All posts by Patrick Edmondson

Atlanta Pop Festival 1969

February 13, 2014FestivalsPatrick Edmondson

Atlanta greets the world

original — 1969 Atlanta Pop Festival poster

Appropriately enough this event was at a stock car track. No trees inside, no shade, Fourth of July in Georgia. A drought of rain and grass made it miserable … except for the music.

postersunatlpop — Photo from Duane Blalock. Photo from Duane Blalock. **Atlanta Pop Festival – I was there or was I? on Facebook**

Here is Mz Toots taking pictures of Sweetwater, a great band featuring a cello. The interplay between the two main vocalists, Nanci Nevins and the flute playing Albert Moore, were magical and full of love like a jazzed out Jefferson Airplane. We really had like Sweetwater at Miami Pop and now they were even better.

Performers included Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, Chuck Berry, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Canned Heat, Spirit, Ten Wheel Drive, Joe Cocker, Chicago Transit Authority, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Grand Funk Railroad, Sweetwater, Al Kooper, Pacific Gas & Electric and Led Zeppelin.

In those days there were unique individuals you seemed to see everywhere. One we called Starman when we saw him selling metal twirling star toys at the Miami Pop Festival. He was also allowed on stage .

Local favorites The Allman Brothers had been signed by a phony promoter and were not allowed inside when they arrived. Yet later the announcer said a band driving by on I-75 had been stopped with the traffic, so they had asked to play. They were Grand Funk Railroad.

sw24cl — **Sweetwater – (Starman at left)** Fire trucks sprayed the crowd to cool the air. People got wet, some naked, some muddy. We camped in our bus with friends around a communal pot and pot under a few pecan trees. Everyone welcomed the sunset. **Joe Cocker** poured out his soul. We planned to leave, but had seen a leather jacket proclaiming- “I came from England to see Led Zeppelin”. We are ever grateful we decided to stay to hear this unknown band.

droppedImage — **We really had like Sweetwater at Miami Pop and now they were even better.**

droppedImage_3 — **Sweetwater with United Farmworkers flag**

Atlanta’s hip community had been introduced to the world. A young hippie lady swirled by and gave us a piece of paper saying, “Come to Piedmont Park Monday at 1 PM” Little did we know what the next day would hold…TheGrateful Dead! (click)

Memories from viewers—->

I cannot believe that it’s been 40 years! Where did the time go? And, am I really THAT old? At any rate, here’s my input!

My brother, Emmett, and several friends decided that we had to go to the festival. Tickets were available at Atlantis Rising for (as I recall) $12 for the whole weekend. We got our tickets, packed up my 1961 Plymouth Valiant and headed to the Atlanta Raceway. We knew we were camping so we made bedrolls – didn’t have a tent just slept near or in the car. We were fortunate enough to find a place to park in the shade. One morning a local farmer came through with a truck-load of watermelons he was hoping to sell to the hippies – unfortunately for him his truck was taken over and melons were flying! Someone in our group snagged one for our breakfast.

As we were enjoying a slightly warm just picked melon a guy came up and really wanted a slice. He traded a gram of hash for a slice of melon – my brother said “Brother, you can have all that’s left!”. After three days of fantastic music, pure love of one another, and getting sunburned, it was time to head home. My brother and friends wanted to leave before I did, so I found a friend who wanted to stay thru Janis Joplin – and I’m glad we did. We waded thru the trash and made it all the way to the stage. All I can say is, it was memorable!

droppedImage_4 — **Grand Funk Railroad**

My brother and I also attended the festival in New Orleans over Labor Day Weekend the same year. Had to hitchhike home because our ride didn’t want to leave!

Sarah (Bell) Murphy Norfolk, VA

“Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness.”

The “First Atlanta Pop Festival” was originated in a meeting between myself, Chris Cowing (White Wolf), and Fred Logerquist, who we have since lost – God Bless His Soul. Alex Cooley and others were additional contributors after the fact. Actually Alex, who was the Manager of the Midnight Sun Restaurant invested $5000 along with his neighbor, David Cooper, later in the game. This is just to set the record straight. Briefly, the first meeting didn’t take place until February or maybe March of 1969. There had been a festival in Florida over Christmas and we said, “If it could happen there it can happen here.” The group ended up being 13 I believe. We moved pretty fast. Fred had connection to the Atlanta Raceway in Hampton.

The Piedmont show which actually 2 or 3 days after, Tuesday I believe was the result of politics. According to the Great speckled Bird, “How could we charge $$$ for music … even $13.50 a day.” we had to do something to appease the social uproar over our commercialism. Spirit, CTA, and Delaney and Bonnie stuck around for room and board. And the Dead played for travel, rooms and beer. So yes I was very involved in it as well as the rest of the team.

I remember Pigpen cracking two cases of beer, neatly arranging them on the balustrade around the pavilion, and calmly dosing each one with premium Owsley Acid. Everyone around the pavilion was glowing.

