The Great Speckled Bird Vol 3 #25 pg12, June 22, 1970

Cosmic Carnival 1970

By Miller Francis

Well, folks, we been ripped off. Say it LOUD- the Cosmic Carnival was a gigantic R-I—P-O-F-F! The Bird used to get criticized for being on a “negative trip,” always looking for the worst in any situation. Always rapping on about Capitalism and pigs and a lot of other nasty elements in the Amerikan way of life. So, when the Cosmic Carnival ads began appearing, we took the promoters at their word and printed a “positive” article that stressed the low price, the TV lightshow, the quality of the performers, and the No-Hassle promise of Aftermath/Pure Cane Productions. It’s obvious now that, as usual, the groovy things about the Cosmic Carnival came from Us, the People, and the rip-offs came from Them. Don’t forget that Woodstock was free because we refused to pay for it.

Just walking around inside the Atlanta Braves Stadium, center of Atlanta machismo, the scene was like a free zone liberated by freaks. Dope was everywhere— mescaline, grass, acid-and nobody seemed uptight in the new and strange environs of official city property. Longhair, tie-dyed clothes, skin, love and dope stood out glaringly against the C & S Bank billboard, the giant ads for “the real thing” that let you know who is really running the city of Atlanta. But the only people present were freaks. I suppose that in order to make any money on something as overblown as the Cosmic Carnival, promoters have to use saturation advertising (which they did) to bring in college students and other young people outside the growing freak communities all over the Southeast. But they didn’t come-just Us, crazy, hairy, stoned freaks, the only truly loyal Rock music audience that ever existed in the first place. As it turned out, we were the show. Think about it-besides Frank Zappa, what was the most exciting thing of all other than the sheer joy of turning on in the Atlanta Stadium in the , glare of the C & S and Coca-Cola billboards?

The music was the big rip-off. “It’s a Beautiful Day,” according to the emcee, “made the day beautiful,” but Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention made the day. Evidently the Atlanta/Southeast hips have listened to and loved the music of A Beautiful Day, and everybody grooved on the response the group got, especially violinist Le Flame. Traffic did some good stuff, but as far as this participant is concerned, the volume was so low that most of the music sounded like it was coming from a transistor radio in the next apartment! The Allman Brothers especially suffered from this ridiculously low volume. When the Mothers began, however, a speaker came on that hadn’t been on before, so their set was at least a third louder than anything else. Just in time, too, because the Mothers did a terrific set built around their recorded work, somehow managing to reproduce all the freaky elements that come easy to recording but not so easy to a live performance. Zappa’s charisma was intact, from the time he appeared at various points in the stadium, rapping with kids, to his work on stage/to the long trail of Zappa freaks who followed him from the stage across the field and up the stairs of the bleachers. We heard it all, the satire, the campy reformulations of 50s Rock, the farther-out material inspired by the New Music of Black musicians, all of it blended and intertwined into Zappa compositions that miraculously hold together, performed by one of the most brilliant groups of vocalists and instrumentalists in all of Rock music. Fantastic, and it put the audience through some heavy mind/music changes! (Note: word has it that those two outasight vocalists are lead singers for the Turtles!)

All the people who bought $7 tickets were in for a shock when they saw the size of the crowd—$3 bought the best seat in the house. That sacred ballfield became more and more a symbol of the stupidity of young people asking, begging, crawling to city officials for OUR OWN MUSIC—it was just a matter of time before we got up off our asses and eliminated the distance between us and the music. It happened during the Allman Brothers set, and rightfully so; they have the sound we love, the sound we needed to say Fuck It to the city of Atlanta. Duane told us to go back to our seats, and we sheepishly did so, but the Cosmic Carnival wasn’t really worth getting busted for. Amerika always looks to “leaders” and “inciters” to pick on whenever they want to come down hard on young people (that’s what the Chicago Conspiracy trial was all about), so don’t be surprised if some Atlanta pig, or group of pigs, decides that the Allman Brothers “incited” us to storm the ball field. If the city pulls this sort of shit, we’re gonna back up the group with everything we’ve got. Get ready because it just might happen. Bongo was busted this weekend because he is a “leader.” What we have to get straight is the fact that our musicians are responsible to us, not to the city of Atlanta, not to those billboards and the trust Mountain do a little bit of their hard and heavy Rock. To no one’s surprise, they did not play in Piedmont Park Sunday. Majester Ludi did play, and while a few people may think it was a big deal that they appeared in the park, we have many local Atlanta bands who can blow Majester Ludi off the stage—they. were obviously on a New York snob trip the whole time they were here, and all they play is what will get them on a record and nice PR photos in Billboard magazine, etc. What a hype! Herman Hesse should turn over in his grave.

