ventures, they envisioned an event that featured top-flight entertainment along with about 70 craft and food booths in a relaxed, outdoor atmosphere.

According to a 2011 Atlantic City Weekly article, “The festival was a sellout with 40,000 in attendance each day…. 
In the end, the musicians were the glue that kept the festival together with their performances. Procul Harum’s show on the first was a highlight, spotlighting the guitar work of guitarist Robin Trower and organist Matthew Fisher.”

Atlantic City Pop Festival

Nice mixed line-up

There are not many criticisms about the Woodstock line-up. The typical statement both from those who were there and those not  is that it was the greatest lineup ever. Of course, that’s not true. And greatness is in the ear of the listener.

For all the great acts that appeared at Woodstock, it did not have the mix that the Atlantic City Pop Festival had.

Friday 1 August

  • Biff Rose*
  • Aum
  • Lothar and the Hand People
  • Booker T. & The M.G.s
  • Chicago Transit Authority
  • Crosby, Stills & Nash
  • Iron Butterfly
  • Johnny Winter
  • Joni Mitchell
  • Procol Harum
  • Santana Blues Band
  • The Chambers Brothers*
  • Tracy Nelson & Mother Earth

Saturday 2 August
  • The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown
  • Creedence Clearwater Revival
  • Hugh Masekela
  • Jefferson Airplane
  • Lighthouse
  • Cass Elliot
  • Tim Buckley.

Sunday 3 August
Atlantic City Pop Festival

No Shows and walk offs

The reason a few band’s names are crossed out is that although scheduled, they did not appear. Crosby, Stills, and Nash because of Nash’s illness; Johnny Winter because his equipment didn’t arrive on time; and though Joni Mitchell did sing a few songs, the audience was not as receptive as she wanted and she walked off. Biff Rose, the festival’s MC, filled in and so became part of the list.

Joni was certainly not going to compose an ode to Atlantic City after that experience!

Notice the names like Buddy Rich, the Mothers of Invention, BB King, Hugh Masekela, and Procol Harum. Great choices and there were no equivalents at Woodstock.

The differences

The differences between the two events are even fewer than the differences between it and other similar festivals that summer. Most had great line ups. Most were multiple days. And AC was in the NY media’s circle of coverage: a great advantage that Woodstock also had.

The Atlantic City Pop Festival was in a race-track. No camping as at Woodstock, thus much less an opportunity for attendee to bond and become part of a whole weekend.

Though, in the comments below, a Norman Gaines writes: “No camping as at Woodstock”. Wrong, bad research. We camped ON THE GREENS  at Atlantic City Friday and Saturday nights at the invitation of the racetrack owners and it was announced over the PA system. We had running water, real restrooms and were able to get cleaned up each morning before the show started on Saturday and Sunday. We had real food available. Also, we had direct bus shuttles from the AC bus terminal to the track when the festival ended. And shaded seats. I was at Woodstock and AC. AC was the better of the two because it wasn’t a disaster, like we all know Woodstock was. And respectfully, it had a much more eclectic lineup.”

I’ll defend my research by saying that

  • the organizers did not provide the camping (as Woodstock Ventures had), but were invited by the racetrack owners.
  • Woodstock had running water. It was an amazing system of pipes and faucets surrounding the area.
  • While Mr Gaines Woodstock experience may have been a “disaster,” mine certainly wasn’t. Discomfort and disaster are two different things.
  • And re the AC lineup, see above, but I’ll repeat: “For all the great acts that appeared at Woodstock, it did not have the mix that the Atlantic City Pop Festival had.”

And as far as other differences, I’ll mention two more:

  1. Estimates are about 100,000 people attended each day. A great number, but far less than the “astronomic” half-million in Bethel.
  2. Finally, like nearly every other festival that summer, there is no official audio or visual record of the event. Over the years, various people have written their impressions, but the organizers did not do more than create a great weekend.

There is this brief home movie and sound of Janis:

A March 8, 2020 article from NJ.com relates a bit more about the concert including a few photos by Peter Stupar who hitchhiked to the concert from Potomac, MD.  Stupar’s site has many more of his pictures from that weekend.

Woodstock

Woodstock Ventures did not set out to create a legacy by filming and recording their event, but in my opinion, their festival would simply be another one on that summer’s long list of festivals had they not done those things.

Atlantic City Pop Festival

Next 1969 festival: Ann Arbor Blues Festival

Anniversary, Cinema, Cultural milestone, Music et al, Music of the 60s

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

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Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Byrds, “Ballad of Easy Rider” (Roger McGuinn)
The river flows, it flows to the sea
Wherever that river goes that’s where I want to be
Flow river flow, let your waters wash down
Take me from this road to some other town
All he wanted was to be free
And that’s the way it turned out to be
Flow river flow, let your waters wash down
Take me from this road to some other town
Flow river flow, past the shady trees
Go river go, go to the sea
Flow to the sea
Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Woodstock away

When Michael Lang and the other Woodstock Ventures partners agreed that they’d do not just an outdoor festival, but an outdoor festival in the country, away from the city, back to Nature, away from the Establishment’s concrete lives, they were tapping into an old American view of the freedom of travel.

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Premiered July 14, 1969

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Road stories

We humans love stories and we particularly love stories about journeys. Ever since Homer sat down and recited the tale of Odysseus and his attempt to return home to Penelope, multitudes of tales have followed creating variations on that theme.