I would love to have a list of the people that attended the FREE concert in Piedmont Park after that Festival with Spirit, Chicago Transit Authority, Delaney and Bonnie and Friends (including Dave Mason and others), and THE GREATFUL DEAD. That was the seminal moment.- Robin Conant

atlantapop — **Sunset at the Atlanta Pop festival 1969**

My brother was working onstage back then. I think he worked all the Florida Festivals and a lot of Miami rock shows. He called me and said I could have all the free tickets I wanted. I was 19 and just out of high school. All I had to do was bring my friends. Well, out of this whole town, about 140 miles from the Speedway, only three wanted to go.

When we got there, my brother had left four “all-access” passes ( I think they were called backstage passes at the time). We got to meet and talk with so many performers, it really was a blur, although I do remember talking with Janis Joplin (very distinctly).

We got there right as Dave Brubeck (with Thelonius Monk?) was playing. We were woefully short-handed on everything except wine and beer (very little food). All weekend we traded beer and wine for weed.

I remember going to look for food and seeing all these “No Hippies Allowed” signs. We were more like political Yippies than Hippies, but, lol, I don’t think the way we looked convinced the locals we were not Hippies (I wore my first leather headband that weekend). Finally, we found a place to eat and a store about thirty or forty miles away). Ended up missing Tommy James and the Shondells we were told.

The band I remember most was Johnny Winter. Credence Clearwater Revival put on a show that was good, but it seemed liked they played every song like it appeared on the record. I enjoyed Spirit and Canned Heat, mainly because there were sort of like legends to us. As a matter of fact, I really can’t recall a bad performer. Oh yea, the Staple Singers blew us away, and I really liked Booker T.

There was a pond and quite of few people were swimming naked.

Saturday, because of my brother, I got to read a couple of announcements on stage. That was kind of weird.

We heard about the Dead at Piedmont Park, but left Sunday for some reason.

At the SC/GA line on the way back, we pulled over into the rest area with four girls from the Festival ( I forgot how we flagged each other down). We swam a while in the lake, and they invited us to Charlottesville VA, but we went home, dazed and confused and never the same again.

Too bad the country became more repressive and everything just sort of faded away.- Joe from Greenville SC

attended the festival…loved all the people I met…everyone was sharing water melons …and their shade. camped out in peach orchid. swear I saw big bird walk by the van….It was very HOT there but the people were wonderful…wish I coul relive it over again. I was also on 14 street . Middle earth head shop & the Catacombs. Did a little typing on Speckled Bird. Wonder if anyone remembers me? I remember you. and love you. Jesus was at the Catacombs in 68. So very meek & sincere. (well, we tried…didn’t we!) TWIGS

Ohmigosh. I was there too. My boyfriend and a dozen others came from Miami. I don’t think we all had tickets, but that didn’t stop us from attending one great concert. It was HOT. PG&E played Wade in the Water (?) in the afternoon and water would have been good then… All the bands were fantastic, great music, and great memories. I came home broke, exhausted, and sunburned. Told my parents I stayed with a school friend over the weekend – HA.

We know “Starman” has Reverend Star and he was a regular at the love-ins and concerts in Miami at the time. billym

I was around to see Starman in the Miami area. I was told he was a UM student. At Atlanta a huge local cop was trying to direct traffic in the hot sun. Starman, with only a cloth diaper on prances up to him. The cop then went and sat down in the shade. Starman with his wand then did a great job of directing traffic Chefneon@myspace.com

I went to the concert & had a really great time. I befrended people with a Uhaul set up as a sales booth of posters & funstuff and slept a few short hours under their truck. I awoke to Creedence CW playing around 2am I think. Got up & went to the front wiht my can of Ranch Style Beans opened & shared them with too many people on the way to the front to see. I have some pics that I will dig up soon of the firetruck & waterparty etc. PEACE www.neonjohn.com

Atlanta newspaper reports on the festival.

Thanks to Tony Hayden for this picture of Janis backstage. He says, “my writer friend and i were up from n’orleans where we wrote/photographed for ‘the inarcane logus’ the local underground press. we got to stay backstage for the duration of the festival.

Thanks again to Tony Hayden for this picture of one of my favorites of the festival Sweetwater. The guy in the middle may be a fan who made it on stage.

Dec 1968 Jan 1969 Miami Pop Festival

February 13, 2014

On December 28-30, 1968, Gulfstream Park outside Miami hosted the Miami Pop Festival, post-Monterey and pre-Woodstock. Alex Cooley happened to attend and decided he wanted to put on a similar festival in Atlanta. The Miami Pop 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.

(There is a book currently in the works after interviews with members or representatives of most performers as well as many of the attendees .)

