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Festivals, Today in history

Aquarian Family Festival

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Aquarian Family Festival

23 – 24 May 1969
San Jose, CA
1969 festival #6
Aquarian Family Festival
poster for Aquarian Family Festival
Aquarian Family Festival

Not just Woodstock

Mention the words festival and 1969 and most people will respond Woodstock. That  is a sensible association as too would be the word Altamont. However, dig around a bit and you’ll find that 1969 is spangled with rock festivals.

May 23 marks the first of them. In fact there were three that occurred that weekend, two of which were less than a mile apart.

On May 18 – 19, 1968 The Northern California Folk-Rock Festival had been held. It was controversial because of the several “announced” bands had not actually been booked and nearly 1,000 attendees experienced PCP drug reactions.

Dennis Jay

The following year when the 1969 Northern California Folk-Rock Festival was announced, Dennis Jay (of the Drug Crisis Intervention group), members of San Jose’s Free University, the Institute for Research and Understanding, and the Druid Corporation (a musicians collective) announced a counter-festival: the Aquarian Family Festival. It was a free concert.

While free concerts were not unheard of, major free concerts were rare. Any actual free concert fed the idea that music should be for free, not something to be paid for. Such an idea doppled forward to that famous August weekend in Bethel, NY.

Another unique facet of the Aquarian Family Festival was that camping was permitted so that attendees could stay on site for the two days. Perhaps Michael Lang read about that, too?

Great line-up

Since the Aquarian Family Festival wasn’t recorded or filmed, it lives in obscurity like most of the many other 1969 festivals. Those facts should not deny its just place in festival history.

Here is the not-too-shabby list of performers for this festival and keep in mind that the  Northern California Folk-Rock Festival was happening simultaneously. Interestingly, Jefferson Airplane appeared at both. Most of the bands were local and there are so many because one of the stipulations was that the music had to be continuous. (*would play at Woodstock)

  • The Ace of Cups
  • All Men Joy
  • Birth
  • Beggars Opera
  • Big Brother and the Holding Company*
  • Boz Scaggs
  • Chocolate Watchband
  • Crabs
  • Crow
  • Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band
  • Devine Madness
  • Denver
  • The Doobie Brothers
  • Elgin Marble
  • Flamin’ Groovies
  • Frumious Bandersnatch
  • Gentle Dance
  • Greater Carmichael Traveling Street Band
  • Glass
  •  Mountain*
  •  High Country
  • Jefferson Airplane*
  • Joy of Cooking
  • Last Mile
  • Libras, Lamb
  • Living Color
  • Linn County

 
  • Mother Ball
  • Morning Glory
  • Mad River 
  • Mt. Rushmore
  • Nymbus
  • Old Davis
  • Quicksilver Messenger Service
  • Red Grass
  • Green Smoke
  • Rubber Maze
  • Rising Tide
  • Rejoice
  • Sunrise
  • Sable
  • Sons of Champlin
  • Sounds Unlimited Blues Band
  • Sandy Bull
  • The Steve Miller Blues Band
  • Strawberry Alarm Clock
  • Stoned Fox
  • South Bay Experimental Flash
  • Throckmorton
  • Tree of Life
  • Weird Herald, Womb
  • Warren Purcell
  • Zephyr Grove

Amphetamine Gazelle

I hope Mad River played “Amphetamine Gazelle.” And many thanks to Metroactive.com. Also, the featured image on top is of the Chocolate Watchband. Who knew!

Aquarian Family Festival

Ace of Cups

The first band listed (alphabetically) is the Ace of Cups, an all-female band from the Haight. Here’s a report about them.

Aquarian Family Festival

I always enjoy getting someone’s first-hand account about an event I blog about. I got this email from Roger Desmond who was at the festival:

It was a bunch of us talking. We thought the fairgrounds festival was a rip-off for many reasons. Mainly, the promoter, Bob Blodgett promised that Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin would play but we found out they were booked at another venue at the same time. Soooo we basically contacted the bands and told them we wanted to do a free concert and wham! It was happening. As a San Jose State student I was able to help secure the venue. Ironically, Jimi showed up and checked it out, and would have played but the amps he needed were not present. But the bands that DID play were amazing!

As major organizer Dennis Jay said “Its what we always wanted!”

Aquarian Family Festival

Next 1969 festival: Northern California Folk-Rock Festival

Music et al, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Today in history

Paul Williams Crawdaddy

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Paul Williams Crawdaddy!

Remembering and appreciating Paul
May 19, 1948 – March 27, 2013
Rock journalism’s founding father

Paul Williams CrawdaddyPaul Williams printed the first edition of his rock magazine Crawdaddy! in a Brooklyn basement on January 30, 1966. In it he wrote: You are looking at the first issue of a magazine of rock and roll criticism. Crawdaddy! will feature neither pin-ups nor news-briefs; the specialty of this magazine is intelligent writing about pop music….

Before Crawdaddy! if someone wanted to read a serious essay about the changing rock music scene, sources were difficult to find. Publishers catered to teens with the still-popular magazines like Seventeen.