God bless the Allman Brothers. The jam, with pieces from A Beautiful Day and an unknown harmonica player, was really fine. But please, somebody, turn the volume up—we don’t just want to hear it, we want to feel it, too! Steve Cole is doing a lot for Rock & Roll in Atlanta (without ripping us off), but some of the shit he was putting down in the park about “violence,” etc. was either misdirected or mistakenly handled. What he was talking about was the kind of stuff that occurs within various elements of our community, but he didn’t make that clear enough. We must learn that any problems and hassles we have within our community—”Contradictions Among the People,” as Mao calls them—must tees, corporate liberals, and Massell’s behind them. When the shit comes down on them, it comes down on us.

Hope everyone dug the four giant TV screens and the different angles they gave of the music on stage! Actually the only angle the promised “lightshow” gave was another glimpse at the way Rock promoters are allowed to get away with murder, without accounting to anybody, least of all the people who make it possible for Rock music to exist in the first place.

Funny thing about all the music promised, too. It weren’t there! Love, Sweetwater, Albert King and Ten Years After did not play, and all but Love were there, at the Stadium!

Worst of all, Ike & Tina Turner, one of the most awaited of all the scheduled groups, didn’t get to play at all. Incidentally, there’s something fishy about the lineup anyway. If it’s true that the Cosmic Carnival had a 12 o’clock curfew to meet (that’s what they say, that’s why the thing ended when it did), then why does the official schedule have Ike & Tina Turner coming on at midnight? There’s no way under the sun that that schedule could possibly have been met (have you ever known stagehands and technicians who weren’t stoned during a show?), so how come so many groups were signed up (if they really were) to play in such a short lime? What an insult to have to listen to Shelly Isaacs when you came to hear Albert King and Ike and Tina Turner!

And that sound by Hanley—whose idea was it to keep the volume low? Hanley’s? Aftermath/Pure Cane’s? Sam Massell’s? Mills B. Lane’s? Coca-Cola’s? C&S Bank’s? Or, more probably, a sick combination of all of these. Did anybody ask YOU how loud you wanted the sound to be, because I wanted it loud enough to clean our heads out, and for ten hours, I heard fellow freaks yelling “louder! LOUDER!!!” and I don’t remember anybody from the stage answering that rather clear demand. Can you imagine what will happen to our music if we let ourselves be intimidated by pigs who don’t know Frank Zappa from Patti Page, and if we allow ourselves to be forced to listen to our music at low volume? In the words of Tommy, “We’re not gonna take it/Never did and never will!”

We dug the final rush onto the ballfield to hear be dealt with within the community, not by outside forces and certainly NOT BY THE PIGS! We have our own Street Patrol-STP means “Stop the Pig”/”Serve the People”—and we must rely on them to settle our disputes. Otherwise, the pigs are going to step in, and we’ll all be the worse for it.

The Rock music scene in Atlanta is really fucked up. It may be dying. But remember that Rock music has always been defined as an industry, subject to all the forms and limitations of capitalism—promoters, middle men, expensive tickets, deals with the city, etc. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that this capitalist base has to go, or the music has to go—1 don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to give up my music. Let’s have it because we demand it, not because the city lets us have it. It isn’t theirs to give.

One thing: Don’t let anybody divide us up into Good and Bad. We—all of us—are one community. If there are problems, WE can solve them. Beware of anyone who tries to divide us into “violent” and “peaceful” elements. These are the kind of people who always put down “violent protest” by us, and don’t get uptight ahout what Martin Luther King, apostle of militant (dig it!) nonviolence, called “the greatest purveyor of vio- lence in the world today”—the United States government. The brother who gets sick at his stomach at the shit the pigs pull on the strip is not alone when he throws a rock, or calls a pig a pig. The sister who fights back, doing what she has to do to survive, must have our support. Brothers and sisters who organize to Stop the Pig are working in our interest. I don’t know anybody who is planning to leave Atlanta just because Massell and his henchmen don’t want the hip community to run itself and make its own decisions, and it would be outasight is all that new blood Massell is worrying about would get it on and come right on into Atlanta. Welcome, brothers and sisters! We dig Atlanta and our scene here, and if you want to turn on to it, we’ll make a space in the lives that we’ve planned. The Atlanta Chamber of Commerce spends a fortune each year trying to encourage businesses, industry and white collar executives to move to Atlanta; now it says it wants to discourage young people from turning on to one of the best scenes in the whole country. It’s not up to Massell and it’s not up to Coca-Cola. Power to the People!!!

—miller francis, jr.