August 2000 The Psychedelic News Music Ezine

Inside. . .

The Fish File
Memories of Iron Butterfly
Is This Not Spinal Tap?
By David Fisher

Atlanta Pop Festival Photos
Photographer Carter Tomassi covered the festival for "The Great Speckled Bird" and shares his photos

Still Savoring the Magic
Bill Mankin helped construct the festival stage and contributes a vivid memoir of the event

Procol Harum at the Festival
Richard Beck was part of the massive crowd and relives this magical weekend with a lively narrative

Procol Harum
Millennium Concert

This Month in
Rock and Roll History

Our Resident Hippy Remembers
Your contributions and stories from
the 60s and 70s.
send us yours

Our Resident Hippy Remembers will return in September's issue.

It had all the essential elements of a bona fide rock festival, and indeed all the ingredients that made these mammoth musical extravaganzas remarkable and miserable at the same time; there was the mandatory establishment resentment (Georgia state governor Lester Maddox declared the festival to be “one of the worst blights that has ever struck our state”), sweltering heat and traffic jams (temperatures reached over 100 degrees and traffic on I-75 was backed up as much as five miles), naked bodies and bad trips (after all, it was 1970), bikers (various biker gangs began arriving on the grounds a few days prior), and most importantly, an incredible array of performers, some of whom have since passed on to legendary status, while others have passed on in the most literal sense.

While it had been only one year since Woodstock, the indelible stain of the more recent Altamont tragedy left officials and concertgoers alike with an uneasy feeling as day one of the festival arrived and the throngs began to swell and motorcycle gangs roared ominously throughout the festival grounds. Fortunately, The Atlanta Pop Festival was not marred by any ugliness.

Sun drenched music fans gathered to revel in the excitement of one of the most eclectic and impressive performance rosters ever assembled. Local heroes The Allman Brothers kicked off the festival on Friday and then returned to bring the proceedings to a rousing conclusion on Sunday. Saturday’s festivities were capped off by Jimi Hendrix, as he recreated his masterful symphony of distortion with another furious electrical shredding of “The Star Spangled Banner”, only this time it was on July 4^th and his backdrop was a dark evening sky exploding in color as a fusillade of pyrotechnics illuminated both the heavens above and the masses gathered below.

The Atlanta Pop Festival would be one of the last open-air festivals of the era. Thirty years later, we relive it by bringing you three unique and very different perspectives of this incredible musical celebration. Carter Tomassi, who covered the festival for “The Great Speckled Bird”, provides his photos of the festival and shares the stories behind them.

Bill Mankin toiled in the hot Georgia sun for weeks helping to construct the stage and contributes a lively and vivid memoir that’s punctuated with amusing anecdotes of the before, during, and after phases of the event, including recollections of his birds-eye vantage point high above the stage. To close, Richard Beck, who was one of the thousands in attendance that weekend, adds a wonderful narrative as he recounts the scene at “ground-zero” with an emphasis on the Procol Harum set.

