After I astounded and amazed my twenty year old son with the shows I’d seen at the Fillmore East when I was just lass, I started telling him of other, stranger musical events.
Do you remember a ‘rock festival’ held in the middle of Wisonsin arounf 1970? The only bands I can remember playing there were The Amboy Dukes and Buffy Sainte-Marie. Who else played? My mind is kind of fuzzy on this one…
Was it the Wisconsin International Falls Festival in Kaukauna in 1972?
Wow. Did you SEE the lineup? Country to Blues to Ex-Mothers to Easy Listening… (Flo & Eddie and The Association?!?)
How did all these acts even know where Wisconsin is?
If that doesn’t ring a bell (think you might’ve confused Buffy Sainte-Marie with Roger Miller?), it could’ve been Summerfest in Milwaukee. Long before it became a well-planned, family-friendly festival, it was one act after another all day long for a week.
I remember the early days, and dancing in a muddy field under impromptu umbrellas to John Sebastian ("What a day… man, you guys are crazy … for a daydream…") who was sandwiched between bands like Poco and Mountain (hmmm… Melanie was there that day – she’s Buffy Sainte-Marie-esque…).
The music would start about noon and run til the wee hours, and once they added multiple stages, it made for a lot of diverse music. I’ve tried to find daily schedules from the '70’s to double-check my memory (did George Carlin really follow the Doors?), but I’ll try again.
Hey --what about emailing Buffy or The Amboy Dukes (who may be selling aluminum siding in New Jersey as we speak, and would apprecite a bit of fan mail)?
If you Google for Wisconsin/Anti-war/Veietnam, you might find a few listings that would give insight as to why musical acts of the day might know about Wisconsin, aside from the University, etc.
Don’t have to Google for Wisconsin/Anti-war/Vietnam – I was here (Madison). It was a wild, but scary time.
Weird flashback: One of the brothers that was involved in the fatal bombing of the UW’s Army Math Research Center (and made the FBI’s list) – the bomber that disappeared in Canada, IIRC – showed up at my door. The face that had stared at me from grainy news archive photos was asking me to sign for a package. After he left, I looked down at his name on the slip: Karleton Armstrong.
samclem, I never thought of bands gravitating toward Wisconsin because of the anti-war atmosphere, but it sounds plausible.
Hey digs, I’m an (almost) lifelong Madison resident and the Sterling Hall bombing is still a major part of Madison talk (though the UW seems to downplay it).
Karl Armstrong owns a sandwich shop on State St now, a lot of people are pissed that a murderer (even unintentionally) is now making a good living off his history (his shop is called The Radical Rye).
Leo Burt is still at large. I know a couple people who claim to have seen him though, including one guy who swears up and down that he saw him 4 or 5 years ago in the Northwest. Seems the FBI would’ve got him by now if it were that easy though.
Thanks all for your responses. We ain’t there yet.
It was a three-day Woodstock-type affair in 1971, the summer after Woodstock. It was held outdoors, in a rural location. There was a big hillside that formed a natural amphitheater. I was a youngster spending the summer with my older brother in Minneapolis. We drove there from Minneapolis. At the time this event was a big deal.
Why is this important? My 20 year old son is now into all sorts of beer-hippie guitar god bands of the 60s and 70s. He is intently interested in which bands I saw live. For example, he was really impressed that I saw Blue Cheer play at the Fillmore, and that I bought their first album. (Go figure). I know several similar bands played at this festival, I just can’t remember which ones. I was generally more of a wussy Incredible String Band type fan, myself.
Keep thinking!
Sounds like Alpine Valley.
CBCD, I haven’t heard the words “Blue Cheer” in decades. I’m gonna drift around a little here wishing the music today was as great as it was back then…
Kalhoun - I find it a hoot that my 20 year old punk-rocker son likes Blue Cheer. He bought a copy of their album Vincebus Eruptum. Do you remember the embossed blue album cover? How cool it was in 1968?
When he found out I once owned that very same record, he developed a new respect for the musical tastes of his mother.
Last night the lad was wearing a Blue Cheer T-shirt. Apparently there is now some sort of Blue Cheer cult following.
Again, go figure!
I’ve got a 27-year old punk rocker who loves Pink Floyd’s “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”. Reassurance that I raised him right!
Unfortunately, all my albums went the way of the garbage dump. They were rained on while they were in storage :(.
To hijack my own thread -
My son’s friends are very impressed I saw the Beatles in concert (Washington DC, August 15, 1966, last US tour)
My son’s friends are also impressed my husband and I are friends with some of the ACTUAL people mentioned in Leggs McNeils history of NY punk Please Kill Me
Other than that, we are old people, as are all parents.
Well, I don’t have kids. But ironically I can empathize with both you AND your son:
As a teenager, waaaay back in the 80s (!) I went through my own pot-smoking hippie phase, and was extremely impressed when I discovered that a neighbor of mine had been a regular visitor of the Fillmore West – he saw Jefferson Airplane, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream to name a few bands. At the time, I couldn’t understand the bemused smirk he always had when I badgered him with questions about those days.
Then a few years ago, I happened to mention to a younger co-worker that I’d seen Kiss - in their original full-makeup, flame-throwing days - when I was in grade school. I also saw (on seperate occasions) the Clash and the Talking Heads. When I saw the look of astonishment and envy on his face, I immediately flashed back to my neighbor and realized why he was so amused.
I think the festival you mean might have been in Iola WI, which is most certainly in the middle of nowhere. I don’t remember much about it, but my older sister’s friends went and came back happy.
Additionally, on the hijack side, when the Army Math Research Center was blown up I woke up thinking that the house had just exploded. Windows broke up and down our street, which was about two miles from the blast.
That morning the FBI went knocking at the door of a guy I went to high school with, after finding his dad’s van’s license plate amid the debris. Apparently Armstrong and the New Year’s Gang had liberated the vehicle from the driveway, loaded it wup with the fertilizer, and the rest is history.
There will never be agreement on whether Armstrong and the others are murderers, or not. The town has been deeply divided ever since.
I don’t know what show this would have been, but since several posters have questioned your memory of Buffy Sainte-Marie I wanted to say that in his book I Need More, Iggy Pop relates a story about playing an outdoor music festival in rural Wisconsin in the '70s with Buffy Sainte-Marie. I have no idea why Iggy Pop and Buffy Sainte-Marie were on the same bill…must have been a “something for everyone!” sort of festival. Wish I’d been there!
I know there was a concert/fest at Steven’s Point in the summer of either '70 or '71. I can’t remember exactly because it was, after all, the early 70’s.
Rysdad - Steven’s Point rings a bell. But it was so long, before the capture of all information on the internet, that these ancient histories were not recorded.
It’s OK. My son made me listen to KISS this afternoon when we played Scrabble.
In the summer of 1970 the festival was, I believe, originally scheduled to take place in the Stevens Point area, but was moved to an area outside of Iola. Buffy St. Marie was indeed there, but the show stopper was Iggy and the Stooges, complete with the first instance of stage diving that I had ever seen. Throughout the festival there was tension between biker groups and the rest of the people. It erupted into some violence. The story was covered in The Chicago Tribune, among other newspapers. Buffy met with a rather uncomfortable reaction from the crowd.
Wussy. Wussy?!
By that, of course, you mean discriminating, imaginative and immune to derision.
I am not alone! I am not alone!