Category Archives: Music of the 60s

Festivals, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Today in history, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

First Annual Midwest Mini-Pop Festival

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First Annual Midwest Mini-Pop Festival

Cleveland Zoo
September 6,  1969
1969 Festival #40

First Annual Midwest Mini-Pop Festival

Simon and Garfunkel had released “At the Zoo” as a single in 1967, so I would not be surprised if the song helped inspire the location of the First Annual Midwest Mini-Pop Festival in 1969.

Jim Tarbell helped create the event (Tarbell later became a Cleveland councilman). He recalls, “That was on the heels of Woodstock. I had contracted with Hanley Sound, who did sound at Woodstock. The sound system came directly to Cincinnati after Woodstock. When it arrived, the crew was still caked in mud. We had Vanilla Fudge, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Grand Funk Railroad, Lonnie Mack and Elvin Bishop.”

First Annual Midwest Mini-Pop Festival

Bill Hanley Sound

Because I saw that Bill Hanley had done the sound, I contacted David Marks. David was at Woodstock and worked with Hanley sound. I asked him if he was in Cleveland with Hanley? Here are his responses: I was on the sound crew. Actually sang a song (disastrously) while the crowds were waiting for Grand Funk to pitch. Strange event. I’m sure Steve Wozniak had something to do with it? He may have helped Harold & Bill with some technical stuff.

I followed up with David and asked who “Harold” was and how Steve Wozniak was connected? Harold Cohen. Bill’s main technician & a much sort after sound mixer. I may be wrong but it would’ve been HC or Sam Baroda who mixed. SW? Not certain how but he bopped in & out of a few Hanley Sound festivals / events. I somehow think it was in Cincinntti Zoo I met him. I do recall Jim Ludlow who ran a club in which we installed a sound system… Ludlow’s Garage & us crew stayed at his house.

First Annual Midwest Mini-Pop Festival

Line up

Unfortunately for Mini-Pop, it rained for the one-day event. The whole line-up was:

  • Grand Funk Railroad
  • Paul Butterfield Blues Band
  • Vanilla Fudge
  • Lonnie Mack
  • Dee Felice Trio

What you see above is what I’ve been able to find. As always, I’d love to hear from anyone who has any more information, especially if you were there.

In the meantime, what better lyrics to post than…

Someone told me
It’s all happening at the zoo
I do believe it
I do believe it’s trueIt’s a light and tumble journey
From the East Side to the park
Just a fine and fancy ramble to the zoo
Bus you can take the crosstown bus
If it’s raining or it’s cold
And the animals will love it
If you do, now Somethin’ tells me
It’s all happening at the zoo
I do believe it
I do believe it’s true

The monkeys stand for honesty
Giraffes are insincere
And the elephants are kindly, but they’re dumb
Orangutans are skeptical
Of changes in their cages
And the zookeeper is very fond of rumZebras are reactionaries,
Antelopes are missionaries
Pigeons plot in secrecy
And hamsters turn on frequently
What a gas!
You gotta come and see
At the zoo
At the zoo
First Annual Midwest Mini-Pop Festival

Next 1969 festival: Toronto Rock and Roll Revival

Anniversary, Bob Dylan, Music of the 60s

Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited

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Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited

Released August 30, 1965

Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People call say ‘beware doll, you’re bound to fall’
You thought they were all kidding you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hanging out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging your next meal
Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited

Fourth greatest?

Rolling Stone magazine calls it the fourth greatest album of all time. I’m not much for top ten lists and such, but this is certainly a great album. If Bringing It All Back Home (released only five months earlier on March 22) had sounded the death knell of an acoustic folk Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited is the clarion call.

Albums have 12 songs. Highway 61 Revisited has 10.  Singles are two and a half to 3 minutes long. Like a Rolling Stone is 6 minutes 13 seconds. 

The album’s shortest song is From a Buick 6: 3:19.  The album closes with Desolation Row at 11:21 and the album’s only acoustic cut.

Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited

Acoustic English tour

Though Dylan had already released his “half-electric” Back Home album before his April-May 1965 England tour, the eight shows were all acoustic. He held off his public electrocution until the Newport Folk Festival  on July 25. 

He was tired and somewhat disenchanted following that spring tour. Writing Like a Rolling Stone cleansed him. 

Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited

Clean and in the studio

June 15 and 16 (1965) were the first two days of recording the album in Columbia Records Studio A in NYC, but it was June 16 in particular that is noteworthy. Although Dylan and the other musicians had worked a bit on Like a Rolling Stone the day before, it was June 16 that produced the version embedded in us. 

An organ riff heard ’round the world

The rim shot followed by Al Kooper’s Hammond organ riff. Al Kooper. 21. Already a musical success as a guitarist with the Royal Teens and their hit single, “Short Shorts.” About the help start the ground-breaking Blues Project and then the Blood, Sweat and Tears.

But on June 16, 1965 he was just a guest sitting in. Sitting in not as in playing, but literally sitting in to watch as a guest of Columbia producer Tom Wilson. Kooper had never played the organ before!

After those two sessions, Dylan continued to write, electrified Newport, and returned to the studio on July 29 and July 30. 

