A Minimum Security Bash

Summer s just about gone and so, with a sigh of relief, we bid adieu to the phenomenon of die Pop Festival, a scourge which (you may remember) nearly dominated rock and roll to death in the year 1970. We’ve got five representative festivals lined up to show die state of the Nation, as it

were:

Liza Williams, L.A. Free Press columnist, went to Gooselake and had concentration camp visions which she elucidates on page 14.

Lisa Robinson, of die Pop Wire Service and Hit Parader (and wife of disc jockey, record company whiz, ace record producer and social lion Richard Robinson) went to Powder Ridge where she asks the musical question “Why do they want to do this to their children?” (Page 15)

Toby Mamis, the 17% year old boy wonder of the New York Herald Tribune, and a member of the Randall’s Island Collective, begins on page 18 his saga of how that disnal disaster became an educational experience for New York radicals.

Ben Edmonds, our man in Boston, discusses Eagle Rock (page 20) and the pop festivat-that-never-was (a growing syndrome).

And Rich Mangelsdorff, of the Milwaukee Kaleidoscope, describes the entrancing time he had at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival, which happened wonderfully, and is in a state of financial collapse — that’s on page 17.

And the editors, viewing the comments that our friends above have made, not being able to resist yet another opportunity to lay it all on ya, kids, have CREEM’s very own point-of-view in another killer editorial which begins on page 22.

A Minimum Security Bash

Part I: The Pureshit Revolution

Goose Lake, the 380 acre site of a three day pop festival, in Jackson, Michigan. It is a green countryside about 40 miles from Ann Arbor where the Blues Festival (scheduled the same weekend) draws a crowd of about 10,000. More than 200,000 are at Goose Lake; they have come from Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Toledo and the neighboring states to hear such imported stuff as Small Faces, Jethro Tull, Ten Years After, and their American star counterparts, plus a bucketful of Michigan bands all sizzling with “high energy” sound — much of it unidentifiable — guitars whining like generators, singers who yell unintelligible lyrics and pounding drum solos. Most of it is a drag.

The press corps (sic!), isolated from the public by an eight foot wooden wall (under constant attack by “them”), alternately sit in their tent smoking dope or on chairs by the wall, keeping one eye on the stage in front of them and one on the wall behind where occasional faces pop up to get a look at the “stars.”

Beyond the wall, which fronts a pit by the stage full of press and hopeful groupies (“if I can just meet him maybe he’ll take me to England — Joe Cocker pays his girls $300 a week to travel with him”!) stretch acres of Sears-Fellini, grass, acid (“pure — it’s pure), speed (with a kit to use if you left yours behind), balloons of nitrous oxide (2 tokes full — 25 cents), Mescaline (“pure — organic”), THC, hot dogs, pizza, Coke, ice cream, and sloth. Bullhorns and handlettered signs tout the dope business — lids, tokes, organic, pure, cheap, now!

At the back of the audience area are large tents, one for dope bummers (“Don’t go in there; they just lay guilt on you”), free food (the supply ran out on Saturday, the second day), and one for “movement” people — White Panthers, Chicago militants, lots of babies, etc.

It is crowded everywhere, perhaps a fifth listening to the music, much of which (when outside the bowl like area that fronts the stage) hangs in the air like a desperate scream. A mile or so away there is swimming, nude or not, in the brownswamp lake and the comfort of thousands of cars to wander among or crash next to.

Around all this rises a metal link fence, around and around, encircling the thousands. Through its gates pass the people — once inside there is no way out unless you leave permanently, or by ambulance. The pathways that circumscribe the quaintly hip named areas — “Tokealot,” “Layalot,” and “Tripalot” are reminiscent of my dreams of Calcutta. Stoned people nudge along in the dust and debris to the sounds of the dopechanters and the sparechange freaks'. Eyes are cold, dead and secretive; water runs from the drinking fountains and turns the paths to mud; people lie about glazed and sated with uppers and downers, freakers, flashers, zoomers, bombers, and fatique.

In the woman’s toilet are rows of exposed seats over the great trough of shit. You squat there watching pale city girls curl their hair and shave their legs ankle deep in water. Someone said people fuck there at night, in the slime in front of the black hole-eyes of the toilets.

Outside the crowds move on, waveringly, slide down the plastic slide laid across a bulldozed dirt hill, stare towards the music, watch as someone leaps from a high tower near the stage in an attempt at what, flight? Escape? No one dances anywhere.

The printed program warns against “blood-suckers” in the swimming hole named “Golum Swamp,” but the real blood-suckers are invisible; they are flying overhead in helicopters looking at their investment, or waiting outside the fence to bust people.

“It’s great to be free” is the usual comment given to the reporters when they ask the kids why they are there. “I can walk around at night without being hassled; I don’t have to brush my teeth; I can dope all I want,” seemingly unaware of the metal fences that enclose them, hold them in a giant concentration camp away from the nation they claim as their own.

It must be a test run of the final solution! Lock the kids and crazies up; give them dope and circuses; pacify. The war outside goes on; Michigan halts the bill to reduce marijuana possession to a misdemeanor and John Sinclair, busted for two joints, is away in an old style prison, misses the fun of this minimum security bash.

