From The Great Speckled Bird July 7, 1970 pg. 2-3

Let us celebrate the triumph of Byron. WE DID A THING! To understand its nature and its impact, we must see the Atlanta Pop Festival not as a “music extravaganza,” nor simply as an occasion to do all

the dope we wanted to in total freedom, a chance to get naked, and a moment of meditation but – and this is absolutely basic -as a people’s assembly in, of, and for Woodstock Nation, population in the millions, of whom several hundred thousand were gathered at Byron, Georgia. It is the year 2, the second year in the life of our new nation—Woodstock Nation—born on the streets of Chicago in August of 68, baptized in White Lake, New York. the following summer, evicted from People’s Park, educated at Columbia, graduated at Kent State, stronger every day with much more than a chronological growth: a new nation, conceived in the bowels of the Monster and dedicated to the liberation of all the Kirns from all the Spiros. Learning more about How in Byron.

If the idea of us as a “nation” seems, at first, far-fetched, it’s because nations are traditionally defined in terms of contiguous territory with continuous borders. Ours is not—yet. We hold title to no territory, we control no geographic space in Amerika; we live and evolve in significant but very small and widely scattered aggregations of spaces—10th Street Atlanta, Lower East Side. Bay Area, the Commons in Boston. And we are more than this, we have residents our consciousness who can be found in every city, town, hamlet, and countryside from coast to coast. No matter how strong our numbers, pigs riddle even our most secure areas. And every time a billy club comes down on a head in California, all the longhairs across the country, down into the Deep South of Byron, Georgia- we all feel the blow.

So our nation is measured not in square miles but in People. And more than that by mere numbers of people (another dehumanizing form of body count), we are measured by our consciousness, by our commitment, by our dedication to the establishment of new life in the rotten gut of Babylon/monster/Amerika. It is in that way, with that understanding, that it makes sense to speak of Byron as a triumph.

Because Byron was about growth. ‘No one who was there,” blares  the billboard for Woodstock (the movie) “will ever be the same again.” More than you know Warner Brothers, more than you know. We came to Byron hopeful but uptight. We left joyful and confident, because not only had we done a Thing, but the way we learned to do it was by the very process of doing it.

As at Woodstock, we were many hundred thousands strong. Some say 5, some say 4 or 3, some say 2 1/2 hundred thousands. In any case, these thousands were confined to 162 acres. If you can imagine cramming the population of Atlanta into a quarter of a square mile, you get some picture of the squeeze. Allowing 75 square feel for each of the 30,000 cars in that area, there remained for all the people present a legal allotment of 11,749 square feel a space measuring roughly 3 1/2 feet square per person. Should we be surprised that “private property” was tresspassed,” or that a “private” club (so labelled to “keep out the ni–ers”) refused even to negotiate for the use of their land and lake?

The Silent Majority of Amerika cannot comprehend either this magnitude (quantity) or of the consciousness (quality) of the people at the festival: nor could they be expected to understand. Our own failures within the New come straight out of the system of values and institutions that grasps these millions in its iron jaws. And so we are just beginning our struggle to break free. We make mistakes. The many failures within this gathering together of Woodstock Nation flow directly from the system which renders the straight world incapable of digging the truth of the event. Our own incompetencies stem from capitalist conditioning from the day we were born in Amerika where you hustle for the dollar and take care of ol’ number one first and foremost. The system has challenged us to take ourselves seriously as Woodstock Nation. Amerika comes on strong; it is powerful- the most powerful empire in the history of our planet -and it takes a shit-load of revolutionary discipline (not Amerikan “discipline”) to maintain and nourish our consciousness of a citizenship distinct from Amerika. We are conditioned to remain ignorant. Conditioned to be specialists in a capitalist industrial system where everyone has his “place.” Trained to call in an “expert” when something goes wrong, channelled into brain factories instead of (also) being taught that our hands and heads will work creatively it we use them, educated into the inability to repair our automobiles, build fires, or find our way out of the woods.