Drop in, Drop out and Trip on Back…

Still Savoring the Magic By Bill Mankin
The Stage's Early Stages...building under the hot Georgia sun
Early June 1970, Byron, Georgia: The advance team/construction crew arrives. Our mission: build a rock festival. This would be my fifth, and last, rock festival experience during those heady three years between 1968 and 1970 when the rock revolution burst out of indoor arenas into the grass and open air. Oddly enough, even at the time it felt like the end of an era. But as I drove down to Byron that first day it felt like the beginning of "Bill's Excellent Adventure." Byron would also be my second rock festival as an actual employee, in both cases working for the team of seven promoters who had produced the first Atlanta International Pop Festival one year earlier. I could barely stand the wait for this one. Memories from the previous summer's Atlanta festival were already giving me great expectations: backstage chat with Janis Joplin; on-stage arms-length vantage point for Led Zeppelin's set; a quiet hotel-room discussion with Jim Morrison and one of the festival's promoters in an unsuccessful attempt to convince Morrison to bring the Doors to the festival; ... and MUSIC! God, the music! For me, the music was the point. In 1969 I had worked before the festival distributing posters and other promotional materials, but had declined to work during the festival so I could concentrate my full attention on enjoying the music. By 1970 I was evidently ready for a deeper commitment. So I signed up for the construction crew and in early June moved to a rag-tag campsite next to the Middle Georgia Raceway and the soybean field that would soon welcome the musical masses. My tent-mate was a guy named Sandy, actually "Psychedelic Sandy" in his college radio DJ persona. The tunes he had spun on the radio a couple of years earlier had really expanded my musical mind. But in reality he didn't look at all psychedelic, nor for that matter like a construction hand ready for a month of heavy sweat and poor pay. But there he was, like me, trying to get as close as possible to the high energy, counter-cultural tidal wave of live rock'n'roll. Our campsite was initially inhabited by about thirty similarly inclined long-haired aficionados from throughout the Southeast, mostly males. The women that came with them ran the campsite and cooked three great meals a day for the crew (what can I say, this was 1970). The facilities were rustic but the camaraderie - and our mission - more than made up for it. When necessary we could even be pretty inventive, such as with our daily showers. The Middle Georgia Raceway, a small oval blacktop track, had an appropriately-sized fire truck - a pickup truck with a square metal tank in the back holding 300-400 gallons of water in a pressurized tank. Every day one of our crew would go fill up the tank and drive the truck back to the campsite. Everyone, men and women, would strip; we'd all get sprayed down; we'd soap up and scrub ourselves; then we'd get blasted with spray again - en masse. It was great fun. It was also interesting that the local sheriff would sometimes manage to time his daily rounds so that he could drive out from town and through the campsite just about shower time. I guess he decided not to arrest anyone for public nudity so that he could come back again another day. [By opening day of the festival the guy had become a pretty good sport - he even proudly displayed a smiling pig face someone had drawn for him on his squad car door.] Our primary job was to build an eight-foot tall plywood fence around the entire, soybean-covered festival seating area. This was a big job - about 24-acres worth. And after a couple of weeks it got old. Once I was asked to collect wild blackberries for the morning pancakes... much better than building the damn fence. It was a welcome relief to join the crew working to build the spotlight towers or the stage, just to get a break. The spotlight towers were really something to see - soaring triangular platforms built high up between three huge tree trunks sunk into the ground, like telephone poles but much bigger, each painted a single color - red, white or blue. Erecting the scaffolding to build the platforms was tricky, and required both caution and stamina. Although the sunsets from the top were a sight to behold, after a day of it I was ready to go back to fence-building; it was much safer. During the construction phase some of the area newspapers gave the festival a media buildup. I managed to get my photo into two articles. My favorite was the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article (6/28/70) headlined: "Hippies Working? And They Don't Bite!" The article went on to list some of the scheduled musical acts, describing Jimi Hendrix as someone who "makes funny noises with an over-amplified guitar." You get the idea. The reporter obviously didn't. Did I mention how HOT it was? I would awake in my tent every morning... sweating. One day during the festival I felt so desperate when I woke up that I grabbed someone's ice-filled cooler and dumped the whole thing over my head - a truly unforgettable rush! Needless to say, the heat made the porta-potties a real challenge; every conceivable alternative went through your mind as you approached the door - and every time the door opened you'd suddenly think of more. Several things made this festival feel very different from others I had attended. It had been almost a year since the unexpectedly large crowd at Woodstock had forced its promoters to declare it a "free festival." We all wondered how big our own crowd would be and whether fences and tickets would mean anything in Byron. Soon enough, as opening day approached and the crowd swelled, we heard the cries of "Music should be free for the people!" Then, even before the gates opened, all our hard work erecting plywood was for naught and the fences fell. Oh well. The main thing, however, that made Byron different was Altamont. Combined with our feelings of expectation and excitement about the music ahead, Altamont gave Byron an added, subtle, edge of dread. Only six months earlier in Altamont, California, an audience member had been murdered in plain sight of a rock festival stage by members of the Hell's Angels motorcycle club. The aftermath produced a dark cloud that spread all the way to Byron, Georgia. Although it was nearly invisible in the middle-Georgia sun, we felt it was there anyway, hiding and waiting. We just didn't know if it would appear or not. The best we could do was try to ignore it. Sometimes that was hard to do. About a week before the festival opened someone had found a