2018 Exhibit about earlier Miami festival plus my poster for the REAL Miami Pop Festival on display.

Wikipedia says: The second Miami Pop Festival was held December 28–30, 1968, and was the first major rock festival on America’s east coast.^[1]^[2] It was produced by a team led by Tom Rounds and Mel Lawrence, who had previously produced the seminal KFRC Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California. The crowd size for the three days was estimated to be around 100,000.^[3]

Performers covered a wide range of music genres,^[4] and included:

Many of these musicians were cast as superheroes in a commemorative comic book distributed at the event. Interesting moments during the festival included: Joni Mitchell inviting former Hollies member and new love interest Graham Nash, as well as Richie Havens to join her onstage to sing Dino Valenti’s “Get Together”; Jefferson Airplane’s Jack Casady playing bass guitar with Country Joe & the Fish; and folksinger/songwriter icon and Coconut Grove resident Fred Neil stopping in at the festival one day to hang out and enjoy the music.^[4] Several acts advertised in early promotional materials did not appear, and their names were removed from subsequent promotions, including John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Dino Valenti and H.P. Lovecraft. Two bands who were expected to appear were unable to perform due to last-minute problems: The McCoys got snowbound in Canada and Booker T. Jones ofBooker T. & the M.G.’s got the flu.^[5]

This festival was unique in that it was the first rock festival to have two entirely separate ‘main’ stages several hundred yards apart (the Flower Stage and the Flying Stage), both operating simultaneously and offering performers of equal calibre.^[4]^[6]^[7]

Did you attend? Share your experience below if you wish.

miamipopschedule

Read my personal experience from the Miami Pop Festival.

**Big A-merica. Art was strewn about the area**

**Country Joe McDonald and Chicken Hirsch, drummer for The Fish, watch The Amboy Dukes. Then they came and sat beside my group in front of the stage!**

Did you attend? Share your experience below.

Atlanta 60s Bands

February 13, 2014Bands, MusicPatrick Edmondson

Music was essential in our lives. Most of us started out wanting to be The Beatles. It looked like their lives were exciting and interesting. Some of us went so far as to become musicians. The times did have an INCREDIBLE soundtrack! Which was good because at times with many of your heroes assassinated, you felt the music was all you could depend on.
Sgt. Pepper’s started a trend towards experimentation with sounds and influences. It was finally decided that guys old enough to die in Vietnam should be mature enough to drink. Lowering the drinking age to 18 filled the clubs with young men and women wanting to dance and forget about what possibly faced us in the Nuclear Threat -Vietnam era. Customers now demanded more than records; many places hired a variety of live musicians.
Since it was possible to earn a living around Atlanta, some very unique and talented musicians were attracted here. The sheer variety of bands in Atlanta at the time made for very enriching and inspiring evenings, and afternoons in the Parks.
Atlanta’s hip community was lucky enough to have had the services of many great musicians, but two of the most extraordinary groups of musicians stand out. They were always ready to play and support our community. One, The Allman Brothers, is still enjoying increasing success as they bring joy to listeners with music based in the musics of the South including blues, country, gospel and jazz. The other, Hampton Grease Band, had one album that became an industry joke and a trivia fact. Only now in retrospect is the complexity of their music being noticed and appreciated beneath the Dada zaniness that inspired it. Both Hampton and Glenn play astounding music and continue to amaze and inspire musicians around Atlanta and the world. Both can walk almost unnoticed in Atlanta while being adored by fans all over the world.
We just enjoyed hearing them play in the park and wish to say thanks for providing all the pleasure and a soundtrack for our lives.
One of my fondest memories is racing with my dog at twilight across the Piedmont Park open field as the Allman Brothers started Whipping Post roaring in the air like a storm gathering to release all that energy at once! Boom!

A partial list:

The Bag, Celestial Voluptuous Banana, The River People, Hydra, Wet Willie, Radar, Booger band, darryl Rhoades and the Hahavishnu Orchestra, Eric Quincy Tate, Mose Jones, The Brick Wall, Atlanta Rythm Section, Lynard Skynyrd, Marhsall Tucker band, Brother bait, Little Phil and The Nightshadow, Kudzu, Stonhenge, East Side Blues Band, Chakra, Kindred Spirit, Ron Norris, Mother’s Finest, Silverman, Ellen McIlwaine, Fear Itself, Thermos Greenwood and The Colored people,

We hope to provide links to all these. Can you supply any help? Anyone have tapes?

Heey Baby! Beach music

Thanks to Ricky Bear for this list of Atlanta musicians of the 60s and 70s on an invite to a reunion.

Sexual rights

February 13, 2014Lifestyles, Politics, RightsPatrick Edmondson

Once you liberate your mind, your heart and body want to follow. Civil Rights, Gay Rights, Women’s Rights, Men’s Rights to be free from societal stereotypes, Citizens Rights and more movements were spawned by these insights.

First Gay Rights gathering in Piedmont Park 1970. Nearly 400 attend; compare to 2007

Jefferson Airplane

February 13, 2014MusicPatrick Edmondson

The Great Speckled Bird August 31, 1970 Vol. 3 #35 pg. 12

Airplane

No doubt about it, as somebody on stage at the Municipal Auditorium put it, the Jefferson Airplane concert Monday night was “the Atlanta rock event of the year.” How long have the freaks in Atlanta waited to hear the Airplane-forever it seems. This was one of the few times the city auditorium has been really packed since Dylan played Atlanta years ago. All that energy of Rock & Roll experience on stage, met by the energy of a new, growing nid expanding village in the new freak nation. Haight-Ashbury thru Chicago thru Woodstock thru Altamont through Kent State.

