New York Pop Flops

New York Pop Flops

Randalls Island’s New York Pop festival is over, but its meaning lingers on, haunting New York City, and affecting several rock festivals that have happened since. New York Pop was the festival where the radicals took over and were supposed to run the show but it didn’t work out; where Sly and the Family Stone didn’t play and there wasn’t a riot; where Vietcong and North Vietnamese flags flew from the stadium flagpoles, higher than the American flag; where nobdoy got paid in full; where one of the promoters' men got beat up at a ticket gate; where what a Grand Jury may soon decide was extortion, but really wasn’t, took place; and where there was one sixth the number of people expected yet four times the number of people than there were tickets sold.

In May, or was it June, Brave New World, Inc. and Teddy Productions announced that they would be holding a rock festival on Randalls Island in New York City on July 17-19. This, they said, would be the first festival within the city limits. New York Pop, as it was dubbed, was set in the beautiful surroundings of Downing Stadium, a run-down football stadium with all-cement seating.

Almost immediately, their permit was in trouble when the city got up-tight about people sleeping in the park at night after the show. So the three day festival was changed into three consecutive nights of concerts.

Bob Gardiner and Don Friedman made up the management of Brave New World. In the publicity releases their office put out, it is noted that they worked together 15 years ago, co-producing a Dave Brubeck concert. They go on to note, in Friedman’s words, that Bob Gardiner gave Don a job at ABC-TV, and that began a friendship. They did the Brubeck concert, and Freidman went on to the Randalls Island Jazz Festival. After that, he went and did the Forest Hills Music Festival in Queens, New York. Friedman claims, as do all promoters, that he produced a Beatles concert and a Dylan concert, and also that he produced what might have been Billie Holliday’s last big concert. He claims to have produced Lenny Bruce in concert, and Miles Davis, too. He also claims he went broke managing Chrysalis, a rock group that never made it. So Don Freidman has been around.

Teddy Productions was Teddy Powell, who produces the Randalls Island Jazz Festival every summer. Powell is of the Negroid race, a distinction which is important.

PART TWO

For almost a year now, Alternate U. (N.Y.C.’s radical night school) has been holding, every Wednesday night, a workshop in Rock and Revolution. Participants in the workshops have included White Panthers, musicians, Yippies, rock critics, freaks, record company employees, independent cultural radicals, and members of the recently dissolved RYP Collective (Revolutionary Youth Party).

Sometime soon after plans for the festival/concerts were revealed, a suggestion was generated at the workshop that we “relate” to the occasion in some way.

The RYP Collective was a group of radicals who wanted to do something about cultural exploitation and related evils, like the Woodstock movie, rock festivals, and the Fillmore East. It was also known as the RIP-OFF Collective.

New York White Panthers consist of the Free Ranger Tribe (who put on benefits for radical causes) and the New York Herald Tribune (New York’s only underground newspaper), which I usually write for.

Other groups within what became the Randalls Island Coalition (growing out of Rock and Revolution) were RAT (the Womens newspaper), the Committee to Defend the Panther 21, Gay Liberation Front, New Haven Liberation Front, with most unaffiliated individuals lumped together as “the Rock and Revolution people.”

That is what we were at the outset. We had meetings separate from the Rock and Revolution meetings, and we formulated a plan by which we would end up running the New York Pop concerts.

Our first move was to just walk into the offices of Brave New World one day. We didn’t accomplish anything except make ourselves known and set up an appointment for a real meeting, A couple of days later we met with Gardiner and Friedman. All that they said was “yeah, groovy, but impossible” and “even if we dug the idea, it’s all up to Teddy Powell” and “we’re all on the same side, baby.” In the middle of the meeting, Carl walked in. Carl is of the Negroid race, and works for Teddy Powell. He put us down as a bunch of white kids and said that Powell was not going to stand for a bunch of rich white hippies telling a black man what to do with his money. We were caught a bit off guard, and the meeting ended abruptly.

Soon afterwards, like within hours, we realized that we’d been fools. We shouldn’t have let him talk to us that way. Powell’s money, from ticket sales, was white (how many black kids would pay those prices to see those acts?), and besides, a capitalist is a capitalist is a capitalist. And on top of that, we wanted to make sure that the audience, our “brothers and sisters”, are provided with all appropriate necessities.