girl in the woods across the main highway whose face had been beaten so badly it no longer looked human. One of our crew had brought her into our campsite where she was hidden as she recovered. The word was that she had tried to leave a biker club and was met with a violent 'no'. As opening day approached we began to see more and more bikers riding around the festival grounds, some armed. Once as I was leaving the back-stage security gate to head for my tent I passed a biker with a pistol on his belt. He was sitting on his bike, gunning the engine, acting as though he was going to be admitted through the gate without a backstage pass. He was. Fortunately, once the masses of music lovers arrived, the good vibes vastly outnumbered the bad. By opening day I had maneuvered myself from fence-builder to stage-hand. It was exactly where I wanted to be - as close to the music as possible. Unfortunately it was about the worst place to be from a musical standpoint - the sound was really bad. It was virtually impossible to hear the vocals above the bass & guitar amps and drums. But it was still hard to complain - the excitement level was intense! There's no good way to describe what it's like to stand next to a high-decibel rock band at full tilt with a several-hundred-thousand-strong mass of humanity spread out in front of you, swaying to the beat and cheering at every crescendo. I guess I can always listen to records at home, I told myself. This is something else! On a couple of occasions I also managed to step up to the microphone between performances to deliver some of the obligatory public service announcements all rock festivals were known for. You know: "Don't take the purple acid, people!"; "Hey, if you lost a kid named Sally, you can pick her up at..."; that sort of stuff. Actually, I have no memories of what I said; I can only hope I was at least coherent. Stage crew duties were hard work but fairly routine, that is until about the middle of the second day when the plywood surface of the stage had begun to suffer from the repeated rolling of heavy, wheeled music gear. It had developed some wrinkles and ripples, which then made some spots unstable. One night, during Mountain's performance, I ended up having to baby-sit their seven-foot-tall, double-stacked wall of Marshall amplifiers, which were rocking ominously with massive lead guitarist Leslie West's every move. If that wasn't enough, I soon sensed something behind me and turned to find another wall - of bikers, all without stage passes but standing very resolutely, arms folded. I did my best to do my job and avoid being crushed by either wall. By the way, Mountain was great! And loud! When I wasn't on stage I was usually too tired to do much of anything else. One day I was so hot and tired I crawled under the stage to try to sleep in the shade, with blaring, bouncing rock bands just ten feet over my head. For me the most memorable performance I witnessed was Hendrix, who took the stage late on July 4. Although it was not actually my work shift during his set (and thus I was technically not supposed to be on stage), I was determined to get as close as I could. So I crept into the shadows about twenty feet from Hendrix's microphone and tried to stay out of the spotlight pools. My reward was something I will never forget. Again, although the sound was not the best, the sights were: midnight, Jimi's otherworldly performance, a light-show on a raised rear-stage projection screen, fireworks, even someone's lear-jet screaming in a low pass overhead. It was more than sufficient to mesmerize and hypnotize, which is apparently what happened to at least one observer - Biff Rose. On the opposite side of the stage from me, quirky songwriter/singer Rose was sitting like a stone(d) statue, face staring wide-eyed heavenward, mouth wide open... for what seemed like a very long time indeed. I can relate, Biff! As seemed typical with every festival I ever attended, the last act would take the stage long after the published schedule had originally indicated. In Byron it was sunrise by the time Richie Havens walked on stage, pulled up his wooden stool and sang for us. I was dead tired and had crawled up to a scaffold platform at the side of the stage, where I looked down on Richie. What was left of the audience were mostly sprawled on the ground, asleep or otherwise immobile. I loved Havens and had seen him many times. His was a true festival persona, and his music was a perfect and welcome accompaniment to such events. As I recall, he opened his set with "Here Comes the Sun." What else? By the time he finished his performance, the whole audience was on its feet swaying and singing along. So was I. The Woodstock generation was alive and well and would survive to live another day, smiling all the way. I took Richie's stool home with me that day. I still have it. Then it was over. Nothing left but the remnants. As I stumbled down to the stage I noticed a familiar face in the audience, like a needle in a haystack - a friend from college. He was just as surprised to see me as I was to see him, and our faces both burst into double-wide smiles. We would have a lot to talk about next semester, when I would also become stage manager for the University of Miami's rock concert series. But that's another tale. The remnants of rock festivals always intrigued me, and as tired as I was that final morning I made a special point to wander through the field in front of the stage staring at the trash and trinkets left in the wake of the musical mayhem. I was not searching for treasures, just staring at whatever was there, like an absent-minded archeologist, not really expecting to find anything worthwhile, but still interested enough to make the effort. Now that I reflect on it, I think I was probably trying to hold onto the crowd, the energy, the music for just a bit longer... to keep it from ending, to hold onto the remnants long enough to re-build the magic. I'm sure that's why, as I drove with a friend back to college after Christmas break at the end of the year, we stopped by the Byron festival site early one morning to pay our respects. The spotlight towers were still standing, so we climbed up. It was sunrise again and everything still seemed possible. If we tilted our heads just right we could almost hear the music. Fortunately, Byron was not a second Altamont. It was the Second Atlanta International Pop Festival. I'm still sorry there wasn't a third. By the way, although I have my memories, I don't have any photos of my Byron stage experience. I'd sure love to track down a couple. If you've got any good shots of the stage, please let me know. Thanks! bmankin@igc.org

