Grateful Dead Live in Piedmont Park 7/7/69
Free download – http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-07-07.sbd.clugston.3116.sbeok.shnf
San Franciscan Psychedelic Ballroom Nights 8 CDs of great music http://www.pooterland.com/index2/news/shack_chat/shack_chat16/shack_chat16.html
It Crawled out of the Vault at KSAN
http://www.tapecity.org/showthread.php?t=2835
Little Feat live @ Richards 1/1/1973
Glenn Phillips, Guitarist extraordinaire, has the inside story of The Hampton Grease Band history as only a member of the bandknows it.
The Hampton Grease Band were a main stay of the community and seemed always ready to play for a good cause. This show was memorable because I was at Emory and knew the Young Republicans who supported Nixon and his Vietnam policy. They stopped just short of being pro-war activists.
We had driven to Emory’s AMB, really enjoyed the Greaseband experience of that evening, even though Young Republicans could be heard outside trying to be disruptive. I had driven The Celestial Omnibus, my hippie VW bus. We returned to leave and the bus would not go backwards. We assumed a flat tire but found more when we checked in the dark. ‘Someone’ had slashed all four tires to ribbons; their idea of debate. Luckily a friend ran Mother’s Tire Company and brought over four replacements.
The unique Mr. Bruce Hampton. Bruce’s site
Hampton Grease Band review
Julian Cope’s Review of Music to Eat for unsung heroes
Harold Kelling, RIP, helped raise funds for the new Little Five Points community.
Col. Bruce Hampton @ 2007 Inman Park Festival
Glenn Phillips Band 2008 Redlight Cafe St. Patrick’s Day
The Glenn Phillips Band RainShadows live
Glenn Phillips – Scotland
Glenn Phillips w/ Peter Stroud-11/07
Glenn Phillips – Live in Athens, Georgia – “John Marshall”
Glenn Phillips- Live in Athens, GA-1996 – “Vista Cruiser”
Photos from The Facebook group Atlanta Pop Festival – I was there or was I?
Another party for the building formerly the garage of the Governor’s Mansion, now an outstanding home.
Another party for the building formerly the garage of the Governor’s Mansion, now an outstanding home.
Lester did not like ‘colored people’ mixing with ‘Good folks’. Even the AJC realized Lester felt much the same way about colorful people.
The Phooey party mix intentionally included both.
Phooey Party invitation
Such was Maddox’s notariety that the party got mentioned in the New York Times
Maddox used the axe handle as a symbol. He gave them out at his restaurant as “Pickrick toothpicks” to intimidate anyone trying to segregate his business. He then used that not so subtle symbol of segregation in his successful run for governor.
The Phooey Party made a peace symbol of axe handles.
Lester was a fool and acted so in public as camouflage for his racism as benevolent affection for his ‘lesser Colored folks’. He even had a Black man as Uncle Tom join him in a stage act. One of the neighbors to the old Governor’s mansion was Mugsy. In 1965 Time Magazine described him thusly: “Milton M. (“Muggsy”) Smith, 63, an Atlanta insurance salesman who made a name during 16 years in the state legislature trying to repeal every segregation law in Georgia.” Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,842098,00.html#ixzz0lgEuyZnw
In 1961 Muggsy had run interference for Lester’s run for mayor of Atlanta. By drawing Black voters to himself as their benevolent friend, he almost got Lester elected mayor. Imagine if he had been Mayor during the events of Allen’s term, the early 1960s. Don’t think Atlanta would have been known as ‘the city too busy to hate’.
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Ever loyal to Lester, Muggsy gathered supporters to jeer at arriving guests and called the police repeatedly to complain.
The police chief was sad he had to leave the party early lest he be seen by Muggsy’s group. 
Where Penn ends at 8th Street is an apartment house. In 1969 and a bit, it was called The Zoo. Jan Jackson, Tom Jones and Dave Hoffman, friends from college, lived in an upstairs apartment.I was visiting on a Sunday morning in Spring 1969, May 11th.
Three guys came in the front door. I recognized one as Berry Oakley, the bass player from The Roeman’s who’d played in my hometown in South Georgia. Someone said one of the other hippie guys played guitar with Aretha Franklin. They announced they were a new band up from Macon to play in Piedmont Park. The other guy had led them to a friend at The Zoo for attitude adjustment prior to the gig.