Great Jones played a short, snappy set at 7:30, and Radar gave us some good stuff before the hour of 9 o’clock came around (especially “Jailhouse Rock” which is where a lot of Atlanta kids are at right now). But I don’t think many folks could get into any other band that night. We were in Airplane/Grace Slick/Jorma/Marty Balin/Paul Kantner/”White Rabbit Volunteers of Amerika” audience all the way. When the band from early Haight-Ashbury stepped out on stage, you could feel the rush hard and heavy, like we had to move on up higher, or explode. The Airplane took us where we wanted to go and left us there for over two hours.

“Somebody to Love,” “Plastic Fantastic Lover,””Saucer'”Marijuana,” “Volunteers””We Can Be Together”, “White Rabbit,””Good Shepherd,” and a lot, more old and new sounds we’ve come to associate with this group over the years. But this time live, up front, done firs thand by one of the few rock bands that reinterprets and re-designs their material for stage performance rather than just recreating their “hits.” Plus a long, hard, bluesy jam, and Marty Balin doing some really fine vocals.

Drummer Joey Covington was the only “new” element we weren’t used to; even though nobody knew quite what to make of his long, white- soulish high volume vocals, somehow it seemed like the things to do at the time, and we all got off on it. And he’s a damn good drummer.

What can anybody say about Grace Slick except that, finally it’s great to have a woman in charge of taking care of some roll& roll business!

A lot can be said about the rotten sound system the Airplane had to struggle with: the same sound people—Festival Group-who loused up the Santana/Allman Brothers concert some months back. Things weren’t nearly so bad as they were that night, but Jorma’s lead guitar was missed more often than not sometimes (leaving a hole in the total Airplane sound), and the mix left a lot to be desired. Thank God the volume was there-this is loud, loud music, and it . felt just right from where we were.

Glenn MacKay’s Head Lights is one of the oldest, and best; lightshows of all, but somehow, the more lightshows I see, the more I appreciate the Electric Collage.

Only a handful of cops were in the auditorium, but toward the first part of the concert we thought they were going to make trouble. The tension was almost unbearable—a heavy adrenalin rush as “Tear down the walls” and “Up against the wall, motherfuckers” come out of the speakers while uniformed cops hassled kids who were trying to occupy the area just beyond the stage. Finally resolving the tension, Marty Balin stood up to the uniforms: “They’re not doing a damn thing,” he said over the mike, “not a damn thing!” It looked like the cop might be into busting Marty himself (the Airplane has been busted a couple of times when they played the South), but Power to the People took the evening, and the stage area was encircled by Airplane lovers for the next two hours: cops looked embarrassed and out of place as they tried to step-over and through the crowd that wasn’t about 10 move because of some city ordinance.. After this early tense scene Marty and Grace moved directly into “We Can Be Together” and “Volunteers,” just to let us know they know. When an unbelievable response was given the Airplane at the end of the concert, (the cheering, stomping, and shouting went on for what seemed like hours), they came back to do one more, and it was “Volunteers” again. I don’t think they had planned on a second encore, but they came back once more and did a new song with some heavy jamming. Fantastic! Something to remember for a long, long time, and an experience of rock music that, hopefully, will keep us inspired until rock concerts in Atlanta can make it without that $6 price tag. Let’s bring the Airplane back to play free in the park!

Back when Santana played at the auditorium, the garbage strike had just begun, and the shit was beginning to hit the fan. A continuation of that strike by city employees was called for Tuesday, the day after the Jefferson Airplane concert. At the same time freaks are being hassled into the jails, and Black people are being shot down in their own front yards by pigs in Summerhill. Gay folk are being attacked and sent to Grady Hospital by homophobes in Piedmont Park, and women are not safe on the streets at night in our community. If “private property” is the target, as the Airplane puts it, and “We” are its enemy, we’d better start getting together some mass, collective actions to Stop the Pig/Serve the People. In loyalty to their kind, they cannot tolerate our minds in loyalty to our kind, we cannot tolerate their obstruction:

Got a revolution to make!

-miller francis.jr.

War on Rock

February 13, 2014Music, Politics, RightsPatrick Edmondson

The Great Speckled Bird March 30, 1970 Vol 3 #13 pg 14

War on Rock

Santana and the Allman Brothers Band flew right into a hornet’s nest last week when they showed up to play at the Municipal Auditorium: there was a picket line of striking city employees there to prevent scabs from filling their jobs.

The word from California is that Santana is a pretty hip Rock group and not the kind to cross a picket line in support of a city administration that had fired the strikers and alerted that National Guard to deal with them. And this year, unlike the 1968 garbage strike when longhairs scabbed in the workers’ jobs, it was becoming clear at the time of the scheduled concert that the hip community was lining up in complete support of the strikers against the city. The Mid-Town Alliance had voted unanimously to support the strikers. The Bird was behind them, and people from The Laundromat, Women’s Liberation and other groups were planning to be on the picket line, not inside the concert. The Allman Brothers dig Atlanta and the music audience here—they didn’t want to cross the picket line either, although their management obviously didn’t give a shit about any black workers’ struggle. The Insect Trust, also on the program, are a fairly “political” group from Memphis (via Hoboken, New Jersey, recently), and they stated early in the day that they wouldn’t play as long as the picket line was up.