Procol Harum at the Atlanta Pop Festival

By Richard Beck

For three days and three nights the gigantic stage at one end of the dirt racetrack held forth with performances from the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Mountain, BB King, Rare Earth, Ginger Baker's Air Force, The Allman Brothers Band, and scores of others, both famous and obscure, and long forgotten by this writer. But one memory that still remains with me after 28 years is the performance by Procol Harum. What follows is an account based upon a collection of vivid impressions and lasting images that have survived these many years.

It is hard to say what excited me most about my anticipation of attending this event. Perhaps it was being part of such a massive musical and human cavalcade. Not far on the heels of Woodstock, few people could know that this would be one of the last truly big weekend festivals before the decline of this phenomenon of the great Age of Rock. By now promoters are learning that they can traverse a minefield of logistical and legal problems only to see their investment go up in smoke as they are forced to throw open the gates to disruptive fans demanding free admission. Now with barricades broken, fans and revelers from all over the country begin to pour into the breach.

And so it was that Byron, Georgia, a tiny, rural community ten miles south of Macon, found its Byron Raceway and the surrounding countryside run afloat in a sea of youth counterculture estimated at 600,000 strong. They came, not for the politics, but for the music. They came hoping for another Woodstock in the making. They came for sex, drugs, and Rock and Roll. I had come to see it all. And I had come to see Procol Harum.

We were all in the deep South now. This is the birthplace of Southern Rock. Good Ole Boy music pioneered by the Allman Brothers Band. In years to come, smaller cities like Macon, Augusta and Athens would also spawn the likes of the B-52s and REM. The Governor of Georgia is Lester Maddox, an infamous racist advocate and mental cretin who walked off The Dick Cavett Show in the middle of his interview. Refusing to answer questions about race relations in his state, he couldn't figure out if Cavett's cleverly reworded queries were multi-syllabic ridicule or not. So when it was announced from the stage that the Governor had flown over our heads and declared the site a disaster area, the mocking roar of dissent could have been heard 95 miles away in Atlanta.

Given the same view as they were helicoptered in, one wonders now what went through the minds of Brooker and company as they prepared to present their unique brand of music to an audience of southern Yanks who, in all likelihood, had heard virtually none of their music over the commercial airwaves. But from the spectacle that was to follow later this evening, it is fun to surmise that Procol Harum had come prepared to give us all a gander at one of the best live bands on the planet. And given a prime-time slot between Rare Earth and BB King, they had the cushiest berth available from which to do it.

The summer heat in Georgia, now world-renowned from the 1996 Olympics, was at its peak. At a time before SPF30 sunscreen, this crowd is baked and parched, ready for the cool of the evening when more festival headliners will take the stage. There are people and cars and encampments for miles around.

To venture down a dirt road leading into a wooded area might prove to be a creepy descent into a dark carnival midway of drug hucksters, who, like infomercial hosts, instruct their gathered customers on the proper way to shoot up for the first time. The two-lane highway in front of the raceway grounds is now nothing more than a paved conduit for the 24-hour public transit system. It is a moving sidewalk of cars piled high with hitchers and partying freaks, occasionally interrupted by makeshift ambulances waving signs that read 'OD' while their drivers plead for a right-of-way. But the prevailing atmosphere is peaceful, remarkably accommodating, and in much the same spirit as Woodstock's 'Summer of Love'.

It is Saturday night, and 24 hours since the concert was declared open and free. The gates and fences are all down now and the crowd has swollen to inestimable proportions numbering in the hundreds of thousands. As Procol Harum begins to take the stage, this animated audience is ready for anything.

As we hear the opening chords of music thundering out of a colossal sound system tweaked to perfection, the lights come up to reveal this group of four Brits. The band is in their familiar stage arrangement, but spread far apart on the giant stage. I can see BJ Wilson, slouching behind his wall of cymbals, low in his stool, as Robin Trower emerges from the shadows to take the front of the stage. Though my binoculars I can see him, hair blowing in the warm summer night wind, smiling at Gary Brooker. He is keeping time to the music, swaying from the waist in his trademark bowing fashion.

