Eagle Rock Bites the Dust

Eagle Rock Bites the Dust

BOSTON — The Boston College Eagle Rock Festival, scheduled for Friday, August 14, was among the most

bizarre casualties of this summer festival season. On Wednesday the 12th, just two days before the festival was scheduled to take place, Boston Mayor Kevin White refused to issue the necessary permit for the festival, citing inadequate security and strongly implying paranoia as his reasons for the refusal. In light of the entire

atmosphere surrounding the festival and its preparations, the Mayor’s announcement shocked nearly everyone and quite righteously outraged more than a few.

To begin with, Eagle Rock was perhaps the only festival in recent memory which could boast a genuine community-serving program. The proceeds from this festival were to be directed toward the construction of an entertainment dome on land donated by Boston College. The expressed purpose of the 8,000 capacity styrofoam dome was to provide Boston with a home for entertainment which would not be economically exploitive of the community.

The proposed facility would be available, rent-free, for the staging of artistic expositions ranging from rock to poetry readings to opera. Because of its no-rent proposition it effectively cut out the necessity of performers’ fees and advertising. The main objective therefore becomes cultural presentation rather than the making of money, and gate prices would be minimal. With a capacity for 8-10,000, an act which cost $10,000 to book, for example, could be presented at a cost of only a dollar per ticket. To my knowledge, this was the first genuine attempt to make the concept of people’s culture presentation a working reality.

The dome was the brainchild of 20 year old Boston College student Joe Maher. He took his idea to B.C. President Father Joyce and received strong backing from the administrator. The building could not be Financed from college revenues, however, and an extra-curricular solution had to be found. Maher’s next move was to get together with Providence, R. I. promoter Robert “Skip” Chernov, and the two planned a series of one day festivals as the answer.

The August 14th Festival was to feature thirteen hours of continuous music, beginning at 10:30 A.M. and running to 1 1:30 P.M. Scheduled to appear were Led Zeppelin, MC5, Lighthouse, Stooges, Big Brother &

The Holding Company, Allman Brothers Band, Amboy Dukes, Billy I Squier, Catfish, Swallow, Buddy Guy Blues Bnad, Cactus, Stalk Forrest and American Dream. The festival was to have been held at Boston College Stadium, with a seating capacity of approximately 40,000. Tickets were $4.50, $5.50 and $6.50, quite

reasonable for a full day of music, but even more so when one considered the festival’s purpose.

On June 30, Boston College put in their application to the city of Boston for a concert permit. On July 1, Chernov began contracting talent for the festival and large-scale preparations were begun. On July 21, festival and B.C. representatives met with Richard Sen nett of the Boston Licensing Division, and obtained tentative approval for the festival. Under Boston’s administrative set-up, licenses are not usually granted until a few days before the scheduled event, and it is the meeting with the Licensing Division which is the base for preparatory operations. With the approval of Sennett under their bets, the festival organizers went ahead with their plans.

On August 10, the organizers were asked by Mayor White to shorten the length of the festival, and when they agreed it was assumed that the concert s would come off without any further \ incidents. This assumption proved false. Exact details are hard to come by, but the decisive factor appears to I have been a citizens group called the Chestnut Hill Association. This group of suburbanites issued a statement which expressed a fear of “possible incidents, drug abuse, rioting, and hippies sleeping on the lawn”. What went down behind the scenes is not known for sure, but on Wednesday Mayor White refused to grant the permit, saying: “We do not have sufficient means at this time to guarantee a festival without a high risk of incidents”.

It should be noted that Mayor White, in this election year, has higher political aspirations, and that the ^ Chestnut Hill Association is comprised of wealthy suburbanites and heavy contributors. Whether or not this substantiates Chernov’s charge that White submitted to political pressure is an individual decision, but the Mayor’s explanation for his refusal hardly stands up to a close examination of the facts.

As to the security problems, the festival promoters had been working with police from Boston, Newton and Brookline to insure airtight security. Uniformed police were to be stationed directly on both sides of the festival fences, some mounted on horseback, to guard against gate-crashers. Security on the inside was to be provided for by over 150 marshalls, comprised of college students-, freaks, and street people. The fear of “hippies sleeping on the lawns” was equally unfounded. In the first place, this was not a “festival” at all, it was merely a one day concert. As the concert had been advertised only locally, there was no reason to expect that the concert would attract people from afar who would need accomodation. As a safeguard, however, it was revealed that Boston College was planning to open its dormitories to those who had no place to go. In short, the Eagle Rock Festival was perhaps the model of proper planning and consideraton.

Why, then, was the festival cancelled at such a late date? The political implications have already been outlined, but it runs much deeper than surface politics. In cancelling only two days before the festival, the city made damn sure that any legal avenues for reversal were closed. Efforts to find an alternate site proved fruitless.

In the shadow of Powder Ridge and Chicago, festivals are being met with increasing fear and hostility, not ail of it unfounded. The concept of a three day festival has committed suicide, and we could all do well to simply bury it and forget about it. A concert in the park on Sunday afternoon and three days of mud and bad acid is a night and day proposition. A dance at the old Grande is worth a thousand Gooselakes. Many of those who are now crying out the loudest against festivals are not members of the fascist fringe, but are voices from the heart of our own community; people who have a genuine concern for the state of our culture.

But Eagle Rock was, under no stretch of the imagination, subject to festival conditioning. The fact that it was axed can only indicate a much more serious problem in ter ms of culture presentation. In hopping so blindly on the festival bandwagon, have we unwittingly sold our culture down the river? Aside from giving an element in the right enough political ammo to blast us to hell and back, we have also done ourselves a grave disservice. Woodstock was the birth of a nation, but only through an exploitive motion picture are we able to pay for it. The Alternative Media conference was a groove, but there is still some sucker we have left with a $7,000 tab to pick up. The Eagle Rock Festival was potentially one of the finest cultural alternatives we have yet come up with, but that potential has only manifested itself in $60,000 worth of bills that Skip Chernov must pay for. And without Powder Ridge and Chicago, people like Kevin White could never have mustered the power to cancel positive cultural expressions like Eagle Rock. The forces of cultural repression may indeed be on the march, but haven’t we given them a more than adequate helping hand? Think about it.

Ben Edmonds