In the last installment of Your Festivals and You, we discussed the above semi-debacle, Summer Jam ’73 at Watkins Glen Grand Prix Raceway in Upstate New York. The promoters sold 150,000 tickets and then 600,000 kids showed up. This kills the Thruway. Once again, the producers and backers are not placed in the stocks for, oh, about a week or so, and once again New York’s governor does not call out the National Guard. (Reagan ABSOLUTELY would have sicced the Guard on the hippies, and had them set fire to a few black neighborhoods on the way back to their barracks. You couldn’t have gotten away with this bullshit in California at the time.) There is no way to keep the fans out.
Because–as I’ve mentioned before, and you can see for yourself in the posted photo–the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Raceway is located in a field.
Terrible strategic positions, ranked:
- John Travolta when he was in the bathroom at John McClain’s apartment and left his Uzi in the kitchen. That is the bottom. Worst possible place to be. Cannot be defended. 2/10, would not pet.
- Alley in between two buidings with lots of windows. A skilled operator tries to avoid this situation. There could be a sniper in any window. Or maybe just a guy with a brick. Literally no way to gain an advantage over your opponents from this position.
- Food Court. You cannot hold the food court. That’s the first thing prospective SEALs are taught during their training. Can’t be done, maggots! Food Court is a chaos engine! the instructors scream. The young men sound off in the affirmative, though they have no idea what their instructor means. They will learn. Oh, they will learn. And then the instructors try to drown the trainees. (I’ve watched several documentaries on SEAL training school, and it seems like 90% of it is just holding the recruits underwater and not letting them sleep until they go insane.)
- The upstairs closet. Michael Myers knows you are in there, Laurie. Stop being such a dummy.
- A fucking field. You can fight in a field. Until this very century, that was what war was (except for the navy stuff). Your guys and their guys oiled themselves up and ran at one another. Field is a great place to fight. Think of the alternatives! Swamps, mountains, forests: all wrong for fighting. You want a good field. Gettysburg is a field. Flanders Field is a field. Nothing like a field. But you can’t fucking hold a field.
Unless you build a wall.
This was Englishtown in 1977, and it was the next mega-concert on the East Coast after the Summer Jam. California had their Jam at the Ontario Speedway in ’74, and drew 350,000 for ELP, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath; the show was well-received, and the kids were well-behaved, and so there was another California Jam in ’78 that drew in equal number. Missouri also had a massive rockyroll event you’ve never heard of in 1974 called the Ozark Music Festival. 350,000 teens showed up there, too, but everyone overdosed and fucked in public and shit on the ground, and the Missouri legislature immediately passed a law against staging a concert that size.
Anyway, Englishtown is a racetrack just like Watkins Glen and Altamont and Ontario; same problem, therefore: How to limit attendance to ticket-holders only. The promoter John Scher’s inspired idea was to circumplant rail cars around the track like Caesar at Alesia. 150,000 (or so) came out, which is what the producers had prepared for, and–but for the scorching heat–everyone had a good time. There were enough hot dogs and bathrooms for everyone.
So: it could be done. A multi-act, all-or-several day(s) festival-style show could be produced in America without the governor getting involved, just a lovely weekend listening to hairy men playing Chuck Berry covers in a field.
Many in both the music and business industries found that to be interesting information.
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