Monday, November 14, 2005

Wow,

I found this bit of trivia after getting an email from the old hippie's
I remember seeing this at the Gentle Giant web page

Sep. ? Bull Island, Illinois the date for Giant’s participation at this three-day Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival has come into question, with the original tour itinerary and one fan in attendance stating the band appeared in the early afternoon of the first day of festivities, Sep. 2, while two other fans claim they actually appeared in the early afternoon of the second day, Sep. 3. whichever day it was, it has been confirmed that GG did not really get a chance to play. one witness in the crowd says that the band stopped playing almost immediately after taking the stage, claiming the “organ was out of tune with itself”. another member of the crowd thinks there may have been a problem with the electric generators. the band was reportedly quite upset about not being able to play. oddly, though, Phil Shulman recalls this festival as being one of the highlights of his time in America, though he may be confusing it with some other gig. the festival, held on a 900-acre site on the border between Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky, was poorly organized so many acts pulled out, including Black Sabbath, the Faces, the Allman Brothers and Joe Cocker. other bands appearing included Black Oak Arkansas, Canned Heat, Ravi Shankar and Nazareth. a few hundred thousand people were in attendance for this show, which was listed in the original tour itinerary as taking place in nearby Chandler, Indiana. it actually was originally planned for a site in Chandler, but was relocated at the last minute. the entire event ended up plagued by rioting, looting and general chaos

It's obvious that Phil Shulman had a great time, after all he said this of the show"The festival as being one of the hightlights of his time in America". The festival was a beautiful thing. There was some bad things that happened. It was a large group of people and people are unpredictable. One person drown in the river and another was accidently ran over by a van they he was sleeping beside. Tragic as those deaths were, they were not caused by the concert. Here I go. I recently had a friend die from a possible drug overdose(Sunday 11/13/2005). The person that had taken him in caught a windfull of hatefilled words from the dead friends family because of his death. Not thanks for taking him in because we didn't want his problems. It seems that everyone in this country wants to do the blame game. There are many examples of this but the one that really sticks in my claw is the Ozzy Osbroune vs the parents of a teen suicide victim(how can you call someone who commits suicide a victim??).
[pause]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was 17 went ther with my buddies , there were 9 of us. 1 dude who showed up was a jock from out high school I never cared for. He said something to me the first day & I told him to shut up and showed him a machete I had. He shut up and then we all had fun taht week. We drove in from Cleveland Ohio, pick up Duffy from Louisville and busted balls all the way in. He said "look for me on the strip in Louisville" we never made it Louisville. The cops stopped us and told us to fix our muffler. They escorted us to a place, they were nice cops (YEAH_REGULAR TYPE PEOPLE!!!) We waited outside the gate on a dirt road, made it in, did all right. I met a babe from Florida & hung with her all week, JUST PALS & actually wrote letters for YEARS, I visited her twice and then I got hitched had a bunch of Kids & staretd a business. Alls well with me BUT WHO actually put that concert on? We should find them, thanks them, start getting together ourselves every year-RE UNION or something any way. "theres about three hundred thousand of you __ __ ckers out there I would like for ya'll to start ( what?) WAHT could 300,000 of us __ ___ ckers do? YOU tell me? We did it once.

Anonymous said...

I woke up this morning thinking I should check the internet to see if anything was written about one of my significant emotional events:

Sho nuf, Indiana-Erie-Canal-Soda-Pop-Festival.

I had just started my freshman year at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. At a party, passing a doob with some guys who were talking about the concert some of my smoke buddies in Omaha had mentioned. "It's not too late! You can send for a ticket..." So eagerly I mailed off my $25, "Gee, will I get to have my own, mid-western, Woodstock!?" What joy when the ticket arrived.

So here I am, a middle-class virgin (I kid you not!) chick, taking off with a vanload of clowns I don't even know.

My memories are also hazy, but I rmember sitting on the interstate for hours, both roads of the interstate backed up solid, going the same way. People walked among the cars, hawking their drug wares. A combination of crank, windowpane, and pot excised a major part of my memory for a good 24 hours. I think that made me one of the lucky ones.

Shortly after that I found religion. But I'm better now.