Billed As The Fastest Guitar Player On Earth

In the summer of '69 I got a decent paying job in an electronic factory after I graduated from high school to save money for college that fall. I was a know nothing jock who liked to hang out at Jones Beach and listen to AM top 40 radio and drink beer.

So when a co worker told me he was going upstate to this music festival and showed me the list of groups that would be playing, I hardly recognized any of them. I had Woodstock tickets in my hand but the thought didn't even cross my mind to go up there with him, if that's how I remember it correctly. The rest is history and I look back on it now, thinking what it might have been like to experience the event, even just to brag that I was there. Psychedelics caught up with me some months later in my dorm room, however.

I did make it to a couple of other huge rock festivals of the era. There was a cancelled event that was going to be held at the Powder Ridge ski slope in Connecticut in 1970, but tens of thousands of people went anyway and partied for days. (Somewhere out there is a picture of a long hair sitting by a tent selling drugs, taken by a professional photographer who had to assure the long haired individual that he wasn't a cop, and I intend to find that photo) One was held at the Mosport Race Track outside Toronto in 1970. A far bigger one that actually had more people than Woodstock was a one day show in 1973 at Watkins Glen in the Finger Lakes Region, central NY:

"Many historians claimed that the Watkins Glen even was the largest gathering of people in the history of the United States. In essence, that meant that on July 28, one out of every 350 people living in America at the time was listening to the sounds of rock at the New York state racetrack. Considering that most of those who attended the even hailed from the Northeast, and that the average age of those present was approximately seventeen to twenty-four, close to one out of every three young people from Boston to New York was at the festival."

The stuff at this link really hits it on the head. That event was mostly an anachronism because by that time the era of gigantic festivals had run it's brief course. Music that day actually became tedious. Three mega groups played in this order for hours each with lots and lots of long, extended jams - The Grateful Dead, The Band and the Allman Brothers. Weather that day started out pretty nice and the mood was light but by the afternoon people were tired from the heat and getting surly, totally soaked from a storm that passed through. By evening most people tended to their own affairs but music was still being played up until midnight or so.

An aside - I had hitched there from my college town with all my backpacking gear and set up camp maybe a 1/4 mile away from the stage. The crowd was so huge that even at that distance there was a crush of people all around. I made the mistake of spending too much time partying down near the music and by the time I got back to where my tent was, some dirty hippies had stolen all my gear. At least I was there.