Free music Piedmont Park was starting to be a regular Sunday event at that time. We wandered over eager to see who would play today. The stone steps were like hip hullabaloo. Some of the best musicians Atlanta had to offer had graced the steps , but so had some neophytes not yet ready for the stage, and even some who would never be ready.
The Allman Brothers looked like just another group of longhaired hippie musicians, but they had two drummers and one was black. That was unusual in 1969 Atlanta. The instant they started to play two more things became obvious. Two guitars were playing leads that intertwined around each other seductively, and these guys were so much better than anything we’d ever heard live. The bite and snarl of the blues rocked along on propulsive rhythms. The songs were old blues and originals, but all were like nothing heard before. Recognizable fragments of other songs were sneaking through, but as soon as recognized they submerged again to let something else arise. “Wasn’t that Donovan’s song about a mountain?”
Usually when bands played people walked dogs, threw Frisbees, barbecued, and just enjoyed Atlanta’s park on a Spring Sunday. Today everything else came to a halt. White, black, young, and older all focused totally on the Allman’s music. The crowd was a dancing party focused towards the stone steps.
The next week’s community newspaper, The Great Speckled Bird, devoted the cover to a picture of Duane Allman in his STP t-shirt playing on the stone steps at Piedmont. The accompanying article stated that everyone there that day knew they had experienced something extraordinary and unforgettable, and it was too big to stay just in Atlanta, or the South, or the US.
The community followed The Allman Brothers to gigs both free and paid; they were a guarantee of an outstanding musical experience.
The Brothers again played Piedmont Park July 7th, 1969 with The Grateful Dead for a free concert after the First Atlanta Pop Festival. Their set amazed the festival goers still in town. Then they joined the Dead to jam at the end of the evening and more than held their own. Now they really found their musical niche, and the secret was out.
The Brothers recently returned to play Piedmont 9/8/7 and the infusion of new blood plus the vets, made the groove live again.
Check a more complete story of that evening at www.thestripproject.com
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Talk about conflicted emotions. I had four of these. Then my grandfather, who I loved very much and had stayed with nights to care for, had died. His funeral was scheduled for Sept. 11, 1964! (note date on tickets I had)
Rain or shine, it should have said or hurricane, which is what occurred. Otherwise my father had planned to surprise me and fly me down..
The next year they came to Fulton Stadium in Atlanta. Tickets sold out before South Georgians got a chance.
A 38th Anniversary look at The Beatles concert at Atlanta Stadium
By Donnie Thompson
http://www.earcandymag.com/rrcase-beatlesatlanta.htm
We were told a story we are unable to check, but pass on since it is so great a story, true or not.
It is said… an Atlanta policeman went to the locker room of the Atlanta Stadium just before show time and caught one George Harrison partaking of a magic cigarette. The officer was sticking to the book and arresting him. Big hubub. Brian Epstein offering anything to just forget it all. Head officer comes and says, “Listen to that crowd! If these guys don’t go on, there will be a riot and a lot of little girls going home with broken hearts today. Can we come to a better agreement than creating a broken hearts club, Sgt. Pepper?”
Sgt. Pepper got the message and tore up the citation. Good story whatever.
by HopHead
Back in the days when I was a committee chairman at the Georgia Tech Student Center, I was buddies with all the local concert promoters … and I took full advantage of these relationships. This was long before TicketBastard came to dominate the industry. Instead of computerized sales, the promoter divvied the actual printed tickets up and delivered them to the various ticket outlets all over the city. So at each outlet, you could only select from the tickets they had on hand.
Leveraging my relationship, I’d simply stop by the promoter’s office the day before the tickets went on sale and buy them directly from him – I could pick any seats I wanted since they hadn’t been distributed yet. It’s a beautiful thing to be in a office with an entire show’s worth of tickets to pick from! Generally I’d purchase the same fifth row, left of center seats for every show at the Atlanta Municipal Auditorium.