In order to deal with this political/cultural dilemma the fairest way possible, Santana met directly with representatives of the strikers. The city workers didn’t want to keep the concert from taking place, and they wanted the support of the hip community; at the same time, Santana didn’t want to run roughshod over the very real efforts of the strikers to maintain a solid front against the city. So Santana offered to make a financial contribution to the workers’ cause and give some time at the concert for a union speaker; in return, the strikers would remove their picket line during the time of the concert. Everything was delivered, but the city didn’t dig what went down—not at all.

Atlanta has an 11:30 “curfew” and Municipal Auditorium concerts have to take that absurdity into account. The Santana concert started on time, but the sound system, supposedly a special “Festival Group” system promised “especially for this performance,” was responsible for an incredible number of hassles.

The sound was terrible for The Insect Trust, and something terrible seems to have happened to the group itself, too. We got a chance to hear them last summer at the Memphis Blues Festival, and they were fantastic, one of the best things we had heard. They got it all in—folk, rock, jazz, blues, some of the new things black musicians are doing, and somehow it all hung together in an exciting way. Nancy Jeffries, the vocalist, we dug a lot, but Thursday night she was lousy. None of it came off, but again. it sounded as if at least a large part of the trouble was in the mikes and amps-or maybe that’s what happens to a good group when they are “discovered” by Bill Graham.

The Allman Brothers Band were great though—it’s hard to describe what happens between Atlanta and the Allman Brothers, but their music brought the house down. It’s terrific to have them back here. but it did seem strange hearing them in the setting of the Municipal Auditorium for up to six bucks instead of for free in Piedmont Park- seems like “success” should work the other way around. We hope to see them back in the park this summer.

A lot of shit was coming down backstage while freaks were tossing a frisbee from balcony to balcony in the intermission before Santana. Roy Eirod, the auditorium manager, didn’t take too kindly to the idea of a striker going on stage, and so pitched a fit. Santana said they wouldn’t play if the agreement weren’t lived up to, and Aftermath Productions had decided that they would support Santana’s position. Finally, Ed Shane came out and announced the speaker who was accompanied, with good reason, by four bodyguards.Most of us dug what he was saying, but a few freaks with warped priorities just had to stick in some booing. The speaker, John Releford, wasn’t fazed at all: “Now, you folks can agitate all you want,” he said, “but I’m gonna stay up here for just a while longer and rap some more!” This got him an ovation, and after a couple of short remarks about freaks not scabbing and freaks and strikers supporting each other, he turned the stage over to Santana.

It would be hard to imagine anyone who doesn’t dig Santana. They did some great stuff Thursday night— like the Allman Bros., mostly from their record—but after only a half hour of music, the mikes and amps suddenly cut off. Eirod, backstage, had flipped because of the union speaker and envoked the curfew bullshit. Shane was out front trying to cool everybody off, but in the wings there was some pretty unpleasant hassling centered around the power switch. The Santana people were furious at the city.

Finally, Shane, who had been playing mostly a “mealy mouth role (he had wised up considerably by the time of the scheduled Spirit concert on Sunday) finally turned to the drummers and said, “What happens now is up to Santana!” Like an explosion, the drummers began to play without mikes and amplification, and a freaked out audience burst into shouts and applause and streamed past the befuddled cops to rush the stage (several kids had been busted during the evening for such offenses as “blocking the aisles,” etc., and at one point, the cops even confiscated the frisbee). You can bet your sweet life the city personnel were quaking in their shoes about what to do—imagine a lot of city cops against the combined forces of freaks, musicians and striking workers. A lot of hands got near the power switch, but miraculously, the electricity came back on for one more ferocious, driving number.

When it was all over, Shane came back to the mike to smooth things over but Santana organist Greg Rollie grabbed the mike and shouted, “We’re sorry about all the trouble—next time we play for you, we’re gonna play for two hours, and we won’t care what the rules say: Right on!

The next day, the city of Atlanta pulled another of its tricks in what Steve Cole of Discovery, Inc. has called a “war on Rock & Roll” waged by Atlanta for a long, long time: it cancelled four concerts already scheduled in the Municipal Auditorium by Aftermath Productions (including Judy Collins and Jethro Tull), and threatened never to contract with that agency again.

A lot of people are angry now. At the same time that the hip community is coming together with the strikers, people who want Atlanta to have Rock & Roll Music are getting together to make sure all decisions about music— who when, where and for how long—are answered not by the city administration of Atlanta but by the people who dig those sounds. Power to the People!!!

————miller francis, jr.

Lester’s blind eye

February 13, 2014Politics, RightsPatrick Edmondson

Could members of the Governor [Lester Maddox]’s committee be the reason firebombings of troublesome Civil Rights and Counter Culture buildings around Atlanta never seemed to get solved or sometimes even investigated? makes you go, “hmm?”

