The Northern California Folk-Rock Festival, May 15, 1968
April 12, 2020 11:06 PM   Subscribe

WHAT'LL YOU BOYS HAVE? SHE ASKED. RAW MEAT, THEY ANSWERED. A remarkable review of a concert featuring The Youngbloods, Crome Syrcus, Steve Miller Band, The Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and the Jefferson Airplane. Written by a guy named Sandy Darlington, author of "Buzz River Letters." It appeared in the San Francisco Express Times, an underground paper formed by Berkeley Free Speech vet Marvin Garson with help from Todd Gitlin, Greil Marcus, Paul Williams, chef Alice Waters, and Marjorie Heins.

"There were a lot of long-haired people there, but the major part of the audience was made up of fifteen-to-seventeen-year-old white kids. Lots of short sleeves, some Bermuda shorts. Kids with straight faces held in anticipation, waiting for themselves, waiting for Stars, waiting to be turned on, waiting to be sent into combat, intent on what was happening but not used to bursting out. Kids who were used to being told, "Sit up straight and don't make faces." They had become the nice children their parents raised them to be, and now they were looking for something beyond that.

Last year they could have eased their changes with a transitional music like Herman's Hermits, the Monkees, or even the early Beatles: boys who didn't look like they'd push a girl too far, boys who were willing to come in and meet the parents before a date. Now that kind of act is out, perhaps a victim of the general polarization of attitudes that is going on in America. Now there is a vacuum, a lack of in-betweens. These kids came from the Scouts, from Sunday School, mowing the lawn for chores and maybe getting a pony for Christmas. And they're going straight out of that world toward the world of Pigpen and Janis.

It's a big jump, and they were slow in getting involved in the music that day. They weren't dumb, they just hadn't been anyplace yet, and they rather shyly waited to be shown around. They were like the farmers who gathered in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1858 to hear the first Lincoln-Douglas debate. It was after that first debate that the New York Post reported: 'All prairiedom has broken loose. It is astonishing how deep an interest in politics these people take.'"
posted by msalt (11 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
"The bands went through a slow and roundabout courtship with the audience, trying to turn them on. Here were all these hairy gang-bang bands all ready to whoop it up like they'd just driven the herd into Dodge City all the way from the Mexican border, and the crowd was like the schoolmarm who wonders if kissing with the tongue is ladylike. So...it took time."
posted by msalt at 11:07 PM on April 12, 2020


"Then Big Brother and the Holding Company came on, completely out front, pouring everything into just that moment, as if there were no tomorrow, only right now. Raw power and excitement, the most intense band around. Yet they're all so gentle. They look like they'd scare hell out of a waitress in a drive-in. ("What'll you boys have?" she asked. "Raw meat," they answered.) And yet they'd be great with children.

"And they're all so tasteful. They make their choices like old-time country musicians. Janis looks like a gramma and like a little girl, burning up in a white flame. While she was singing, the wind was blowing the cottonwood trees behind her, and the leaves were turning over, from green to grey-green and back, as though in time with the music. They're presently recording an LP for Columbia in L.A. They're good people and I hope they get home all right."
posted by msalt at 11:09 PM on April 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


"Next came the Grateful Dead. Tom Donahue announced that their new album is out this week and suggested that the Dead might play some numbers from it during their set. Jerry Garcia smiled benignly to himself. He said they'd do 'Alligator' and they did, for about forty minutes. That was their set and it blew the place wide open.

"Most bands hit a song fast, then stretch out for a while, ending up with a bang. The Dead go into a song slowly, tentatively, and build up an atmosphere until everyone is inside the music. Then they take off, exploring the figures over and over again with that super rhythm section. If you're outside it, it can be boring. But when they get to you, it's incredible and hypnotic, as if the music was happening inside you. At Santa Clara it blew everybody's mind. It was as though we were hearing for the first time in our lives, and we stood in a kind of trance, scarcely knowing that we were listening. The ending was very drawn-out, on purpose. From that incredible middle section they trailed off slowly into percussion sounds, then down to just cymbal noise, and from there to silence. When it was over we didn't clap much, we just stood there open-mouthed: Who was that Masked Man?"
posted by msalt at 11:53 PM on April 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


And a link at the bottom of the article so you can hear those 40 minutes of Alligator if you want to. I do want to, see you on the other side.
posted by Literaryhero at 5:20 AM on April 13, 2020 [3 favorites]


Nice enough review, but you didn't need to use multiple comments to quote most of it.

I found it odd that the writer didn't know the name of the Airplane's big hit.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:01 AM on April 13, 2020 [2 favorites]


I'm a little stunned to hear Steve Miller Band referred to as a "hard" act. I mean... in context, sure, but as a 40-something I never heard them in context with their contemporaries, only as a band that was popular on the classic rock station. And next to the more recent acts they don't come off as hard at all. Weird. What hard-rocking groups will my own kid see as limp dad-rock when he's in his 40's??
posted by caution live frogs at 10:35 AM on April 13, 2020


I really love that description of the Dead's set. It captures the way I feel about the music so well. "as if the music was happening inside you... as though we were hearing for the first time in our lives, and we stood in a kind of trance, scarcely knowing that we were listening." That gives me goosebumps.
posted by treepour at 11:04 AM on April 13, 2020 [3 favorites]


I'm a little stunned to hear Steve Miller Band referred to as a "hard" act

Yeah, me too. The 1968-69 Grateful Dead seem a lot harder to me. I guess compared to The Assocation and flower-powery bands? They were solidly blues based anyway, and it's worth remembering that this was before Led Zeppelin came out, much less Black Sabbath.
posted by msalt at 4:20 PM on April 13, 2020


I think Steve Miller was tighter & more focused on straight-ahead Blues-rock in live staging. I recall some of his comments about that time remarking on how his hippy contemporaries were kinda stoned & bumbling around on stage when it came time to put on a show. (Of course, I find their music more interesting than his. But he's okay too;)
posted by ovvl at 6:31 PM on April 13, 2020


I think Steve Miller was tighter & more focused on straight-ahead Blues-rock in live staging.

I somehow ended up seeing Steve Miller twice in one summer around the turn of the century, and it was the EXACT same show both times. Like the stage banter was literally the same. I found it pretty weird. I realize that it has to be tough going out there night after night, but word for word same conversational asides? That's pretty weird.
posted by Literaryhero at 10:58 PM on April 13, 2020


What hard-rocking groups will my own kid see as limp dad-rock when he's in his 40's??

Aerosmith, Wilco, Imagine Dragons are my guesses. For a more out there group, Blind Mellon -where 'No Rain' is pretty out there vs most of their other work, and lots of '80s rockers like Poison, Foreigner, Bad Company, Journey, White Snake, etc. Those bands, to my ears, don't 'rock' even if they are operating basically in the 'rock' genre.

The Ramones too. They sound like a pop band.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:56 AM on April 14, 2020


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