Pampered in and by an obscenely affluent society, we overlook the real fact that the economic resources of Woodstock Nation are pitifully small: Woodstock/Atlanta is an economy of scarcity, not of affluence, and in that respect we resemble people’s China more than we might at first glance. At the festival, this showed in our wasting of precious water, our squandering of money that could and should have gone to the festival (not the promoters, but “us)

Music drew us, constant music, a three-day bath in the sounds that have given us back our bodies, freed them from the tyranny of our “do-don’t” Minds. We came as passive consumers, whose only responsibility for the success of the festival was to pay $14, just like –dig it- Disneyland. Only it didn’t work out that way. 80-90% of the people gathered did not have tickets and had no intention of buying them at the gate. Either because they could not afford them or because they figured sooner or later they could force the promoters to proclaim a “free” festival.

Thursday night and all day Friday that’swhere it was at: us (the people) against them (the promoters, who threatened to cancel the festival if enough tickets were not sold to cover their “losses”—that was Thursday night). Action creates reaction, and the rumor (later reported as fact by the Atlanta Constitution) that bikers had been hired to tote shotguns to keep people without tickets out triggered militant “plans” (which were as strategically moronic as they were ideologically heroic) to tear down the fences and liberate the music.

Both sides were off the mark. The people were naive, the promoters functioning out of ignorance, greed, and/or fear. Had the Cosmic Conspiracy not intervened, I don’t know what would have happened, I don’t know how the battle of the gate would have turned out. But massively and dramatically at three crucial moments, the cosmos took on a vanguard role. First the heat. It was so goddam hot that it was difficult to get beyond one’s personal survival, let alone get juiced up about storming the gate or guarding it. Because it was hot, and because of  our imprisonment in a consciousness of affluence and greed, we were unaware that we were selfishly wasting a precious resource—water. Water. Water poured over people from 5 gallon cans “just to cool off.” Water running from barrels onto the ground as people washed their hands and faces under the spigot. Water turning to mud as folks drank directly from the hose, diverting that water from those barrels. Water flowing 9 o’clock Friday night at a measured rate of a gallon and a half per minute -the sole source for 15,000 in our campground.

But by then it had rained, so that the people who had crowded like cattle to the showers now fled to thier tents to escape the biggest, most democratically distributed, treeest shower available most but not all. Some had learned. So that the surge to the gate—reversed. So that the land (not to speak of the people) cooled. So that the lines at the water barrels disappeared; the precious resource could be conserved, could gain on the thirst of a refreshed people. And the music—stopped. Into which stepped the promoters. Using the rain as what could only be called a transparently lame excuse, Friday night’s music (only) was declared “free.” Having thus lured us back witli B. B. King, however, the promoters laid on their larger audience basically the same riff as the night before: we need bread. Basically the same— they wanted everybody to pay—but still different: $1 a day, they said, would see them through.

It never happened. Saturday we finally made it inside the fence. There was time to take showers, now about half inoperative, but hot naked freaks were standing quietly in line, holding each other’s clothes—again we were learning. There was a hole in the inside fence, which previously herded people to the rear of the concert site. Standing there was a dude with a money pail; outside had been a people’s propagandist with a bullhorn. Period. Economic coercion and accompanying threat of violence had vanished. Even the bikers seemed relieved;

Inside the people were very together, especially . considering the fact that by now the outside world knew the “concert” was “free” and there would be a lot of straight people coming in to dig our music. The rain came again, this time to loosen the crowd up, to drive the straights for shelter. We stuck it out until the rain had served its purpose. Night had fallen but the fireworks people launched a red sun, that hung in the sky, growing brighter for maybe 30 seconds before it set. WE DID A THING!

And we learned that music is just as important to us, no more, no less, as our own blood, for music is the blood of Woodstock Nation-it flows through all of us— as crucial to our survival as dope, which gets us high, inspires us, strengthens us, communizes us; and as water.

We came to Byron believing that music should be free, that it should be the occasion for no one making a  profit, hoarding thus the scant resources ofWoodstock Nation. But we learned that while nothing is without its price, selling us our music was precisely and exactly the same as selling us our water would have been.

The promoters evidenced that kind of growth on Saturday when the stage announced that all dope dealers were being asked to give 10% of their bread—and concessions 25%. Now DIG. That procedure is national, wethepeopleofwoodstocknation levy the following taxes. Enforcement? That, of course, did not happen— this time—but it could have, and next time it might. Suppose, for instance, four hours after these announcements, the ir   had resounded:

Okay now, we’ve had four righteous dealers pay their dues, so here’s what we ‘re gonna do. If those four guys, and we remember who you are, will come up here now, we ‘II give you a stamped receipt. Any other dealer who comes across will also get a receipt. And people, ask your dealer to show you his receipt when you buy your next hit.