So we went to more meetings, got up a list of demands and found out we had company.

The Young Lords Party (not, but formerly, affiliated with the Chicago-based Young Lords Organization), we discovered, was also formulating demands to be presented to Brave New World and Teddy Productions.

For those of you who don’t know New York, it might seem confusing that the Young Lords (a Puerto-Rican revolutionary group) would get involved in a rock festival; actually, it is easily explained: Randalls Island is the only public park in El Barrio (Spanish Harlem, the ghetto). The community has no other park. Randalls Island is used for picnics, ballgames, cultural festivities, and school trips. Only a week or two before, a Puerto Rican holiday festival had been called off by the city because “they” (the Puerto Rican community) had not kept the park clean enough! Actually it was retaliation because of some riot-like incidents in El Barrio during late June. It upset the Puerto Rican community that the white people could have their festival, but that the people who live up there, couldn’t. It upset the people that all these white kids would be wandering through their neighborhood at all hours of the day and night. And everyone knew that the music fans were going to be ripped-off by junkies for their cameras, watches, money, girls, everything.

So the Young Lords joined the Randalls Island Coalition and we met together, got our lists of demands together into one, and decided the time was right to meet with the promoters again.

Some of our demans were: Enough money to free one Black Panther on bail; All empty seats filled, free, at show time; A bail fund to cover legal defense in case of narcotics arrests; Hiring of community bands selected by us; No police at the stadium; Hiring of community people; Speaking time on stage; Movement propaganda concession booths; Movement c o m m u n i c ations/information center; Proper medical, food and sanitary facilities.

While I was away at the Newport Jazz Festival, one week before New York Pop, an agreement was reached, the details of which were never quite clear. All we knew was that a contract was signed by us, them, and that our lawyer had a copy. Bill Crain, our lawyer, wasn’t seen or found again until after the festival was over.

We had a press conference at the Underground Press Syndicate loft on Monday, July 13, ’ where our

spokesman read our press statement, which ran down our analysis of the situation at the time, and said that we felt that we had set a precedent, and that all rock festivals in the future would have to work with the community, be of the community. The Young Lords Party representative explained that their involvement was based on a point in their program concerning control of their communities. And Don Freidman spoke for the promoters, saying that he thought it was great that the profit was going back into the community and that he had always felt that rock and politics are inseparable.

Immediately, the wheels began moving. Our people got a stage building crew, a stage crew, a light system, a sound system, and a security force. We got all the radical groups in the city up to Randalls Island with propaganda. We got an office inside the stadium. And we got our own gate, “for passes only.”

PART THREE

Friday morning came, and we all showed up bright and early at Downing Stadium. Nobody had any idea of how many people were going to show up. Few people had any idea how many tickets had been sold. At one o’clock, four hours before the show was supposed to start, there were already people outside waiting to get in (with and without tickets), and hundreds of people inside from the night before, mostly without tickets. Our gate was functioning to let movement propagandists through, and the stage entrance was open, but none of the ticket gates were open. So our gate was expropriated by the management and used as a ticket gate. When we decided that that wasn’t cool, we forced them to open some ticket gates.

Five o’clock came around and nothing happened. Six o’clock came around and nothing happened. Finally, at seven (which was the time agreed upon by BNW and the radicals at which empty seats would be filled), the music started. Elephants Memory, a community band, played. The sound people reportedly used their set as a “test” of the system, and that really fucked up the band, They closed their set with a twenty minute song called “Power To The People”, and topped it off with a tape of Weatherwoman Bernadine Dohrn speaking. They were followed by an all-woman group called Season Of The Witch, a trio that has been together for seven months. They were backed by a male community group, Communications Workshop, that they had never played with before. They were followed by Boffolongo, an unknown group managed by Steve Nathanson, a close friend of Freidmans. It is irrelevant that they are a good, tight band, They are not a community band, and they were not a featured act. They were stuck on by Brave New World as a favor to Nathanson. Promoters always do that kind of thing. That’s how Bert Sommer played Woodstock, that’s an old and dirty trick to play on an audience.