What concerned the various sectors of the United States ruling elites in regard to SNCC’s position against the draft and the war in Viet Nam was that the organization was actively challenging the notion that Africans in America should fight in unjust wars overseas. In January of 1966, SNCC issued a detailed statement opposing the war in Viet Nam. In August of the same year there were picket lines set up outside a selective service induction center in Atlanta, Georgia by members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The demonstrations resulted in the arrest of numerous activists and drew the attention of the FBI.

In a confidential FBI report issued on September 7, 1966 entitled: “Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Stokely Carmichael”, the Bureau sought to provide a summary of recent activities of SNCC and its chairperson. Under the beginning section of the report entitled: “Picketing Activities Atlanta, Georgia,” it states that: “Since August 17, 1966, a small group of Negroes, the majority of whom are members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, have been picketing the Twelfth Corps Headquarters, Northeast, Atlanta, Georgia, protesting United States action in Vietnam and United States Negroes fighting in Vietnam. A number of these individuals have been arrested by the Atlanta Police Department and charged with various offenses ranging from disorderly conduct to assault and battery. The activities of these individuals in connection with their picketing of the Twelfth Corps Headquarters are also under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation relative to destruction of Government property and possible violations of the Selective Service Act of 1948.”

The confidential report of the FBI continues by making reference to a speech made by Carmichael on September 3, 1966 and a rebellion which erupted on September 6 in Atlanta. According to the FBI report: “A confidential source advised that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee sponsored a rally in a predominantly Negro neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 3, 1966. Stokely Carmichael made a short speech at the rally. He attacked the Atlanta Police Department on police brutality matters. According to the source, Carmichael stated Negroes should form vigilante groups to observe police and should any acts of police brutality be observed, a committee should be formed among the Negro element to follow such matters.”

After the arrest of the pickets at the Twelfth Corps Headquarters, a delegation of SNCC members including Carmichael went to the Atlanta City Hall to demand a meeting with Mayor Ivan Allen. The SNCC members asked that the Mayor release the people arrested at the induction center. The Mayor replied that it was a federal matter and was beyond the control of the city of Atlanta. Carmichael was reported to have insisted that the city do something to affect the release of the demonstrators. Nonetheless, the Mayor abruptly ended the meeting by suggesting that the delegation become registered voters in the city. SNCC later held a street rally that same day, September 6, in emergency response to the police shooting of an African-American youth who was supposedly a suspect in a car theft.

Mayor Ivan Allen, who went to the scene of the rally in an attempt to calm the growing angry crowd, was pelted with rocks and bottles while standing on top of a police car. When the crowd began to rock the police vehicle the Mayor fell off after the roof buckled under pressure. The crowd grew rapidly and began to fight police in the surrounding neighborhood of Summerhill. The Mayor sent in a thousand police officers utilizing teargas and other forms of force to quell the rebellion in Atlanta. Allen immediately blamed SNCC for the unrest in Atlanta’s Summerhill District. Carmichael had issued an appeal over radio station WAOK asking that people come to the sight of the shooting of the youth by the police. The first two people arrested on the scene were SNCC members Bill Ware and Robert Walton for inviting people to broadcast their eyewitness accounts of the shooting by the Atlanta police over a loudspeaker.

Two days later Carmichael was arrested and charged with incitement to riot. On that same day another disturbance erupted in the Boulevard Section of the city after a black youth was shot to death on his porch by a white parolee, who was later sentenced to life in prison the following year. Hosea Williams of SCLC then attempted to organize a demonstration in the city after the arrest of numerous SNCC members, however, he was detained himself for leading a peaceful procession in the area where the youth was gunned down on his porch. The disturbances in Atlanta gained nationwide coverage with the scene of Mayor Allen being pushed off the hood of a police car repeatedly shown over national television. Atlanta, a southern city that attempted to cultivate an image of being moderate and business-oriented, was exposed as a bastion of racism and police brutality as well as intolerance to peaceful protest and other forms of dissent.

In the same confidential FBI report mentioned above that was issued on September 7, 1966, the bureau provides its own interpretation of the events on September 6 in Atlanta. The report states that: “The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee scheduled a rally at Capital and Ordman Streets, Atlanta, Georgia, on the afternoon of September 6, 1966, in protest of the arrest and shooting of a Negro male for auto theft earlier in the day. During the rally several unidentified Negroes talked to the group in a haranguing manner. Members of the group started throwing rocks and bottles at police officers and white spectators. Ivan Allen, Jr., Mayor of Atlanta, was unsuccessful in quelling the disturbance. Several acts of violence occurred resulting in the arrest of seventy-two people by the Atlanta Police Department; however, specific charges are not known.”

Pressures mounted against SNCC throughout 1966 resulting from its positions on black power, the draft, self-defense, urban rebellion and the escalating war in Viet Nam. With the release of selected FBI documents of Stokely Carmichael since his death in 1998, the unclassified records of American intelligence and the White House have provided clearer insights into the role of not only the FBI’s Counter-intelligence Program COINTELPRO, but the direct involvement of the Johnson administration and the United States Military in efforts aimed at the destruction of the civil rights and black power movements that were in strong evidence during 1966.