A s for the concessions, well, they don’t seem to have gotten the message, so let’s try this. We know you’re thirsty, so we’re not going to ask you not to buy drinks. We are, however, going to suggest that you Don’t Buy Coke-until Coke comes across. If and when Coke pays up, we’ll ask you then to patronize only them, until Pepsi gets religion. You dig?

And we would dig, even though that did not happen this time-this time

So now we know where we are. One nation conceived in concert and dedicated to the proposition that we are One. Our music is not for sale; no amount of money can “buy it.” For we are our music, as much as it is us. And our music, it turns out, is not free; it costs us our lives.

As the Jefferson Airplane sings, “Our life’s too fine to let it die.” Nor will it die. But we must understand that in order for our life to live, we must destroy Ameri-ka. Our room to live, to build our own cities, towns, festivals, industries, must be chipped piece by piece or seized all at once from those pigs who now call their lakes and clubs “private property.” Our life, our stoned, rhythmic energy will endure (and grow) only through constant, ceaseless struggle—total war against Amerika. All your private property is target for your enemy / And your enemy is- We. WE.

Moreover, our life’s too fine to hoard it the way the pigs hoard their wealth, so we shall grow, we are growing. As we drove up freak-lined 1-75, the spirit of the festival drifted up the road like lingering marijuana smoke; At first, I noticed, we freeks banded together in the right-hand lane, slowing down traffic so that the sisters and brothers could safely catch and give rides, while the straights took the left lane, eyeing us curiously. But the further up the road we went (the longer the straights had to get used to us), the friendlier they became; one lady waved first; another dude passed six hitchhikers-and picked up the seventh.

And the kids of the straights? We lured them from our psychedelic cars with Vs answering their own that they subersively flashed from the back seat of the family car on a Sunday drive.

At our exit, I held my hat out the window, waving to a carload of freeks movin on up the road. Sad that for us the festival had ended; but joyous in the bonds that link my family with literally hundreds of thousands of other families from coast to coast—we sleep “free” in Vermont, California, Oregon, Georgia, every state in the Union, under the freek flag of Woodstock Nation. STP.

-greg gregory

For my money Carter Tomassi took THE photographs to capture the flavor of this happening.

Appreciate Carter’s Photographic Essay here.

Carter has started a central place to collect people’s memories.

Lots of good stories and you can add your own about the festival. There is an area for  special moments, too.

Were you at The Free Stage? – Carter Tomassi’s has the only photos of which I am aware. It was a long bulldozed trek into the woods. It had sprung up dealer’s camped with signs. Many of the performers played here also. Much more up close and personal. We were unable to loacate its whereabouts in the now built up area. Memories?

We would like to collect your Atlanta stories  at this site. Next time you’re deep in meditation about the 1970’s please feel free to send over any stories you remember. We hope to add on memories and pictures from as many people as possible.

Earl McGehee’s Photos on flickr

Crowd panorama

Richard Powers worked in the medical tent at Byron.

Samfinesilver’s photos

Fest on the Fourth photos.

Phillip Rauls’ Photo essay

“THE ATLANTA POP FESTIVAL’S 40th ANNIVERSARY”

Read Atlanta newspaper’s accounts (links inactive during translation)

AJC July 1 ‘Rock It to All’ Festival Theme

   AJC July 4 Joplin, 80,000 Rock Buffs To Make Festival Scene

AJC July 5 That Sound’s Really Cool, Man, But It’s Mighty Hot

ACon  July 5  Music Fans Stay Orderly  Despite Heat, Wine, Drugs

AJC July 7 Pop’s The Thing Despite Heat at Hampton

AJC July 7 Pop Group Came To Find a Groove

ACon July 12 A Lot Happened at Pop Festival

July 7, 1969 The Grateful Dead in Piedmont Park

Download The Dead in Piedmont Park

AJC 7/8/69 Bonnie says she is a natural, clean hippie

AJC Magazine July 12 Park Rock Concert Wows ‘Em

  Aug 20,1969   Metro Beat Magazine Pop Festival

    Remembering the Atlanta International Pop Festival

Printed from the Joni Mitchell Discussion List website.