I don't even remember what song they were playing, and I don't think the crowd cared. They roared their approval while I wondered aloud if they even knew what kind of repertoire they were in for this evening. It didn't seem to matter to the band either. They were playing to a packed house. It seemed to me that they were going to give this crowd the best they had in them. Whisky Train, The Devil Came From Kansas, Still There'll Be More, all washed over an enthusiastic crowd who seemed to appreciate the virtuoso performances of Trower and Wilson and were now discovering the incredible power of Brooker's voice as he belted out song after song. All around me I sensed the courteous concentration of the audience as they quietly let the lofty rendition of A Salty Dog carry them away like the seagulls floating above the opening and closing chords.

Something is happening here. Where did this music come from? Forgotten are the soulful rhythms of rock and roll that had kept them on their feet throughout the sets by preceding acts. Now there seemed to be an anticipation of just how far afield this performance would take them. By the time GB started crooning the words 'paling well, after sixteen days' this crowd was cast adrift, only to be swept up again in the wake of the operatic saga of Whaling Stories. Trower's searing guitar solo was ripping my guts out while Chris Copping's organ sound, an appropriately distorted roar, drove this song onward to a dynamic crescendo of 'boiling oil and shrieking steam'. As the dramatic tension finds release in the 'Shalimar the trumpets chorused' verse, the final relief came next in the quiet ending passage of 'those at peace shall see their wake'. The crowd exploded with a show of surprise and approval that matched the resolve of the band to win over this crowd. This was an astonishing moment for me. Worth the price of admission. At that moment, I actually imagined that Procol Harum had handily achieved their rightful immortality as a major force in the evolution of Rock music. But still to come was one more event which I will always remember.

Major Wilson had not had his final say yet. New to my ears is the yet-to-be-released Power Failure. Now well empowered by the energy flowing from a sea of approving voices, Barrie J Wilson lets rip an inspired and crowd-pleasing drum solo. After all, this is still the South, where the show ain't over till you 'give the drummer some'. When the band comes back in with the final rounds of music, there is no power failure. The roar of the crowd is right on cue. Their show of approval eclipsed the canned applause on the original recording. But oh how very right and perfect it is that the applause was added during recording. It will always be an integral element of the song. It is inescapable in concert and the surest tribute to the legacy of BJ Wilson.

I cannot recall how many encores the audience demanded, but they were not going home until they heard the song that made them come to listen. True to their usual format, the band blew the cobwebs from A Whiter Shade of Pale and delivered the coup de grace to this audience.

Rear-Admiral Brooker and his salty crew had navigated their way through the countryside of Georgia, and like General Sherman who conquered Atlanta on his march to the coast, they had delivered the final thrust and conquered the South.

Memories of Iron Butterfly

By David Fisher

The Fish File

Is This Not Spinal Tap?

Like most kids growing up in the 60's, Iron Butterfly played a frequent part in weekend parties and the general confusion of adults. Parents could not understand an opus like In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. What did it represent? Why was it so long? What did the drum solo mean?

Give me a break! These were the same pie-eyed parents who embraced Thelonius Monk's near-unmelodic rants, Ravel's redundant never-ending Bolero and Ethel Merman's walrus-like warblings.
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida didn't have to mean anything. It was a release, a consciousness to behold, a musical work you could listen to three times in an hour and have time in between to enjoy major bong hits.

It was with this sentiment that the crowd gathered in August of 1975 to see Iron Butterfly; a band we'd heard nothing from in six years but whose name was synonymous with all things psychedelic and musical. The trouble was that the band gathered in the good old Penticton Peach Bowl Convention Centre. Not that the "Peach Bowl" was such a bad place to see a concert, but when a band which no-one has heard from in a half decade suddenly shows up in small town western
Canada, one should wonder.

Well, wonder, we did. In droves.

The sparse stage arrangement did nothing to diminish the hype buzzing through the crowd. (or any other emanating buzzes). The band wandered onto the stage. Sure enough, two of the four players were original members.
Doug Ingle hadn't changed his hairstyle, his glasses and quite possibly his shirt since the photo of him graced the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida back cover. Ron Bushy, true to his name, still maintained the messy van-dyke on his chin.
The bass player was an enormous, shirtless American Indian who literally cast a shadow across the stage. The lead guitarist looked like "Where's Waldo" only with stringy dirty blondish hair. Doug Ingle, by comparison, looked like a hefty man, resplendent in his "Howard Stern" looks.

