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Laurel Pop Festival
The first time I saw
Zeppelin was about a
month before at the Merriweather Post Pavilion In All the Bands were still in there
"Trying to make it -Mode". Which means they Cover of the Laurel Pop Festival program
Here are some photos Tom shot both nights. We were 17 year old kids with a
Kodak Instamatic.
Laurel Pop Stories I
just discovered your site. I love it. Here's a pic
of my girlfriend Debbie and me before the show on
July 11th, 1969.
I remember it well......................I was 20 yrs. old with a new 69' Chevelle SS 396. I was a big fan of Zep,J.Winter,Jeff Beck, Mothers,etc.etc.etc. I remember when Zeppelin closed the show and the P.A. System was turned off because of people in the surrounding town complained and forced the show to end............but you could still hear Robert wailing above Bonzo's drums...................and that's when we started burning the chairs in a huge BonFire. Those were amazing times for music and I still have my ticket stubs to all the concerts that I went too, many of the same ones you went too. And then there was the following month of August and off to the Atlantic City Pop Festival..................Ah the Summer of 69' God bless ya for having all the stuff here that make memories everlasting ! Chip Hello -- can't believe how many of the exact same concerts I attended as you -- wish I'd saved my ticket stubs like you did. I wanna add a couple of important factoids to a couple of your concert blurbs and ask a question or two. First -- was that Hendrix concert at the Balt Civic Center the one with Buddy Miles? If so, I was there as well as the Hendrix show at the Hilton in DC. Also -- add "The Edwin Hawkins Singers" to your line-up at Laurel Pop, Friday night. (sad, but true :D ) The Cream concert ($10.00!!! Remember how outrageous that was??) That was their farewell concert (very important item to add) and the opening acts were: The Terry Reid group and The Moody Blues. I was there, too -- what a show! I saw a lot of the same acts you did, but different places -- saw the Iron Butterfly open for the Airplane at Shady Grove. Saw John McLaughlin with AlDiMeola & Paco DeLucia at the Kennedy Center and saw Weather Report at DAR. That's about it for now. Cheers! Cool website (damn! I wish I'd saved those stubs!) Allen R. Johnson, Jr. It was quite a coup to have a two day festival with so many big name acts just up the road from my home in Lanham.
The evening started out poorly with me getting stood up by the girl
I'd arranged to take to the show.
It turned out OK in that I gave the ticket to my friend who turned
18 that day. He was killed a few years later so I'm glad he had the
chance to attend such a memorable show.
I was a huge Zeppelin fan by that time, having seen them open for
the Who up at Merriweather and wearing out the vinyl grooves in the
Legendary LZ I album. I didn't know what to make of Tull. I'd only
heard a little about them and they were considered a sort of
"jazz-rock" group then what with Mick Abrahams on guitar and
Anderson doing his Roland Kirk imitations on flute.
Anderson with his long beard and clad in what appeared to be a
tattered bathroom had us shaking our heads in delighted amazement
with his antics on stage . At one point, with his back to the
audience, he went into a slow theatrical half turn and pointed a
bony finger at the assembled crowd of newly minted freaks hissing
"Juunkieeesssss!" We loved it.
I remember Led Zeppelin playing Communication Breakdown as it
started to rain. I don't know that it was the greatest performance
of LZ ( I saw them several times over the next years including twice
at Baltimore) but at that time they could do no wrong.
Can it be true that all this went down almost 40 years ago?
Nah!!
Mark G
Here’s what I remember about Laurel. By Michael M. My Gonzaga classmate Pete and my younger brother Kevin and I had $6.75 tickets like the one pictured for Friday night's show. We were sitting in the wayback when a group of people -- my recollection is that one of them was Bill Craig, who lived a few blocks from me in Hollywood, a suburb of College Park, and whom I had met the semester before at the University of Maryland -- surged forward over the snow fence dividing the seating sections from one another to colonize $12 seats. Pete and Kevin and I joined the invasion, and wound up about ten rows back from the stage. When the inevitable usher arrived and demanded to see our tickets, we pretended to be foreigners. Kevin and I both had used the same German text at Gonzaga, so we began reciting both parts of a dialogue from "Deutsch Erstes Buch" in which a tourist is asking a traffic policemen for directions to the cathedral. Pete had taken French, and he used the same tack. "Where are your tickets?" the usher said. "Entschuldigen se bitte mir, Herr Wachtmeister, " I said to him, looking as earnest as I could. "Wo ist der Dom, bitte?" "Der Dom ist nicht weit von hier," Kevin said. "Geradeaus, dann links." "Vraiment, la cite, c'est tres belle," Pete said, or something like that. "I said, where are your tickets?" "Geradeaus, dann links? Ausgezeichnet!" This went on for a while until the usher gave up and rousted Craig and his pals, and we enjoyed the show immensely. The era being what it was, it made perfect sense to be drenched in so much live excellent music for such a pittance. I still remember vividly Led Zeppelin leaving the stage at the end of their set and, from behind the amplifier bank, starting "Communications Breakdown" as an encore, with Plant leaping like a superhero over the Marshalls, only to have someone cut the power at mid-verse. The next night Kevin and I went to the Biograph to see "Monterey Pop!" and it's been downhill ever since. -- Mike Dolan Great to read your blurb about this show. I'm sure you know that it
continued Saturday night the 12th- I went to that night and saw the Guess
Who, 10 Years After, Mothers of Invention, and Savoy Brown, among others- I
stumbled backstage after the show and saw Frank Zappa holding hands with a
woman not his wife and then getting ready for a filmed interview with a
local DJ. I was only 15 then, nobody told me to get out- those were the
days! Recollections from a then 15 year old Rock and Roller I remember Sly and the Family Stone as stealing the show on Saturday night. They were awesome and had a funky groove that got me and my friends up and dancing. That is one of my favorite all time performances. I liked Guess Who set although I wasn't a fan of theirs. As usual, Frank Zappa put on a great show and the Jeff Beck Band featuring Rod Stewart was great. I don't think Savoy Brown played as the show ran late and the promoter were angry cause the crowd had built bonfires out of the wooden chairs as it was a chilly wet night.I didn't go the night before because I didn't have the money. One of many regrets.Tom Send me your Laurel Pop Stories
This site was last updated 11/02/09 |