http://www.jmdl.com/articles/view.cfm?id=824

On December 28-30, 1968, Gulfstream hosted the Miami Pop Festival, post-Monterey and pre-Woodstock. The festival drew 100,000 fans over three beautiful winter days, and featured many seminal acts of the time: The Grateful Dead (Free download http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-12-29.sbd.cotsman.5425.sbeok.shnf),

Chuck Berry,

Marvin Gaye, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Steppenwolf, Procol Harum, Country Joe and the Fish, Canned Heat, the Turtles, and Three Dog Night were among the fourteen daily acts that appeared on two stages — one at the grandstand and the other near the south end of the park — for the price of seven dollars per day.

According to Rolling Stone (February 1, 1969), the festival was “a monumental success in almost every aspect, the first significant — and truly festive — international pop festival held on the East Coast.” Woodstock, of course, took place in 1969, and Hallandale city officials, horrified by visions of stoned hippies dancing naked at Gulfstream, nixed plans for a second Miami Pop Festival.

The Miami Festival: An Inspired Bag of Pop

by Ellen Sander

New York Times   January 12, 1969 ————————————————————————

The area was alive with beads, bells, prim and pressed cotton resort wear, cheerful faces, spontaneous dancers, and a total of 99,000 fans. They had all come over a three-day period from the Eastern Seaboard, from Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, and as far away as Montreal and Big Sur to attend the first annual Miami Pop Festival held in Gulf Stream Park, Hallandale, Florida, from one to ten P.M. each day, December 28 through December 30, 1968.

The event was a resounding success in both organization and programming, making it the first significant major pop festival held on the East Coast and the first successful pop festival since the now legendary Monterey International Pop Festival in June, 1967.

The program, which consisted of 35 acts, offered hardcore blues, sassy San Francisco funk, rockabilly, gospel, rousing rhythm and blues, folk music, jazz, top 40 pop, Latin rock, and hillbilly music in addition to a solid lineup of rock and roll. The generous expanse of pop was with a conscious sense of scope, history, roots, and direction.

With a singular lack of superstars, the festival was the first event of its kind to successfully showcase pop in perspective, gracefully carrying the hillbilly-and-grits banjo picking of Flatt and Scruggs, the multi-textured outbursts of the Grateful Dead, the Chicago blues of the Paul Butterfield and the James Cotton Blues Bands, the jazz of the Charles Lloyd Quintet and the hard rock of Steppenwolf, all on the same bill.

The 35 acts gave a total of 42 performances on two stages during the three days. Concerts were staggered in sets of 45 minutes each with a 15-minute overlap, making it possible to see everything or stay in one area for those portions of the program which seemed most attractive.

The two performance areas, one in front of the Gulf Stream race track grandstand, another in a large tree-lined meadow, were several acres apart. Between the two were an art exhibit, arts and crafts concessions, enormous pop art sculptures, food and drink concessions, and two live, painted Indian elephants who watched the spectacle with politely amused ponderousness. The layout of the grounds and situation of the diversions kept the crowd in a constant state of flux, and the entire affair had a continuing, organic feel about it, being both artistic and entertaining at each meandering turn. The weather was balmy, audience and performers were in good spirits, and there was hardly a set that didn’t meet with wild enthusiasm.

Particularly satisfying were Three Dogs (sic) Night, a brilliantly eclectic group that did inspired re- creations of, and improvisations around the hits of other pop artists and contemporary writers; and also Pacific Gas and Electric, a blues-rock-gospel ensemble in spirited, uncontrived, crisp music. Their audiences, for the most part, had never seen them before. These two and Sweetwater, a Los Angeles group with a vaguely oriental rock sound, are among the best and most underexposed talent in the country. The Festival was a perfect setting for the discovery, rediscovery and elevation of fresh sounds in the musty closet of rock.

Chuck Berry who, along with Elvis, precipitated the onslaught of rock way back in the fifties, performed a chronological set of his old hits, which by now are institutions. Marvin Gaye, Junior Walker and the All Stars, and the Sweet Inspirations burrowed deep into the rich black roots of rhythm and blues, the basis of all rock and roll. Richie Havens did unique, incandescent thing. From England, Procul Harum and the Terry Reid group performed. Country Joe and the Fish, which temporarily includes Jack Cassidy on leave from the Jefferson Airplane, played a set. It was a hardy, inspired mix of sounds.