But not his party — The White Panthers. They are there with their band “UP” trying to sock it to the people. “UP” is loud and almost unintelligible; what words they want to say in their music are impossible to understand. If the band is to alert people, using rock as an educational medium, it fails. There is a failure to communicate; the crowd remains apathetic. The people’s music must be something the people relate to, or it is only music, and, as musicians, they seem strident and inept.

For that matter, what are they doing at Goose Lake at all? One reason might be because they had been given the Festival Program concession (and they need the money badly to survive, to try and free their leaders). But back in their home community of Ann Arbor the real “people’s music” (historically speaking) the black music, goes its usual low-priced, low paying way. Only 10,000 blues fans came to honor the black musicians, and it is rare that these musicians get such a gig. (Sunday night at the Blues Festal Johnny Winter appeared unannounced to jam — he was really playing for the poeple!) I - would have thought the White Panthers would have been among the first to support the black musicians. To point out the exploitation system that has ripped-off the black culture and sold it back to us a la Rod Stewart, a prancing whitesuited decadent English “star” whose soulful agonies consisted of mauling the mike stand and wiping his blonde hair from his eyes with delicate upperclass gestures. (Unfortunately the crowd loved him.)

What an opportunity it could have been for the White Panthers to reach a captive (literally) audience of 200,000. They could have followed the example of the San Francisco Communication Company which, in the Flower Power era way back in 1967-68, were cranking the mimeograph handle daily; taking to the community the latest political and community news. The Panthers might well have asked in leaflets, “Is this how you want to live?

Are you enjoying the festival? Why aren’t you at the Blues Festival? Do you see now how the people’s culture is being ripped off?” and so on, and so on.

If I am hard to the White Panthers it is because they are in the vanguard of the people’s movement. They have taken on the tremendous task of trying to educate and liberate the youth who they rightly see as the only hope for change. Their task is made more difficult as their leaders are decimated, turned into political prisoners. It is important that they find efficacious ways to communicate their ideas to young people. (Sadly most of the young people at Goose Lake seemed to mimic the life style alienation of their parents. True, they substituted dope for alcohol, but apparently only to achieve the same stupor. Their parents watch TV passively; they watch the rock stars in much they same way, or lie down next to their cars as though they feared it might be Armageddon and they wanted to take their one status symbol — the car — with them.)

Part II: When the Goose Hit the Fan

No one danced! No one wore flowers! The clean green new tents from Sears, pinioned near the cars that brought them, gathered dust. The bikers stood next to the fence holes that had been made by kids trying to get in free (the three days cost $15.00) and demanded $5 a head to come through. On Friday (the 1st day) five women sat beside a pretty display of Woman’s Lib literature they had hung on a makeshift wall next to one of the pathways. By Saturday there was no trace of them; mud and softdrink cans, soggy paper, an abondoned shoe, watermelon rindsand dope had replaced them.

Out in the “Goosenest” in front of the stage people clustered in groups, sat in the dust and debris, staring towards the blaring music or shuffling about. Overhead the helicopter dipped and churned and the fences stood all around all around, and the fences stood all around.

What can be the reason to promote 200,000 people at a time into a confined space? Instant slum, overcrowding, all the disadvantages of a ghetto — recreated folks, for your listening pleasure! The idea of a music festival in the country is the conception of tranquility, cleanliness, flowers, woods, space, celebration, all the things which are unavailable to us in our urban environments where our space is pinched in direct ratio to real estate valves. We go to the country to be free, to breath clean air, hear good music and get high in a natural environment.

The same people who crowd us into urban slums crowd us into giant “festivals,” take our rent at the door and to hell with the plumbing. Not only have they usurped our lifestyle and sold it back to us, they have duped us by selling us an inferior product with built in obsolescence.

Part III; Wither will we wander?

Is it possible to have a festival for people? Yes, you can put on your own festival, start in your livingroom, play the kazoo, go to your park, take your tambourine.

What about hearing the big “stars?” You are the big star, people just do the best they can. Is there a criteria? It's what you enjoy and participate in. Enjoy your own music; enjoy your local bands; relate to their music. But how do I see the “stars”? Look up — or if you have to have the hype — watch them on TV; that way you can go to the toilet or make love to the music or get high with some degree of comfort.

You mean festivals are over? No, only rip-offs, not everything called a festival is one. So what should we do? Liberate your music. Take it back to the people it came from; insist on controlling it. It was your music; it is your music; start over. Don’t buy a ticket to anything where there are more than 50,000 people outdoors or 10,000 enclosed. Boycott the hype festivals. Support “unknown” bands who play in your local clubs. Support the bands who play in the park for free because they want to make music rather than dollars. Enjoy the music you like. Don’t buy the star system; it’s as plastic as the stuff it is marketed on.

Part IV: Chorus

People: It’s your music; take it over! If it is their version, don’t dance to it. Free music is the voice of free people. You are not free in a concentration camp, no matter how famous the bands, how available the dope. Don’t forget that outside the wall the war against you goes on. Tear down the walls! Power to the people’s music!

Liza Williams

From the Los Angeles Free Press