A weekend in Woodstock, NY writing and a return to the studio on August 2.  All he needed was one more day, August 4.

Six days to record the fourth greatest rock album. Nice work, Bob.

Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited

Reception

According to Wikipedia,  “New Musical Express critic Allen Evans wrote: “Another set of message songs and story songs sung in that monotonous and tuneless way by Dylan which becomes quite arresting as you listen.” The Melody Maker LP review section, by an anonymous critic, commented: “Bob Dylan’s sixth LP, like all others, is fairly incomprehensible but nevertheless an absolute knock-out.”The English poet Philip Larkin, reviewing the album for The Daily Telegraph, wrote that he found himself “well rewarded” by the record: “Dylan’s cawing, derisive voice is probably well suited to his material … and his guitar adapts itself to rock (‘Highway 61’) and ballad (‘Queen Jane’). There is a marathon ‘Desolation Row’ which has an enchanting tune and mysterious, possibly half-baked words.”

In September 1965, the US trade journal Billboard also praised the album, and predicted big sales for it: “Based upon his singles hit ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, Dylan has a top-of-the-chart-winner in this package of his off-beat, commercial material.”  The album peaked at number three on the US Billboard 200 chart of top albums, and number four on the UK albums charts.

Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited

Coda

Joe Levy in Rolling Stone has a more recent article about the album which fully praises the work. In it Levy quotes Dylan:  “I like the sound – I like what I’m doing now,” Dylan told Nora Ephron and Susan Edmiston at the time of Highway 61 Revisited‘s August 30th release. “They can boo until the end of time. I know that the music is real, more real than the boos.”   

Mr Jones

But something is happening here and you don’t know what it is. 

Do you, Mr Jones?

Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited
Anniversary, Festivals, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Today in history, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

1969 Vancouver Pop Festival

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1969 Vancouver Pop Festival

Paradise Valley Resort
1969 festival #35
August 22, 23, and 24 1969

Vancouver Pop Festival

Each year as I post a short piece about the many rock festivals that took place in 1969, I seem to find a few more. On my latest list, the Vancouver Pop Festival is number 35.

Paradise Valley Resort (now the Cheakamus Centre) is about 40 miles north of Vancouver, British Columbia.

Promoter Bert Gartner had planned on selling 30,000 tickets for each of the three days. He sold 15,000. The MC was well-known radio DJ Terry Mulligan. Bikers showed up and “did” security.

1969 Vancouver Pop Festival

Dead or not?

There is some dispute as to whether the Grateful Dead played the event. Some sites state they did; others dispute it. Unusual is that there is no recording of their performance, something that almost always occurred.

The Jerry Garcia’s Middle Finger site comes down on the “did not play” side with the following information:

Here are the listings from the great San Francisco Express Times, vol. 2 no. 32 (August 21, 1969), p. unk. There’s lots of interest here, of course. But I have circled the item that interests me most greatly. It’s under the listings for Sunday, August 24, 1969, and reads as follows:
Hippy Hill: Trans-Cultural Rip-Offs, Inc. presents Steve Gaskin & the Grateful Dead in concert with Shiva Fellowship. Bring dope (the sacrament) and good vibes. noon. free.
“Hippy Hill”, a.k.a. Hippie Hill, is apparently at the far eastern edge of Golden Gate Park, close to the entry from the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. It seems like a perfectly good place to go share a sacrament and a free show by the Dead.

I show the listing referred to below. It is too small to read, but if you click on it you will likely be able to see a larger view:

1969 Vancouver Pop Festival

1969 Vancouver Pop Festival

MC Terry Mulligan

In 2011, MC Terry Mulligan wrote his biography, My Life…So Far. In it he included his memories about the event. He felt it had held much promise, but failed to deliver.  He also said that the Grateful Dead did not play. Among the several paragraphs about the event, Mulligan includes…

I had my own experience with an unruly music event when…I introduced the acts at the Vancouver Pop Festival–three days of rain, cold and miserable hippies….
Nobody was ready for the pissing rain and cold. People were in sleeping bags on the wet ground in a mountain valley that was mostly shielded from the sun.
I was the guy who promoted the event on the air, so many people thought it was my event. Every half-hour there was somebody loud and angry in my face, spittle flying. “My old lady just got robbed.” “These are bogus tickets.” “You took my money, man!”
1969 Vancouver Pop Festival

Vancouver Sun report

Yet like any event, perspectives change with who one was and where one sat. Vancouver Sun reporter Eileen Johnson wrote:

…the music was excellent, the sound system worked fine, the weather couldn’t have been been better, the light show was a delight, and there were so few people…no one could have suffered from overcrowding
1969 Vancouver Pop Festival

Attendee David Chesney

And yet another statement from the same article by attendee David Chesney,

It was like every outlaw motorcycle gang in the Pacific Northwest came to this thing….The bizarre part was when Little Richard came on. All these bikers right up front. …Little Richard was mincing it up big time, and questioning their sexuality while flaunting his.
1969 Vancouver Pop Festival

Next 1969 festival: Isle of Wight