Significantly enough, the only real disappointment was Steppenwolf, which came on in all arrogance and superstar nonchalance for one of the Sunday night’s closing performances. They were one of the biggest names scheduled and the worst show. Also Fleetwood Mac, a blues- inspired group from England, had a hard time getting together musically. Folk duo Ian and Silvia were rather restrained at their first pop festival. And the Box Tops gave off a feeling of irrelevance. But these failures were somehow bearable.

Constant magic and music filled the air as crowds wandered comfortably from area to area. There were several narcotics busts made on the festival grounds but no violence or brutaility (sic) of any kind ever erupted. The police, private security corps and concessionaires were easygoing and goodnatured and, as festival producer Tom Rounds observed dryly Monday evening when two pot smokers were quietly escorted into paddy wagons “Anyone who can’t find a place to turn on in 250 acres without getting caught, is just dumb.”

The Miami Pop Festival was a monument to pop, an excellent model for future events of this kind. It was a shift in perspective, an experiment in depth rather than sensation. It had that special balance of humility and extravagance which consistently delighted an initially skeptical audience. After all, these pop fans had been through a year and a half of badly produced, expensive pop festivals, most of which failed miserably. The ticket price was only $7 for ten consecutive hours of entertainment each day.

Jose Feliciano appeared twice, Joni Mitchell closed her notably lovely set singing Dino Valenti’s “Get Together,” accompanied by Richie Havens and Graham Nash, late of the Hollies. Fred Neil, an oft-forgotten folk singer and songwriter who directly or indirectly influenced a good portion of today’s pop, visited the festivities Monday night looking lean, tanned and healthy. Music from both stages could be heard all over the festival grounds and spontaneous jams ignited in the performer’s private area.

Post-festival celebrations included a rock and roll wedding in which Spanky of Spanky and Our Gang was married to Medicine Charlie of the Turtles in a folk coffee house in Coral Gables. The wedding party included members of Our Gang, the Turtles, Richie Havens and Tiny Tim. After all that, New Year’s was a letdown.

(c) 1998 Patrick Edmondson   (Excerpted from a longer work in progress)

After High School graduation, Gabi had moved to Atlanta to start Georgia State just as Fred was planning to do while living with his benefactors, Uncle Paul and Aunt Evalene. Gabi’s sister, Pixie, had an apartment off North Peachtree so she didn’t have to look for apartments for rent. I was going to be nearby at Oxford, a small country town east of Atlanta, in the fall.

Pixie realized that with Gabi came me, her boyfriend. Pixie drove her light blue Dodge dart down to Oxford almost every weekend to get me for her sister Gabi, then drove us back on Sunday night. Often we gave rides to other weirdoes I was meeting at Oxford.  Pixie didn’t suspect that she had become a stop on the hitchhiker’s trail through Oxford.

We had become friends with Dan del Vecchio at Oxford. His brother Jeff had hitchhiked down to visit him. Dan and Jeff are both skinny.  Jeff is tall; Dan is medium like me. Dan wears an old-fashioned tuxedo coat with split tails. Jeff has wide glasses and was just out of the Navy and still wore navy bells.  They both went to Atlanta and of course came by Pixie’s. Jeff Del Vecchio came by one Sunday and seemed to really tickle Pixie’s fancy, which was great as she had been so down for so long.

December 1968 I had finished one quarter of Oxford and returned home to scandalize Tifton and my father. Gabi of course came with me. We, also of course, came prepared to turn on our old high school buddies and spread the enlightenment.

Meanwhile Pixie had to move, but would not look for a place. Then she called for Gabi and me to come help her move.  We came up and went through want ads and called at pay phones and drove around. Finally she found a place in Decatur. Some poor old lady had split off the up stairs of her house on Adams Street, but never knew what was up when she rented to Pixie, her mother and Gabi. A hint should have been when everything besides furniture was just carried in big sheet bundles.