The opening number was fairly true to form; Are You Happy, from the infamous In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida album. Ingle muttered some greetings at song's end then promised the crowd (in barely discernable tones) that "that song" would be coming up a little later. The next offering; Most Anything That You Want, quickly disintegrated from a recognizable B-side into a confused jazz-fusion number that saw Ron Bushy suddenly attempting a Buddy Rich impersonation. That drum effort quickly became a cacophony of cymbals and snares. The crowd immediately shared a "What the hell is this??" look that flitted from face to face. Lights of red, green and blue shimmered, dancing across the stage; at least the visual was mildly entertaining. Bushy's drumming ended, thankfully, and the song's refrain echoed throughout the hall. The song ended. Confused, scattered applause met the band's silence.

"Hey, thanks a lot," Ingle slurred like some downtrodden Vegas lounge singer, "here's a little song you might remember."
The tell-tale piercing organ sound opened In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and the crowd screamed and swooned. The quintessential bass-line, guitar refrain and drum beat took the song into gear and Ingle started crooning. Then, as quickly as the song was being worshipped, it fell into a hodge-podge of muddled sound, lacking any rhythm whatsoever.
The spotlight suddenly shone on Bushy who gamely started what might be the most famous drum solo in musical history. It didn't last long. His drum beats were recognizable for a few seconds then turned into a stereo-typical "boomboom-boomboom" rhythm that, if heard in a 50's TV Western, would prompt the Indians to dance around the campfire, whooping and waving their tomahawks.

This outburst really confused the crowd. The big Indian gentleman set down his bass and knelt in front of Bushy's drum kit. He began bowing to the beat, like a "we're not worthy" exercise.
More confused glances darted through the crowd. The drum beat continued,...continued,...continued. Then the stupid jazzy raucous began again. Ingle spewed out an inane babble of lyrics like some buffalo caught in the mud.
It was nothing like In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.

Well, we wandered. In droves. To the exits. By the hundreds. The laughter was spontaneous, infectious and contagious. We didn't care about the money we'd wasted. We didn't care how foolish or taken we felt. We just couldn't stop laughing.
Maybe Bill Murray saw Iron Butterfly on their tour and was inspired to create his sleazy lounge singer, made famous on Saturday Night Live. His portrayal of Doug Ingle's drug-addled incomprehensible droolings were spot on.

Bill's still working. I wonder what Doug's doing. Hopefully lip-synching to his L.P. And you know, Thelonius Monk sounds organized now, Ravel's Bolero is kind of erotic and Ethel Merman? Well, two out of three ain't bad.

Fishmum

This Month in Classic Rock History
August
1962
18^th	Ringo Starr takes over on drums after Pete Best is fired
1966
10^th	Jefferson Airplane releases their debut album, "Jefferson Airplane Takes Off"
20^th	Country Joe And The Fish release "Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag"
1967
8^th	George Harrison visits San Francisco and strolls through the Haight-Ashbury district
12^th	Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)" reaches the #1 spot on the U.K. singles chart
1968
17^th	Cream's third album, "Wheels Of Fire" tops the U.S. album charts
1969
1^st	Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Procol Harum, B.B. King, The Byrds and Santana are among the performers at the Atlantic City Festival
15^th	The start of the Woodstock Festival in Bethel, New York
20^th	Frank Zappa dissolves "The Mothers Of Invention", announcing he's "tired of playing for people who clap for all the wrong reasons"
1971
26^th	The Emerson, Lake and Palmer album "Tarkus" achieves gold record status

	The Trip Continues . . . Expand Your Mind visit classicrockpage.com	August 2000 - Issue 11 subscribe to the monthly issue

A Photographers View of the Atlanta Pop Festival By Carter Tomassi
	This First Aid Tent was set up at the rear of one of the camp grounds to handle minor injuries and the occasional OD. Many of these places were manned by communes of people who arrived a week or more before the festival started. This dealer thought it might be a pretty convenient place to sell his wares. Advertising like this could have landed him 10-15 years of hard labor on some prison farm. Guess he knew what the odds were that he would be busted in a crowd of a half million people. Another photo contribution from the event.
First Aid... and more


Traffic, heat and peace signs... arriving at the Festival in style
	Shot this out the window of my VW bus coming in the first day. We were driving towards the festival. Guess these folks were looking for camping on the outside perimeter of the site. We managed to find a nice spot under a large oak tree less than half a mile from the stage. The number of people arriving that day was probably greater than the population of the entire middle of the state. Woodstock had been the summer before and I think we all came with the idea of outdoing Woodstock. Check out the sky with its mix of humidity, car pollution and red clay dust. To view more photos of the Atlanta Pop Festival click here to go to Carter's site