Pink Floyd, however, was appearing at Atlanta Symphony Hall during the Meddle tour – the first-ever rock concert at Symphony Hall. I was a huge Floyd fan, ever since Umma Gumma scared me silly. I’d never been to Symphony Hall and had no idea what tickets to buy – there was no seating chart at the office since they’d never before done a show at this venue. This particular show was especially important because I was getting tickets for all my friends as well, about two rows worth. So I just took Alex’s word on what the best seats were, and walked out of his office with 10 seats in row KK and another 10 in row LL.
I had no idea where these seats were located and had some trepidation – the seat numbers were unfamiliar and I’d spent all my friends’ money – but I shouldn’t have worried. Alex had taken care of me. The whole batch of us arrived at the concert tripping our brains out – how else are you supposed to see Pink Floyd? We entered the Hall in full hippie regalia and discovered that our seats were in the direct center of the first two rows of the balcony. Whoa! The balcony in Symphony Hall swoops right down almost to the stage – we were looking right down on top of it!
Looking down from our seats we could see a huge light boom with three rows of lights resting on the floor of the stage, stretching horizontally almost the entire width of the stage. Behind it, the curtain was closed. The show began almost subliminally with the sound of a beating heart gradually increasing in volume until it was just loud enough to hear. Then the lights started to pulse red in time with the beating heart. After a moment, the band started to play from behind the curtain. Already this was show unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
The lights continued to pulse and sequence in a manner I’d never seen before, and the curtain remained down until after the first song began to segue into the next. Suddenly, the entire massive light boom began to slowly and majestically rise from the floor until it was as high as the top of the stage – the lights still pulsing rhythmically with the music. Then the curtain opened, exposing the band and their equipment for the first time. Suddenly the entire light boom rolled from the front of the stage to the back and the lights rotated from pointing to the audience to pointing down at the band. Given the special effects available today that may not seem so much, but in 1970 it was brain overload!
Later in the show we heard a helicopter approaching – an unmistakable sound to anyone who had seen news clips from Viet Nam. Louder and louder, the helicopter sounded like it had entered the hall even though we couldn’t see it. It flew directly overhead, then behind, then around the hall again. It dawned on me that Pink Floyd’s sound crew was using quadraphonic speakers – I looked behind me and, sure enough, there were giant PA speakers positioned in the back corners of the balcony. Still, I felt like I needed to duck when the helicopter flew overhead. One of the guys with me stood up screaming, flung his clothes off, and ran out of the hall. This is a band that likes to play with your mind …
Pink Floyd Part Two
Ok, so I had a wonderful, mind-bending experience the first time I saw Pink Floyd – these guys had caught me by surprise with a show unlike any I had seen before. I knew they were going to mess up my mind, and still, they did it anyway. So next time they came to Atlanta I figured I was ready for them.
This time they were playing in support of their brand new album, Dark Side of the Moon, at the old Atlanta Municipal Auditorium instead of Symphony Hall. (Could the naked, screaming guy have had something to do with that?) The Municipal Auditorium was where I’d seen most of the shows that hit Atlanta – Traffic, the Who, Mountain, Elton John, the Dead, the ABB, among many others – most of them from my regular fifth row, left of center seats.
But this time, remembering the quadraphonic experience from Symphony Hall, I decided to get creative. Instead of sitting up front, I figured I’d get the seats with the best sound. So I took out a seating chart, drew a big X on it, and determined the exact center of the floor seating. This is where I bought two rows of tickets for Floyd (since I could get seats anywhere I wanted).
Well, when we arrived for this show we were even more psychedelicized than the last time, I mean we were on a different planet! We were a little late getting there (for obvious reasons) and, although the show hadn’t started yet, the auditorium was very crowded. Rather than work my way through the crowd in my precarious state of mind, I decided to ask an usher for help. Now I’m a tall guy – I seldom have to look up at anyone and when I do, it tends to make me a little uncomfortable. So when the usher told me to wait and came back with a guy about a foot – a foot! – taller than me, I was discombobulated to say the least. Then this giant of a man looks down on me and says in a voice I’ll never forget, a basso profundo not unlike Lurch the butler, “Come. With. Me.”