Finally, Grand Funk Railroad opened the show around nine-thirty. They were followed by John Sebastian, then Steppenwolf, Jethro Tull and finally by Jimi Hendrix. There had been problems with money (like hardly any tickets were sold) and the bands didn’t get all the money that they were supposed to. Hendrix almost pulled out, but made a deal with Brave New World. If they would put Cactus on, later in the weekend, he would play. That’s what happened.

Meanwhile, we hadn’t gotten all the seats filled, although we could have; there just weren’t any people to fill them up with. Our raps from the stage came off badly, and we were hurt by the reception that Elephants Memory got (it wasn’t until later that we found out why they sounded so bad).

The city officials were forced to allow camping out, as we all knew they would be, and a group of Quakers were around to make sure that nobody got ripped off or hurt. It turns out that the captain of the park precinct was a “nice guy” who, after helping protect the kids who camped out (from rats and roving street gangs), also told Brave New World that his officers would not be used to protect the ticket gates because that would mean using them to protect a financial investment at the expense of physically hurting people, and his men were paid to help people, not profit.

Saturday was a whole different scene. The money was absolutely not coming in at all. There were twice as many people on the island Saturday than there were the day before, all the additional people gaining free admittance. But it wasn’t that easy this time. At our gate, we had decided that there had been too many contract violations already, so. at seven, without asking, we started letting people in, urging them to contribute to the radical collectives. Lots of kids who had come to buy tickets gave their ticket monev to us instead, and came in. Others paid some or none, but everyone came in. One of Brave New World’s henchmen came over and told us to stop. We don’t like people telling us to stop, so we didn’t. He was politely asked to get the fuck out of our way. He refused and started telling people we had already let in that they couldn’t come in when in fact they were already in. Then he got pushy about it, forcibly throwing people out. So we gently pushed him back out of the way. He returned with two of the biggest, • fattest, ugliest and stupidest people I’ve ever seen, and they proceeded to not let anyone without a pass (and several people with passes) inside the stadium. Within a few minutes, this jerk was bruised and screaming that “eight White Panthers” had beaten him up. None of the White Panthers on the field was at the ticket gate when it happened (we were all either acting as security backstage, or cutting open locked gates to let people in). At this point it was “war”. All the gates were opened with wirecutters, and the fence was clipped in several places.

At eight o’clock, there were thirty-five thousand people in the audience, and none of the performers had shown up. There was no money, but Hanley Sound, the light and video people and the stage crew were convinced to stay on. A latin group, from across the river in East Harlem, showed up and they were shoved on stage. They were so bad that they were shoved right off again. Ten Years After went on after one or two other hastily-gotten groups, They played an unusually long set because, while they were on it was definitely established that Delaney and Bonnie wouldn’t be playing, that the Tony Williams supergroup wouldn’t be playing, that Ravi Shankar wasn’t going to show up, and the Richie Havens wasn’t going to go on. Havens had driven up in his limousine to go on and when his manager found out there was no more money, they turned around and left the island. Two nights later, on a news show, Havens was interviewed and he said that he had lost all his respect for the Young Lords and that he blamed the festival’s failure on them. Meanwhile, there was a large crowd of stoned people waiting for the stars who weren’t showing up. The New York Rock and Roll Ensemble came out of nowhere and played but that didn’t calm the crowd down at all. They started pelting the stage when the announcer said “thank you, you’ve been wonderful, we want to thank the Young Lords and the White Panthers and the others who have helped make this a great show for all of you”, and 1 didn’t mind one bit because that was an outrageous statement to make. We were getting blamed for the failure of the festival. Rocks, bottles, wood, cans, the crowd took the wall down between the field and the stage and started to destroy the sound system

By dawn, it had all calmed down (thanks to a group of Quakers who had been contracted to be a peace-keeping force throughout the festival and who 1 haven't said enough good things about), and everyone was all right. The crowd had ripped off all the concession food during the night and there was still plenty of Pepsi in “people’s concessions” until the concession owners came and took everything away.

Sunday had been declared free as a face-saving device by Brave New World. There was nobody at the ticket gates Sunday, people just walked in. A lot of people didn’t think anything would happen after Saturday night’s mess, so only twenty thousand people showed up, but this was the day to be there.