The list of those variations is far longer than any little blog like this one could delineate, but Mr Chaucer’s 1478  Canterbury Tales comes to mind as does Jack Kerouac’s 1957 On the Road. And of course Mr Tolkien’s tale of Mr B Baggins of Bag End.

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Road films

As soon as Americans started to build roads for motorized vehicles, a plethora of films about people and their travels ensued. The movie of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath novel couldn’t have happened without cars and roads. At least not in the same way.

Visit the Federal Highway Commission’s site for its extensive list of road-related films.

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Easy Rider

By the summer of 1969 the cultural revolution was in high gear. Rock festivals dotted the summer calendar. War protests continued. The anti-hero reigned. In 1967, The Graduate had shown us the suburban anti-hero. Easy Rider introduced  us to two western hippie anti-heroes.

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Captain America & Wyatt

Peter Fonda played Captain America and Dennis Hopper played Billy. Both dress in a counter-cultural style: Fonda in a leather jacket with an American Flag stenciled on it;  Hopper in leather pants and jacket in imitation of some Native American tribal dress.

They leave California with a gas tank filled with drug money, intending to head east to New Orleans and thence to Florida. Such a trip is the opposite direction of what traditional American history books told of Manifest Destiny and going west to explore, settle, displace, and claim the American dream.

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Easy Rider Itinerary

Along the way they visit a commune, experience free love, get arrested, introduce a new friend (“George Hanson” played by Jack Nicholson) to marijuana, get beaten by locals, use LSD, and witness death.

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Ballad of Easy Rider song

From Wikipedia: The star and script writer of Easy Rider, Peter Fonda, had initially intended to use Bob Dylan’s song “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” in the film, but after failing to license the track, Fonda asked Roger McGuinn of the Byrds to record a cover version of the song instead. Fonda also wanted Dylan to write the film’s theme song, but Dylan declined, quickly scribbling the lines, “The river flows, it flows to the sea/Wherever that river goes, that’s where I want to be/Flow, river, flow” on a napkin and telling Fonda to “give this to McGuinn. He’ll know what to do with it.” The lyric fragment was dutifully passed on to McGuinn, who took the lines and expanded upon them with his own lyrical and musical contributions to produce the finished song.

Impact

The story reinforced the counterculture’s view of the Establishment’s worthlessness and corruption, and that most Americans saw those who tried to live freely as a threat to their way of life.

The soundtrack’s artists reinforced that view. Included were The Band, The Byrds, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Steppenwolf.

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider
Anniversary, Beatles, Music et al, Music of the 60s

Beatles Paperback Writer Paul

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Beatles Paperback Writer Paul

Another anniversary of its US Billboard #1
July 9, 1966

Beatles Paperback Writer Paul

It was 1966 and some music had turned the corner. Some music. Frank Sinatra had his strangers and daughter Nancy her boots. The Monkees were believers and Tommy James was hanky panky.

Beatles Paperback Writer Paul

Rubber Soul

The Beatles had released Rubber Soul in 1965 and its songs changed the course of pop musical history. For those who followed the Beatles, like the Pied Piper with the children of Hamlin, Rubber Soul’s direction led to new possibilities.

Beatles Paperback Writer Paul

Paperback Writer

In a month the Beatles released their next album, Revolver. It, too, boosted listeners and believers to new places. A capella is not a phrase associated with the Beatles. The Mills Brothers. The Beach Boys. Not John, Paul, George, and Ringo, but we heard the Beatles do so at the beginning of “Paperback Writer” as they had done at the beginning of “Nowhere Man.” I don’t think most of us realized that.

Beatles Paperback Writer Paul

Not a Love Song

Whether someone actually challenged Paul to write a song that wasn’t a love song and whether Paul saw Ringo reading a paperback at the same time is part of distant misty history. Whatever the inspiration or prompt, “Paperback Writer” is not a love song. It is a (very) short story.

Beatles Paperback Writer Paul

Dear Sir or Madam…

The lyrics are a letter by someone hoping to change their life.  He is unemployed and has been writing for years and will write more if “you like the style.”

The song has a boosted bass. John wanted that. John liked the idea. He wondered why the bass wasn’t more pronounced in earlier work.

Beatles Paperback Writer Paul

Frère Jacques

As Paul sings about wanting to be a paperback writer, the others chant along with the same phrase. Or do they? They certainly do at the end, but what about during the song?

It is those playful Beatles singing the words Frère Jacques. Hilarious.

Beatles Paperback Writer Paul

Allan W Pollack

As always, Allan W Pollack’s site does a far better job of delineating the song:

  • The first half is set for pseudo-“a capella” voices in a pattern of cascading antiphony that is something off the beaten path for these guys. The large number of overdubs makes it sound as though many more than just three people were singing; a modest anticipation of what would surface much later in the likes of “Because”.
  • In the second half we suddenly are faced with almost the entire instrumental backing ensemble executing a double-barreled iteration of a really knockout ostinato riff for lead guitar and bass drum; one that I’d say is easily way up in there the same class with the one from “Day Tripper” in terms of both its distinctive melodic contour and craggy syncopations that extend over one and a half of the ostinato’s two-measure length.
          You said it Allan!