Yikes! The show hadn’t even begun yet and already the mind games had started. Lurch led us right past the rows I’d purchased, all the way to the front of the auditorium. I freaked when we went by the seats I knew were ours – I had no clue what could be happening. Turns out the soundman for Floyd had done the same thing I’d done – he’d drawn an X on the floor plan and situated his soundboard in the exact spot I’d selected for our tickets. In order to accommodate the missing seats, they had set up two rows of rickety, wooden folding chairs in the space between the front row and the stage. We were all seated, crammed together within touching distance of the stage.
Oh glory! The show started and Floyd proceeded to blow our minds. There were three black chicks doing back-up vocals all wearing sequined dresses. Each girl was wearing a different colored wig in bright neon red, blue and green. A guy wearing a gorilla suit cavorted across the stage, climbed some scaffolding, and began swinging on a rope from the balcony. Another guy dressed like the Mad Hatter walked down the aisle through the audience on stilts. When he reached the stage, he took one giant step up and started walking around the musicians. They ignored him as if he wasn’t there. Same with the gorilla. This is all happening right in front of us. No other concert experience had ever prepared me for this. The music was incredible and our minds were unlimbered from reality.
My buddy Jim was seated right next to me and was white-knuckled, grabbing the arms of his chair. Later he told me he thought he’d been kidnapped by aliens, for real. I can understand why. A truly unforgettable concert experience.
From left to right: Lance, Mark Goodfriend, Schroeder, Lee Shannon & Stevie Parker.
The tent on the right has quite a history of it’s own. It came from a Sears’ store in Denton, TX. Renée & I rode with John Ivey to the Dallas Pop Festival, Labor Day of ’69. We arrived a week or so before it started and needed a place to stay. I’m an Eagle Scout and had no problem with tents, so off we go to the closest Sears’ store to buy the biggest tent they had in stock. The Hog Farm needed a few things, so this guy we called Beethoven, dressed in an orange jumpsuit with beads and a stovepipe hat went with us.
We were quite a sight at the neighborhood mall in Denton. Beethoven found the toy department and proceeds to buy handfuls of less than a dollar toys and gives them away to every child or adult that would take one. By the time he meets up with me in sporting goods he looks like the pied piper with all the people following him around. including security guards. We must have drawn every guard in the store. I was glad to get out of there.
Put the tent up back stage and enjoyed the privileges of shade and almost seclusion in the midst of chaos and the Texas sun. Maybe 75% of the performers shared the tent and refreshments with us, more than I can name or remember. Each musician is a separate story. Maybe more another day….
Brought that tent back to Atlanta, used it in one more Pop Festival, as shown in picture and managed to keep it and use it for 36 years. A lot of camping trips, lot of fishing, lot of family time. Renée and I have three children. All of them learned to play cards in that tent during rainy weather. Good memories.
Monday, August 31, 2009
I grew up in Griffin, GA; a small town south of Atlanta. I had the pretty normal life of a small town boy and as I grew into my teens I began listening to FM rock stations and hanging around with some of the musicians and others considered a little on the “hippy” side Then in 1969 Hampton, GA was invaded by thousands of people coming to attend the First Atlanta Pop Festival. I was working with 2 friends as a field hand at the Georgia Experiment Station for a summer job.
We decided that we would drive over to the raceway and check things out. So we loaded a truck with a few watermelons, other fruit – from the fields we were working, and some beers. (Being natives of the small town we knew where we could get beer, even under aged) and drove over. We were still somewhat naive about this culture but we were probably the hippest people in our town at the time. I guess by the time we arrived at the festival it had become a free concert because we ultimately found ourselves inside the field and walking around with our beer, sampling pot (my first time) and meeting people from all over.
We wound up staying for a very long time as I remember see several acts including Spirit, Janis Joplin, and others. We left late that evening and were the local heroes for having the guts to even go over.
At that time ROTC was mandatory in the high school which meant military haircuts etc. I spent the rest of my summer growing my hair and paying Saturday night visits to Atlanta and the strip. By the time school started in the fall my hair was not all that long, but much too long for the ROTC Sargent. I was advised if I did not cut my hair I would fail the class and could be expelled from school. I saved them the trouble and got with a couple of friends to head to California. Unfortunately we only made it as far as Starkeville, Mississippi before the car crapped out. A local minister helped us get it repaired and we returned to Atlanta.