At about four, the music started. I forget the order but Fat Alice, Boffolongo (again), another soul group from East Harlem, Johnny Robinson, and somebody else played all afternoon. The only thing I remember about the afternoon happened during Fat Alice’s set, when the police showed up. It seems that someone had complained to the police about the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese flags that we had put up Sunday morning. They were flying high on the stadium flagpoles, visible in Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens. The pigs told us to take the flags down, so we did. As soon as they left, the flags went back up. The city’s Red Squad (they follow communists) was out in force, led by Barry Gottehrer, an aide to Mayor Lindsay. They were all sitting around the area where the flags were, looking as inconspicuous as football helmets in a baseball game.

After the “little” groups played, Rhinoceros, Elephants Memory Van Morrison, Dr. John the Night Tripper, and finally Mountain went on.

During Mountain’s set (which was much too long), too many police cars for our comfort pulled into the stadium area, so the flags were spirited away without the Red Squad noticing, leaving them “bustless.”

An interesting note, I think, on the state of the festival, was the stage security force, composed of radicals; Mostly White Panthers, a few others. The stage crew and the performers had asked that nobody without actual work to do on stage be allowed on stage. So Teddy Powell, Don Freidman and Bob Gardiner were repeatedly refused access to the stage. Sunday night it degenerated into a lot of brawls in which managers of groups who did have to be on stage didn’t get on stage because Brave New World was fucking up; for example, while Van Morrison’s manager had to get up on stage to check that all the equipment was set up right, a friend of Freidmans was taking home movies to show1 his kids. It didn’t matter anymore, by the time Mountain came on, it was a comedy of errors, it was a game of chance-were you going to get on stage or not?

PART FOUR

Mountain played three or four encores (they all sound the same to me) and it was all over. Al! over except for the end. After an experience like tha; we had to learn something The crowd learned that their idols, their rock and roll stars, usually don’t play unless they get their money. This is disillusioning to a lot of fans, but it’s the cold hard truth. The groups are in it for the money, and they won’t play without it. Nobody knows why the Voices of East Harlem didn’t play-they are at once stars of the show and a group that lives within walking distance of the stadium. And Joe Cocker had cancelled out, but Sly Stone had been contracted to replace him. Sly, unfortunately, had been scheduled to be in Minnesota that same night, so he wound up in Minneapolis. Sly’s manager announced to the crowd that he would do a free show where ticket holders would get the front rows on August 23, 24 or 25, at another city park. He said that Sly felt bad about disappointing the crowd and said, “see you in August.”

Well, as I write this it is September and several days ago, Sly didn’t play in New York.

PART FIVE

If this account seems disjointed, and it probably does, that’s because the weekend of the concerts was a string of fragments, not a festival, because the weeks before the shows were so confusing, and because we’re still trying to figure out exactly what happened.

The New York Times of Monday July 20 spent half the allotted space of an article to a discussion of the flags that were flying. That incident seems to have stirred up a lot of enemies down at City Hall for the radical collectives. There are even rumors of an indictment (conspiracy to commit extortion) against the radicals, with intimations of trying to blame us for the Sly Stone Chicago rock riot and the New York City rock riot that happened after a Mountain concert in Central Park five weeks ago.

The conclusions that can be drawn from our experience on Randalls Island are too numerous to mention completely, and they probably haven’t all been figured out yet, but here are a few things:

Rock bands are really into making money and aren’t really into playing for free or for less than they ask for. Thev are active participants in the rock industry that exploits youth.

Radicals shouldn’t make alliances with hip capitalists, or capitalists of any race', creed or religion. That involves compromise, deals, negotiations, and a lot of shit that ultimately comes down hard on the people.

The only rock festivals worth having are the ones that come from a community, not inflicted upon one. One that is a collective effort, not one that some people put together to make some money The original Be-ms were such community expressions, the rock festivals are not. They are rip-offs of the idea. The rock festival promoters have taken a beautiful thing, commercialized it slightly, and done it a la assembly line in order for it to be more profitable. It's that assembly line hang-up that signals the doom of rock festivals because, just like in the factories, when one cog doesn't want to do its part (like the audience, for instance), the rest of the factory, the resi of the machine, isn’t of any use at all.

Toby B. Mamis