Texas International Pop Festival | |
---|---|
Genre | Rock, pop, etc. |
Location(s) | Lewisville, Texas United States |
Years active | 1969 |
Founders | Interpop Superfest |
The Texas International Pop Festival was a music festival held at Lewisville, Texas, on Labor Day weekend, August 30 to September 1, 1969. It occurred two weeks after Woodstock. The site for the event was an open field just south and west of the newly opened Dallas International Motor Speedway, located on the east side of Interstate Highway 35E, across from the Round Grove Road intersection. [1]
The festival was the brainchild of Angus G. Wynne III, son of Angus G. Wynne, the founder of the Six Flags Over Texas Amusement Park. [2] [3] Wynne was a concert promoter who had attended the Atlanta International Pop Festival on the July Fourth weekend. He decided to put a festival on near Dallas, and joined with the Atlanta festival's main organizer, Alex Cooley, [4] forming the company Interpop Superfest.
Artists performing at the festival were: Canned Heat, Chicago (then called Chicago Transit Authority), the James Cotton (Blues Band), Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, Grand Funk Railroad, The Incredible String Band, Janis Joplin, B.B. King, Freddie King, Led Zeppelin, Herbie Mann, Nazz, Rotary Connection, Sam and Dave, Santana, John Sebastian, Shiva's Headband, Sly and the Family Stone, Space Opera, Spirit, Sweetwater, Ten Years After, Tony Joe White and Johnny Winter. [2] [3]
North of the festival site was the campground on Lewisville Lake, where hippie attendees skinny-dipped and bathed. [3] [5] Also on the campground was the free stage, where some bands played after their main stage gig and several bands not playing on the main stage performed. It was on this stage that Hugh Romney, head of the Hog Farm commune of Woodstock fame, was given his sobriquet, Wavy Gravy, by King. [2] (At , he was .)
The Merry Pranksters, Ken Kesey's group, were in charge of the free stage and camping area. While Kesey was neither at the Texas event nor at Woodstock, his right-hand man, Ken Babbs, and his psychedelic bus Further were. [6] The Hog Farm peacefully provided security, a "trip tent," and free food. [7]
Attendance at the festival remains unknown, but is estimated between 120,000 and 150,000. [3] [4] As with Woodstock, there were no violent crimes reported. [5] [7] There was one death, due to heatstroke, and one birth. [4]
High-quality soundboard bootleg recordings of almost the entire festival are circulated on the internet. [8] Led Zeppelin's set is one of the most popular Led Zeppelin bootlegs due to the high technical and musical quality of the performance. [1]
The Festival began at 4:00 p.m. each day. Grand Funk Railroad (announced as "Grand Funk Railway") opened all three days and played through the afternoon heat till the 4:00 p.m. opening band. BB King played all three nights and told the same jokes and stories, perhaps thinking he had a different 150,000 person crowd for each show. [9]
On January 29, 2010, the Texas Historical Commission approved the placement of a state historical marker near Hebron Station, a Denton County Transportation Authority train station in eastern Lewisville, close to the former site of the festival stage. [6] A benefit concert was held in Lake Dallas, Texas, on January 31, 2010, to raise the $1,500 required to pay for this marker. [11] The marker was placed at the site with a formal dedication ceremony held at the nearby train station on October 1, 2011. [12] A current overlay map shows the main concert stage area now covered by the Hebron-121 Station town home development, and the festival grounds covered by a chicken restaurant to the north and the Edgewater Apartments to the south. [13]
Todd Harry Rundgren is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the bands Nazz and Utopia. He is known for his sophisticated and often unorthodox music, his occasionally lavish stage shows, and his later experiments with interactive art. He also produced music videos and was an early adopter and promoter of various computer technologies, such as using the Internet as a means of music distribution in the late 1990s.
Denton County is located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 906,422, making it the seventh-most populous county in Texas. The county seat is Denton. The county, which was named for John B. Denton, was established in 1846. Denton County constitutes part of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. In 2007, it was one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States.
Grand Funk Railroad is an American rock band formed in Flint, Michigan, in 1969 by Mark Farner, Don Brewer, and Mel Schacher (bass). The band achieved peak popularity and success during the 1970s with hit songs such as "We're an American Band", "I'm Your Captain ", "Some Kind of Wonderful", "Walk Like a Man", "The Loco-Motion", "Bad Time" and "Inside Looking Out". Grand Funk released six platinum and seven gold-certified albums between their recording debut in 1969 and their first disbandment in 1976.
