Sly Stone showed up an hour late and sang Everyday People, then passed out on stage…BB King playedThe Thrill is Gone; Edgar Winter, J. Geils Band…who else performed?
It was pretty loose and disorganized, but I remember haviong a great time.
Oh, I thought this was going to be a wrestling thread.
Jeremy Piven got NOTHING right on that show except the high-cross-body.
Carry on, then.
I wanted to be there, but I was recently married.
I THINK* I started going to Summerfest in '71, and we spent almost every day of the next ten summers sitting on blankets (no seats, no “ampitheatre”, just a muddy field at first) listening to a LOT of good music – I mean, they’d start playing at noon, and just keep tossing new bands on stage 'til the wee hours.
The FIRST Summerfest was '69, and was NOT at Summerfest. it was scattered throughout the city. Same in '70. Sly was there in '71, at what I’d call the first REAL Summerfest. Do you remember how late he was? Turns out he was sitting in his hotel room, afraid of the crowd. With good reason–remember those angry hippies during the Vietnam era? They were all at S-fest. Beer bottles and rocks flying, an impromptu bonfire made from picnic benches… I’m sure Mayor Maier was rethinking his original plan to make it a PolkaFest (Seriously–called “JuliFest”) with German food and Oompah bands! As it was, they started with performers like The New Colony Six (4 shows at the first 'fest!) and Up With People :-}
I’ve got the coffeetable book at home, I’ll quote from it when I get home.
digs
*(who was THERE, man, but has trouble separating one year from another)
PS: Now I’m taking my kids and their friends to Summerfest with me, and getting written about. Last summer, my friend Andy and I took our kids to Ben Folds/John Mayer and experienced “Bummerfest”:
"Milwaukeeans will pay for beer the same way SUV owners will pay for gas. Whatever it takes. Brewskis are up to five bucks apiece at Summerfest now. They could be 50 bucks and it wouldn’t matter.
“The guy in front of us disappears every other song and returns with plastic bottles of Miller Lite that he shares with his drenched girlfriend. I don’t know what’s more discouraging: the fact that each round takes their focus further from the music, or the fact that they’ll pay that much for crappy beer.”
Notice the plastic bottles…
So, SAMCOOKEFAN1, got any cool stories? What was the food like? The heepees? The drugs? Now it’s a MillerFest (see above linked article), but Back In The Day…
Anybody else?
And … why weren’t you somewhere that Sam Cooke was playing?