Editor’s Note: The FBI documents utilized in this article can be found on the Bureau’s web site: http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/carmichael_stokely.htm The files have been divided into five parts and are published without comment or interpretation. These documents by no means represent the totality of FBI and other government agencies’ surveillance activities directed at Stokely Carmichael and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating (SNCC). However, the examination of these records illuminate the thinking of the Johnson administration, the Department of Justice, the Secret Service, local police agencies and municipal and county governments in regard their efforts designed to stifle and eliminate the civil rights and black power movements of the time period.

http://panafricannews.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_archive.html

Phooey!

February 13, 2014history, Politics, RightsPatrick Edmondson

Why is the word Phooey associated with segregationist governor Lester Maddox?

Phooey was Maddox’s all purpose cuss word. Remember Lester Maddox had been elected Governor because he was a segregationist. He was nationally known for having used axe handles, ‘Pickrick Toothpicks’, to threaten any “colored” people who would come to his restaurant. His other talent was riding a bicycle backwards in parades. Really. Those ‘talents’ got him elected Georgia governor.

Lester made Georgia a national joke, so

some had fun with it.

A musical comedy about Maddox made it to Broadway.

Then Lester moved from the Ansley Park Governor’s Mansion into the new Governor’s palace just finished in Buckhead.

“The guest list of 400 includes140 negroes”.!! Actually the chicken came from Pascals which fed the Civil Rights leaders, not Maddox’s Pickrick.

Harrison Tells Why He Supports McGovern

February 13, 2014PoliticsPatrick Edmondson

Clark Harrison, Jr. was my uncle. He was the first WWII paraplegic to leave the VA hospital and live. He learned to fly his own plane and published his autobiography after being chairman of Dekalb County Commissioners. Taking this stand was considered crazy and political suicide at the time, but was inspiring to me. The best politician I ever knew.

PAGE 14A DeKALB NEW ERA WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1972

Harrison Tells Why He Supports McGovern

Two, prominent DeKatb County citizens – Clark Harrison and former Congressman James A. Mackay – have publicly endorsed the Presidential candidacy of Sen. George McGovern.

In last week’s issue of the DeKalb News, Mr. Mackey, a Decatur attorney and former U.S. Congressman, emphasized his support for the Democratic candidate, and closed with the comment that “Senator McGovern is simply asking us to be something different than a modern, militaristic Rome.”

Clark Harrison, the out-going Chairman of the Dekalb County Board of Commissioners, is the head of the Dekalb drive to elect Senator McGovern.

Here, in an assessment of his desire to see George McGovern elected, Clark Harrison speaks candidly about war, patriotism and the economy of a nation.

By CLARK HARRISON

My endorsement of George McGovern for President is based on personal conviction that goes back many years.

I was in a hospital in England in 1944 when President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill made their historic demand for the ‘unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. I felt strongly at the time, and since that this unnecessary political statement cost the lives of young Americans.

Since I was wounded in combat, I have always felt strongly about the political use of patriotism of our young men. Historians have confirmed the feeling I had at the time about the ‘unconditional surrender’ statement, and I believe they will confirm the feelings many have today that the Viet Nam War, and the Presidential visits to Red China and Russia, have been used in a ‘political effort by President Nixon to assure his re-election in 1972.

The tragedy of this day is the fact that alter four more war years under Nixon, we can no better control the internal situation in Viet Nam than we could have when Richard Nixon took office in 1969 – and 20,000 young Americans have been killed in action in the intervening years.

1 am convinced we can stay in Viet Nam another 10 years and the final situation in that unhappy country will not be substantially improved.

We are told today that the only reason we do not totally withdraw, now, is because of our prisoners of war – and yet, there are 550 more Americans held prisoner in Viet Nam today than in 1969. And, every day, American men fly over North Viet Nam, and are exposed to capture or death.

President Nixon sold one-fourth of the U.S. wheat crop to Russia in a deal they have sought for years—and did not secure the release of a single American prisoner.

Domestically, the Viet Nam War has been used to silence critics of what has been the most disastrous administration of this century.

The disaster of the Nixon Administration has been that our involvement in a war we cannot win has been continued at great expenditure of this nation’s wealth, and without a corresponding tightening of our civilian belts.

We have, in effect, been told that we can have ‘guns and butter,’ and the result has been disaster to our economy with the bill paid in inflation, devaluation of the dollar, a stock crash that cost the small investor literally billions, and an unprecedented high in unemployment.

The price of the Nixon Administration has been paid by the youth of America, by the wage earner, whose income has been fixed, and by the elderly.

The most alarming development is the apparent intent of the Nixon administration to continue these policies for another four years.

I have always been proud that I could serve my country in combat in World War II. I hope today, that whatever influence I may have will be on the side of preserving the ideals that made this country worthy of the sacrifice of our young men.

At the moment, that means, for me, voting for George McGovern.