Paul Williams Crawdaddy

Paul Williams Crawdaddy!

Swarthmore College

Williams had begun writing rock and roll essays while a student at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. He wrote about Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, David Crosby, and Brian Wilson among others.

In 1968 he served as campaign manager for Timothy Leary’s run for the governorship of California. Williams , Williams and Leary joined John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their Toronto “Bed-in For Peace”.  It was during that performance art piece that the song “Come Together” was written.  According to the Williams site: Paul’s voice can be heard mixed into the chorus on the original recording of “Give Peace A Chance.” Similarly, on The Doors “Unknown Soldier” he can be heard locking and loading a rifle.” 

Also according to the same site, “…he wasn’t only at Woodstock, he rode to the festival from New York City in the Grateful Dead’s limousine [click for more >>> Williams site]

By 1968 two new rock magazines had appeared: Rolling Stone and CREEM.

Paul Williams Crawdaddy!

Parting ways

Williams and Crawdaddy! parted ways in 1968 and Crawdaddy! suspended publication in 1969, but returned as Crawdaddy in 1970.

In 1979 the magazine changed its title to Feature but after only three issues it ceased publication.

Paul Williams reclaimed and restored the exclamation-pointed title in 1993. In poor health after a 1995 head injury in a bike mishap, the magazine stopped publishing in 2003.

On June 28, 2009, various musicians held a benefit concert for him at the Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco.

Paul Williams Crawdaddy!

Death

Williams died on March 27, 2013, at his home in California at age 64 from complications related that accident which had lead to early onset dementia.

 NPR article on Williams’s death; NYT obituary.

Paul Williams Crawdaddy!

Cold War, Red Scare, Teenage culture

Princeton Riot Blackboard Jungle

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Princeton Riot Blackboard Jungle

Bill Haley & His Comets singing “Rock Around the Clock”

Princeton Riot Blackboard Jungle
L-R: Louis Calhern, Glenn Ford Sidney Poitier in Blackboard Jungle
Princeton Riot Blackboard Jungle

 Communists everywhere

In the 1950s many Americans thought they saw Communists in every nook and cranny. And Americans blamed what they defined as social ills on Communism’s influence.

Civil Rights? Communism.

Folk music? Communism.

Homosexuality? Communism.

The Beat Generation? Communism.

Juvenile delinquency? Communism.

Rock and Roll? Communism.

Princeton Riot Blackboard Jungle

Ed McBain

The novel Blackboard Jungle was published in 1954. Ed McBain, using the pseudonym Evan Hunter,  wrote the book.  The following year Richard Brooks directed the film.

The film reinforced the popular view that teenagers, particularly those who lived in the cities, were out of control. Disrespectful. Lazy. Intemperate.

The movie opened with Bill Haley & the Comets “Rock Around the Clock.” The song was actually the B-side of a single the band had released in May 1954, “Thirteen Women (and Only One Man in Town).” The single didn’t go far on the charts. Not until its now-famous B-side opened the movie.

Princeton Riot Blackboard Jungle

Rock Around the Clock

           On July 9, 1955, “Rock Around the Clock” became the first rock and roll recording to hit the top of Billboard’s Pop charts. The song stayed there for eight weeks.

Princeton Riot Blackboard Jungle

10 Times the Clock

It was on this date, May 17, in 1955 that the so-called Princeton Riot occurred.

According to Princeton dot edu, “On May 17, 1955, the juvenile delinquency drama Blackboard Jungle closed its run at Princeton’s Garden Theater. That night, 10 enterprising students met at a local record shop to purchase copies of the film’s groundbreaking theme song, “Rock Around the Clock.” The plan, as revealed in the next day’s “Prince”: to blare Bill Haley’s hit single at 11 p.m. from “key places” on campus “in hopes of triggering an outburst.“

Blackboard Jungle
NYT article
Princeton Riot Blackboard Jungle

Earlier Memphis Ban

That Blackboard Jungle was in the news was not new. On March 28, 1955, Memphis, Tennessee’s censor board had banned the film.

In fact 1955 was a tough year for rock and roll promoters. On May 22,  Bridgeport, Connecticut authorities had cancelled a Fats Domino concert because of the dangers of “Rock and Roll.”  Similar rock and roll concert cancellations due to local officials’ fear of possible violence occurred in Boston, Atlanta, Newark, Asbury Park, New Jersey, and Burbank, California.

And remember that the Ed Sullivan Show had presented only the top half of Elvis Presley’s first appearance.

As for that Princeton riot, the faculty committee suspended four students.

Princeton Riot Blackboard Jungle

Princeton Four

Blackboard Jungle
NYT article
Princeton Riot Blackboard Jungle

Clare Boothe Luce objects

On August 26,  Blackboard Jungle was removed from consideration at the Venice Film Festival because of objections by the U.S. Ambassador to Italy, Clare Boothe Luce, but the movie received four Oscar nominations (won none).

Today considered a landmark film about the 1950s. And though Bill Haley’s song was not the first rock and roll song, it is often credited with making rock and roll popular far beyond its 1950 boundaries.

Princeton Riot Blackboard Jungle