Lewisville is a city in the U.S. state of Texas, located in Denton County with portions extending into Dallas County. As one of the Mid-Cities within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the 2020 census reported a population of 111,822.
The Merry Pranksters were followers of American author Ken Kesey. Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally at Kesey's homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus called Furthur, organizing parties, and giving out LSD. During this time they met many of the guiding lights of the 1960s cultural movement and presaged what are commonly thought of as hippies with odd behavior, tie-dyed and red, white, and blue clothing, and renunciation of normal society, which they dubbed The Establishment. Tom Wolfe chronicled their early escapades in his 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and documents a 1966 trip on Furthur from Mexico through Houston, stopping to visit Kesey's friend the novelist Larry McMurtry. Kesey was in flight from a drug charge at the time.
Terry Knight was an American rock and roll music producer, promoter, singer, songwriter and radio personality, who enjoyed some success in radio, modest success as a singer, but considerable success as the original manager-producer for Grand Funk Railroad and the producer for Bloodrock.
Stewart Levine is an American record producer. He has worked with many artists such as The Crusaders, Minnie Riperton, Lionel Richie, Simply Red, Hugh Masekela, Huey Lewis and the News, Patti LaBelle, Sly Stone, Boy George, Oleta Adams, Killing Joke, Jon Anderson, Boz Scaggs, Womack and Womack and Curiosity Killed the Cat.
Melvin George Schacher is an American musician who is the bassist and a founding member of the hard rock band Grand Funk Railroad.
The Atlantic City Pop Festival took place in 1969 on August 1, 2 and 3rd at the Atlantic City race track, two weeks before Woodstock Festival. It actually took place in Hamilton Township at the Atlantic City Race Course. There was heavy security at the festival, and the stage the acts performed on was created by Buckminster Fuller. A ticket for the entire 3-day weekend was $15.00 to see all of the performers listed. Attended by some 100,000+ people.
The Mar y Sol Pop Festival was a rock festival that took place in Manatí, Puerto Rico, about thirty miles west of San Juan, on April 1–4, 1972. It was held on 420 acres (1.7 km2) of countryside adjacent to Los Tubos beach in Manatí on the north shore of the island. An estimated 30–35,000 people attended the festival.
This article is a discography of American rock musician Todd Rundgren.
Led Zeppelin's Summer 1969 North American Tour was the third concert tour of North America by the English rock band. The tour commenced on 5 July and concluded on 31 August 1969.
Showco was a sound equipment provider of touring sound reinforcement equipment and services to the concert touring industry. It was based in Dallas, Texas, United States. In 2000, Showco was acquired by Clair Global.
The first Atlanta International Pop Festival was a rock festival held at the Atlanta International Raceway in Hampton, Georgia, twenty miles south of Atlanta, on the July Fourth (Friday) weekend, 1969, more than a month before Woodstock. Crowd estimates ranged from the high tens of thousands to as high as 150,000. With temperatures nearing a hundred degrees, local fire departments used fire hoses to create "sprinklers" for the crowd to play in and cool off. It was a peaceful, energetic, hot and loud festival with few problems other than heat related. Concession stands were woefully inadequate. Attendees frequently stood in line for an hour to get a soft drink.
Hebron station is an A-train commuter rail station in Lewisville, Texas. The station is a park-and-ride lot serving southern Lewisville, including the Vista Ridge Mall retail area.
The Strawberry Fields Festival was a rock music festival held at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada, about 100 kilometers east of Toronto, between August 7 and the early morning hours of August 10, 1970. Although accounts vary, the audience has been estimated at between 75,000 and 100,000 people. A three-day ticket for the festival sold for $15.00.
The Dallas International Motor Speedway (DIMS) was a racetrack located in Lewisville, Texas. It operated from June 1969 to 1973. The racetrack served as the site for such events as the NHRA Springnationals, NHRA World Finals, and the Texas International Pop Festival in 1969.
Jack Calmes was an American inventor, sound reinforcement and lighting business executive, and musician.
The New Orleans Pop Festival was a rock festival held on Labor Day weekend, two weeks after the Woodstock Festival. It was held at the Pelican International Speedway in Prairieville, Louisiana, about 65 miles up the Mississippi River from New Orleans and 15 miles south of Baton Rouge. Over 26 bands performed during the three days of the festival, including seven veterans of Woodstock. It had a peak attendance of 25,000–30,000 people.
This is a timeline documenting the events of heavy metal in the year 1968.