VA- Celebration of Life Festival / Celebración de la vida (1971 - June 24 to 27) 🇺🇸 McCrea Lousiana

Del 24 al 27 de junio de 1971, se llevó a cabo la Celebración de la Vida, un ambicioso festival mörb/d head de ocho días, a orillas del río Atchafalaya en Cypress Pointe Plantation en McCrea, Louisiana. Los promotores del festival alquilaron la plantación de soja de 500 acres por $ 20,000 después de ser desalojados de dos sitios anteriores. Los organizadores no lograron concretar una ubicación antes de comercializar el evento, y tuvo que ser reubicado varias veces en el último minuto. La ubicación se dio a conocer tan pronto como se encontró la propiedad y personas de todo el país comenzaron a viajar allí. Los lugareños intentaron bloquear el festival, pero una vez que la gente comenzó a aparecer, se dieron cuenta de que lo más seguro, dado que las carreteras estaban congestionadas y la gente estaba estacionada a lo largo de la carretera por millas y millas, había que dejar que la gente entrara a la propiedad. Entonces levantaron el escenario y comenzó el festival.

Desafortunadamente, mientras los trabajadores se apresuraban a preparar todo y erigir la gran torre de sonido, llegó una tormenta y la torre se derrumbó. Uno de los grandes postes de los andamios atravesó el torso de un trabajador. La consecuencia de todos los retrasos inesperados fue que en lugar de los ocho días que se habían anunciado, el festival comenzó con cuatro días de retraso y terminó siendo de solo cuatro días. El cambio de horario provocó que muchas bandas cancelaran sus apariciones. En cuestión de horas, el festival de rock había más que duplicado la población de Pointe Coupee Parish, para un festival que contaba con una impresionante alineación de actos. El lugar del festival estaba mal equipado para manejar esta avalancha de gente y las condiciones eran realmente malas. Hacía un calor espantoso y los mosquitos y otros insectos eran un problema, al igual que la falta de comida, agua, instalaciones médicas y sanitarias. Había una tienda, visible desde el lugar del festival, que vendía todo lo que había en sus estantes. Estos problemas, más la indignación pública por las acciones de algunos de los asistentes, hicieron que el festival terminara antes de lo programado. Al concluir el tercer día, más de 150.000 personas se habían reunido para disfrutar de la música y los divertidos espectáculos paralelos. Por desgracia, al menos cuatro personas se ahogaron por la corriente y los rápidos del río Atchafalaya (hubiese sido vrütal si se los hubiese comido un cocodrilo), otro murió por una sobredosis de drogas y policías encubiertos realizaron más de 100 redadas por drogas

Pistas por separado en mp3, grabacion original sin retocar, calidad aceptable, portadas por este blog

👂👂👂👂👂

John Sebastian
(June 24, 6PM, 1st festival performance on main stage)
01. I Had A Dream
02. Lovin' You
03. She's A Lady
04. Nashville Cats
05. Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?


WAR (9:22) featuring ERIC BURDON
(June 24)
06. Sun Oh Son -
07. Lonely Feelin' - Get Down

Chuck Berry (28:24)
(June 24)
08. Nadine
09. Memphis, Tennessee
10. Sweet Little 16
11. School Day (Ring Ring Goes The Bell)
12. Around & Around
13. Oh Louisiana
14. Promised Land (cut)
15. Reelin' & Rockin'
16. My Ding-A-Ling (lyric singalong intros, then cuts)



Stoneground (1:01:52) ESTO ES UNA ROCKLIQUIA QUE SUBIMOS AL BLOG HACE AÑOS
(June 25)
17. Looking For You
18. Great Changes Since I've Been Born
19. Rainy Day in June
20. Bad News
21. Passion Flower
22 Total Destruction To Your Mind


Ted Nugent & The Amboy Dukes (1:23:07)
(June 25)
23. "Cannon Balls" guitar jam
24. Prodigal Man (?) (fragment only)

Fire Wind (1:33:09)
(June 26)
25. "Coming Together" (?)