I had to get the family car home for Christmas. We had been talked out of sending for tickets to the Monterey Pop Festival the previous June, so when our Oxford friend Jan Jackson had heard about a similar music festival in Miami at Christmas and had volunteered her boyfriend from UGA, Martin’s VW bus as transportation, we mailed off for four tickets. The day after Christmas, Martin, Jan, and Gabi were to drive to Tifton to pick me up for the trip to Miami in Ol’ Baby, the faithful blue VW bus into which Martin had built a double decker bed.

My parents and siblings were very curious when Ol’ Baby pulled into the carport and Gabi and this couple got out. I was surprised to see Jeff DelVecchio and another guy, Mike Smith, also climb out. Seems they had heard of the festival and being inveterate hitchhikers had headed to Atlanta. They surprised Mrs. Ujhelyi when they came knocking at Adams Street late at night.  Now they were in the mix and Jan also had promised a woman from Oxford we’d stop by Leesburg, Fla. and pick her up to go to Miami.

Thus was our merry band to be. Later we would be joined by a woman from Miami Mike had planned to see. She ran away, sort-of, to go with us. Later they got married and came to Atlanta to honeymoon at a big hotel and called Gabi and I to “get stoned and fuck up the plot of Streets of San Francisco on this big color TV with us to celebrate”. We’d already fucked in sleeping bags beside each other in the Indian Reservation dump; kinda creates a special bond.

Almost as soon as we pulled out of our driveway Martin asked Jeff,” Where did you hide that acid?”

“Up here in the light. All the grass is in the toolbox.” He answered from the top bunk. After this exchange I was aware I was leaving Kansas.

We were passing around a joint as we headed down I-75 at a steady purring 55 – 60 mph. Gabi and I took turn chattering like magpies, stoned ones at that, in the bottom bunk. We had been apart for a few days so had lots of information to exchange. We were almost two receptors of the same brain it seemed at times.

The radio stations came and went. It rained and the windshield wiper on the passenger side stopped. Martin told Jeff to bang on it. He did until he broke the windshield, which annoyed Martin a bit. I had brought Rolling Stone. I had subscribed and got my copy early. It was on groupies. I believe we all read it cover to cover over the trip since it was the only reading material we had.

Finally we turned off to pick up Laura. Her suburban parents eyes were filled with horror at the thoughts of her getting in that bus even with Gabi and Jan, but they were polite. I do believe she inhabited both Jeff and Mike’s sleeping bags before we returned her home.

We drove into Miami and called some friends of someone. They directed us to meet them at Coconut Grove which was full of hip shops and people.  Stopped to see Michael Lange, who someone knew, at his head shop. We bought a leather headband and bag he had made. He later ran another  festival in Miami then the Woodstock festival.

We sat in the sun under palm trees and watched the people flow.  Later we worked our way back to a campground nearer the festival spot. The people were very wary of our crew checking in to a family campground. Little did they know of the collecting invasion forces.

Awoke, used showers and went searching for a Huddle House for breakfast. Martin has high metabolism and must eat regularly. Then we went and got high to await the start. We then waited outside the racetrack at Hialeah for the gates to open. Martin starts talking to a man by a van. He is a professional photographer and gets to drive his van of cameras inside. He invites us all for the ride. We saw him all through the festival and saw pictures we’d seen him take in Rolling Stone. We were quite impressed.

The festival began at 1PM and lasted until 10PM each day for three days. Saturday December 28th Jose Feliciano, Procol Harum, Buffy Sainte Marie, Country Joe and the Fish, Three Dog Night, Chuck Berry, The Infinite McCoys, Booker T and the MGs, Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green, Pacific Gas and Electric, The Blues Image.

Some acts performed more than one day. Also some brand new groups were slotted in as The Amboy Dukes with Ted Nugent still an acidized hippie in tight velvet pants. The ads said “a thousand wonders and a three day collage of Beautiful music”.  That was an understatement. There was a stage on the racetrack with all the seats then another stage way out in the parking lot. You could walk from one and be at the back or plan ahead and be right at front for special acts.

Art works from the Coconut Grove art school had been strategically placed throughout the grounds. Tripping people were constantly discovering them and getting hung up in examining the art and never leaving its tiny alcove in the hedges for hours.

There were milk cartons like kids use at school, except made of plywood and so big the mouth is a full size door entrance. We were walking one time and saw a group of people collected around one and we could hear music. Joni Mitchell and Jimi Hendrix were playing acoustic guitars and harmonizing.  Duane Allman, then unknown except to Georgians, watched from the crowd.