Miller Francis

February 13, 2014Bird PeoplePatrick Edmondson

Miller Francis was at most basic, the music reviewer for The Great Speckled Bird. He is almost the first journalist to note Duane Allman and The Allman Brothers Band as something special. Rolling Stone Oct 4, 1969 pg. 18 Excerpt From The Underground Press ( a special report) [WHITE RACISM IN OURSELVES] One of the best rock and roll writers the underground has produced is Miller Francis, Jr., of The Great Speckled Bird in Atlanta. Francis is unique in his ability to place rock in the perspective of the revolution. Equally committed to the Movement and to rock and roll, Francis demands nothing but the best from both. This was how he reviewed the first MC-5 album: “The new, long-awaited MC-5 album is a disaster. Its very existence demonstrates perhaps the greatest weakness of the Movement in this country: its inability to understand, thus to make use of, the communications media, particularly the one that is by its very nature a ‘Movement music’—rock and roll music … At its best the MC-5 is an emasculated version of what the Who did years, ago; at its worst it is a pasty faced derivative of black music (as if we needed yet another minstrel group!). The MC-5, who I understand were a white rhythm and blues group before they were ‘revolutionized’ by John Sinclair, have simply wheeled their grimy Detroit vehicle up to a Black Power station and said ‘Fill ‘er up.’ They play with their hands and feet, not with their guts and soul. They are smug, not proud . . . That white radicals can be turned on by this farce sadly demonstrates how far we must go before we can approach the problem of white racism in ourselves and in our communities without guilt and intimidation.”

Miller Francis interview

Miller Francis grew up in Anniston, Alabama in a working class family. He was in high school when a Freedom Rider bus was attacked and burned just outside of town. Inspired by Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, he studied fiction writing at the University of Alabama. He watched as Governor George Wallace took his stand for racial segregation in the schoolhouse door, and he met Vivian Malone and James Hood after they were admitted as students. He joined thousands at a rally in the former capitol of the Confederacy to welcome those who had marched for civil rights from Selma to Montgomery.

Freed from the bullying that had plagued his hometown years, Miller came out to his college friends and soon developed a “second family” of freethinkers, misfits and hippies. At his Army physical, after much soul-searching, he declared himself homosexual, and because of his opposition to the Vietnam War, a conscientious objector. To his surprise, the Army responded by denying him either status, and in 1967 he refused induction into the military. Intending to leave for Canada, he married his best friend in a large, public Wed-In on the campus quadrangle, held on the release date of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. After deciding to stay in the US and fight his case in court, and he settled in Atlanta. There, he was arrested, and the ACLU provided legal defense. When the Army ordered a second physical exam, as required by Alabama law, he was declared 4F for reasons of health, and all charges were dropped only weeks before trial was to begin. As forces for radical change gained momentum in the Sixties, Miller moved from fiction writing and became more active politically, writing only non-fiction, and continuing to demonstrate for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. He lived for a time in an Atlanta commune called The Heathen Rage, and wrote music and film reviews for The Great Speckled Bird, a weekly underground newspaper with national impact. Some of his articles were reprinted by other underground papers, and he also contributed briefly to Rolling Stone and Creem (including a review of Music To Eat by The Hampton Grease Band). He covered national events such as the Woodstock Music Festival, the Memphis Blues Festival and the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival. His enthusiastic “discovery” account of The Allman Brothers Band’s first performance in Piedmont Park is still being quoted (Scott Freeman, Midnight Riders: The Story of the Allman Brothers Band). As early as 1969, Rolling Stone Magazine called Miller “one of the best rock and roll writers the underground has produced. . .unique in his ability to place rock in the perspective of the revolution”. In his book on the underground press, The Paper Revolutionaries, Laurence Leamer called Miller “the most articulate of the cultural radicals. [He] maneuvers the symbols of cultural radicalism with the subtlety and sureness of Marx working with the tools of economic determinism.”

As new social movements began to develop, Miller wrote articles articulating the oppression of women and homosexuals, contributing some of the earliest statements of what soon came to be called the Gay Liberation Movement. Miller was divorced in the early 70s. For several years, he worked as a legal secretary at the Southern Regional Office of the ACLU and the Atlanta Legal Aid Society, and later held a number of different jobs–mill worker, county court transcriber and computer typesetter. After he left The Bird, he visited then-socialist China in 1973 as part of a delegation from the U.S.-People’s Friendship Association. As the era of the Sixties ebbed, Miller broke from identity politics for a broader vision of social change. From 1982 to 1996, he was DJ/host of Revolution Rock (By All Music Necessary) at listener-supported radio station WRFG Atlanta 89.3 FM. In addition to playing punk rock and other forms of music on the cutting edge at the time, he conducted in-depth interviews with world class musicians such as Fela Kuti, Henry Rollins, KRS-One and The Clash’s Joe Strummer. Promoter Steve Harris described Revolution Rock as one of the shows that “exemplify radio pushed to its highest potential. . .Francis’ well-researched and tasteful presentation allows the music to communicate the message, avoiding the obvious pitfalls of political proselytizing.” Miller lives in Atlanta and is currently separated. For over twenty years, he has worked in the video library archives at CNN. In a return to fiction writing, he spent the last several years completing a novel, If Heaven’s Not My Home, which is set in a small town in Alabama in 1957.

The Strip Project

Calling all Atlanta Hippies past and present: Peace brothers and sisters!