By now my friends had had enough of the adventure and decided to return to Griffin. I decided to stay in Atlanta where I remained for the best part of the next 5 years or more.
I first visited The Strip on weekend visits from Griffin until the fall of 1969 when I left home. I began to form great friendships and lived in a “Crashpad” on 14th street. I would leave what few belongings I had at the Speckled Bird office for collateral and sell copies for food money. I ate a lot of Krystal burgers during that time because they were the cheapest meal to eat.
I experience acid for the first time at the Donovan concert at the Municipal Auditorium (now an admin building for Georgia State University.) It turned out the be somewhat of a bad trip and I learned quickly I did not like acid much after that.
I had a slight run in with the law and found myself back in Griffin for a while in 1970. But the call of the Byron festival rang out and I traveled there a week early to help build the stage etc. After staying in Byron through the event I returned to Atlanta where I continued to live and hold several short jobs between my “street pharmacist” endeavors.
I was living with several friends in a house on a small street of Piedmont (Mytle street, I think) when we were raided and I was arrested for possession (of less than an ounce of pot) and operating a dive. Oddly enough I wasn’t even in the room with the dope and my name was not on a lease but that did not matter. (I found out later that the GBI had been watching me and my friends from Griffin days.)
I was more careful after that with my drug activity and took various odd jobs. I finally landed a job as a cook at Tom Jones Fish & Chips on Peachtree street between 10th and 11th street. When the manager left town with the contents of the safe one night I was promoted to manager.
That is where I stayed until a bounty hunter came in and took me in for not appearing at a hearing. It turned out that the notice for the hearing had gone to the house I was living in at the time of the bust. I had since moved.
I took a plea bargain and agreed to return home and return to school to avoid jail. By then my mother had moved to Atlanta so that made complying with the law and still hanging on The Strip easy.
What was your best experience associated with The Strip and the hip community?
All the music. Piedmont Park had something happening almost every weekend. And when shows came to town you either got a job as an usher or new someone who did. I saw so many acts at the Municipal Auditorium for the price of a joint.
Second Atlanta Festival in Byron
The summer a friend and I hitchhiked to Washington, DC with a few hits of acid to sell and $50 each.
Later on, nights at Funochios, Richards and Eelectric Ballroom.
I had a few. Bad acid trips, living on the street not knowing where I would sleep or get my next meal, my arrest, beaten up and robbed of a half pound of weed (which I had to work off by selling more for no profit).
A night of depression where I was convinced suicide was a good move. Took 10 hits of acid with a guy named “Angel”. When it kicked in I realized, “this was a bad move.” Was counceled by a guy in the house that, “I shouldn’t worry, the acid itself probably wouldn’t kill me.” He stayed with me through the evening to keep me on an even keel and keep me from freaking out. I never saw the guy again after that. I tend to call him my angel. That was the point where I never took acid again nor considered suicide. I learned that Angel later shot himself on the back steps of Chili Dog Charlies.
Loves lost or let slip away by stupid acts and bad decisions.
Those experiences were the best and worst in my life. When they were up there was nothing like it. When down it could really drepress you. I have used my past as a testimony when working with teens and men in my church.
I always say that I don’t know that I would repeat them but I wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world
I went to a house on 14th street with some musician friends one night. There was a concert scheduled for the next day so people were starting their partying early. While in the basement of the house we were passing around joints and listening to some guys playing guitar and singing. I found out the next day it was Duane Allman and other members of the band but I was too high to know who they were the night before.
My street name was “Skinny”, a name that followed me from High School. I weighed about 130 pounds soaking wet and hung around with a 250 pound football player who’s nickname was “Uncle Heavy”. He had a reputation of taking the smaller weaker guys under his wing for protection. And when the counter culture hit Griffin he was right there along with me and others
I am now married to a wonderful woman who grew up in the Decatur suburbs. Her life was vastly different from mine. She grew up with both parents in the typical middle class home. She offered the grounding I needed and the faith in me that made me want to be a better person. We have raised 3 wonderful sons; twins 30 years old and their 27 year old brother. I just became a grandfather to a beautiful boy. I have worked for BellSouth (now AT&T) since 1976 in media and graphics production from multi-image slide to video & multi-media.
Mike Payne