When Joni later performed at the fest Hollies singer-songwriter Graham Nash, whom Joni had met through their mutual friend, David Crosby, accompanied her. Joni’s account

But we were in a hurry to see County Joe and the Fish, of whom we were big fans, for the first time.

Later we found out Hendrix was involved in the financing of this festival and held one of his own at this raceway later in the spring of 1969. His other partners in putting on this one got emboldened by the great success and started planning one at home in New York state where they were from. They later did it as Woodstock.

Also Duane Hanson http://arted.osu.edu/160/18_Hanson.php had his realistic looking people in unusual places to be found. Once I’m stumbling along with the crowd which parts and leaves me hanging over the most realistic bloody motorcycle wreck!

Then there were the stereotypical old tourist couple standing and pointing out something.

Most performers hung around the grounds and enjoyed themselves as long as they could stay. Other famous people had just come to experience the east coast Monterey.

We realized the campgrounds would probably be filled or closed by the time the crowd exited for the night. We asked around and heard the Indians were coming to the rescue of their brothers the hippies.

Yeah, and scalp them! The Seminoles motioned the line of campers with signs, “camp cheap. This Way.” with an arrow. We should have learned to beware American Indians bearing arrows.

We followed in the dark out into areas looking swamp even in the darkness. Then a campground, but the arrows sent us further. Phantasmagoric sights to exhausted people. Finally. You can stop. Sleeping bags plopped and people were asleep on hitting the ground.

Upon awakening in the morning we found ourselves in the dump for the reservation campground. A garbage filled swamp surrounded this tiny isthmus full of cars. Lots of bugs and we heard gators grunting in the bushes around the water. They would only allow hippies access to a standpipe for water, so no shower. Also wouldn’t allow access to the laundry. Why are hippies so dirty?

Jeff’s experience in naval matters had him direct us to a big marina. We hung outside the clubhouse until we saw a hip looking kid. He let us in and lent us his key so we could get in both genders for showers and hair washing.  He left telling us which boat, yacht actually, to return the key. It felt good to wash off the Seminole dump. We were a clean but scraggly still collection of beatniks.

When we returned the key, the kid’s father came out and we thought he would be mad, but he invited us aboard and kept filling a pipe of high quality hash to smoke before we left. Wow, is this world changing or what. We hurried to eat ravenously. Everything, even salt crystals were exquisite in their tastes and textures. As hunger slacked everyone went from wolf to aesthetes enjoying the very essence of the act of eating. And we had a Pop Festival to go yet today!

Sunday December 29^th Steppenwolf, Marvin Gaye, Grateful Dead, Hugh Masekela, Flatt and Scruggs, Butterfield Blues Band, Joni Mitchell, James Cotton Blues Band, Richie Havens, The Boxtops.

The second night we would not fall victim to Seminole arrows. We went to look for the girl Other Jeff knew. He called and she told us to come quietly. We drove stealthily into the Miami suburbs and cut the engine to drift into the driveway of a split-level suburban manse with a large lawn. Again exhausted sleeping bags deployed.

We awoke to the sun and a small girl walking around looking at us. She ran back into the house and we scrambled to collect ourselves back into Ol’ Baby to make a get away. Before we were successful, the girl returned. “Mama wants to know how many of you want eggs?”

Mom invited us inside and made a big spread. Biscuits, honey, orange juice, eggs, ham, lots of coffee. It was like being home something my mother would do. “Invite your freaky friends in dear and introduce them!” Mom even made sandwiches she put in a pack and handed the women in the group before sending us all off to the festival.

But first we had to make a stop for her teenage daughter to pick up a sack of acid for she and Other Jeff to sell today. I had never knowingly been around tripping people or certainly so many varied drugs, but still Gabi and I were fine with Cannabis forms alone since we didn’t even drink.

Monday December 30^th Iron Butterfly The Turtles, Canned Heat, The Grassroots, Jr. Walker and the All Stars, Ian and Sylvia, Charles Lloyd Quartet, Sweet Inspirations, Sweetwater, The Joe Tex Revue.

The Grateful Dead Miami set (Free download

http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-12-29.sbd.cotsman.5425.sbeok.shnf),