Country Joe McDonald (1:38:40)
(June 26)
26. "It's Been A Long, Long Time"(?) (only known version!)
27. Entertainment Is My Business
28. Kiss My Ass
29. Red Hot Mama
30. Freedom Is A Constant Struggle
31. Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine
32. The "Fish" Cheer /I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag
33. Janis


Potliquor (2:00:54)
(June 26)
34. Riverboat

Black Oak Arkansas (2:03:12)
(June 26)
35. Jailhouse Rock (fragment)


Arlo Guthrie (2:04:32)
(June 26)
36. Rosie Rag
37. Hobo's Lullaby


Chambers Brothers (2:10:17)
(likely after midnight, so actually the 27th)
38. Love Peace & Happines

Tiene gracia que teniendo a los Amboy Dukes y a Country Joe, y a Black Oak o Chuck Berry, el festival lo cerrasen los Chamber Brothers 

mad max lousiana

Algunas bandas que iban a ir pero al final no aparecieron: Rolling Stones, Canned Heat, Allman Brothers, Paul Butterfield, Cat Stevens, Edgar Winter, Joe Cocker, James Gang, John Lee Hocker, Flying Burrito, Sly & The Family, Miles Davis, Neil Young, Ravi Shankar, Taj Mahal, Moddy Blues, Quicksilver Messenger.. el festival quería ser un nuevo woodstock improvisado pero fue demasiado ambicioso y Lousiana es un páramo salvaje 

Atencion peligro - cocodrilos vietnamitas en la orilla - 

esos hippies construyendo un castillo de arena a lo hawkwind, es mas heavy metal

que cualquier cosa relacionada con el heavy metal que haya pasado posterior a los 90s

post recomendados: Left 4 dead ambient soundtrack, Texas International Motor speedway

Salurocks!!

ambulancia hippie

Thanks all the other  who assisted with a couple of song titles or pushed a button here or there, plus all those spacey YTubers who shared their memories...ouch! Sincere thanks to whomever uploads this for me. Roughly 50 YEARS after the event as I type this. Time for the tapes to hit the DIMEwaves. The only bit that has circulated from these Festival tapes in the digital world as of 2021 AFAIK is the Amboy Dukes, but in lesser quality & mistakenly including the end of the Stoneground set as The Dukes! SET & SETTING ~ Vietnam and the draft loomed over a lot of HeAdS - some online stories about heading to festival from nearby base a week or so before shipping off. Country Joe was singing to his audience. VERY interesting (probable) set opener from Joe, "It's Been A Long, Long Time"(?) - a song he doesn't remember at all or recognize the lyrics for & we don't have him playing anywhere else, but it sure has a familiar sound & is followed by "Entertainment Is My Business" which is the song a couple of us think is the most similar to it. The F*CK Cheer goes down WELL! As for taper efforts, running a tape deck for 3 nights in mosquito-infested heat - or early AM after no sleep... The 1st nite he captured several artists/bands with an OK degree of success, pretty cool as apparently ONLY THE LEFT SIDE of P.A. system was actually functioning for all of Thurs nite! Festival's GRIM SIDE: June in southern Louisiana was, "painfully hot, compounded by tropical humidity, lots of mosquitoes". There were almost no trees/shade on site & an exteme(!) shortage of water, food, toilets & medical facilities. Promoters only began setting up site 3 DAYS beforehand (a joke), in part because it was the THIRD location they tried establish a site, the first 2 shut down at the last moment by authorities. The Galloping Goose Motorcycle Club (aka "gang") was hired for security - but for them it was more a shakedown opportunity, some were armed with "chains, swords&shotguns". After a couple of days of mayhem, they were run off by armed police. As for concertgoers, there were supposedly 3 or more drowning deaths, others were shot(!) or shot at (some while swimming), 100+ busted mostly by undercover cops (some in traffic jams before concert, or when leaving!), many OD's (1-2 died), 1 or more persons permanently "disappeared", 1 was "run over by car while sleeping"&others run over by motorcycles, some were beat up by motorcycle gang members & police, rapes were reported, there were robberies, 1 reported a bottle rocket "blew up in my lean-to (shelter), bringing me out of my LSD-instilled stupor", 1 worker was speared by metal pole when stage collapsed in thunderstorm&2 others badly injured, the locals were paying(!) to come in to watch the nudies...,etc,etc. POSITIVE SIDE _ 60,000 mostly peaceful hippies lived thru & enjoyed their intentional music-based community for many days, and in the hardcore south, at that. While the recordings are sub-par, it was a very interesting collection of bands overall & the music was undoubtably enjoyable. Sounds like it was a staggeringly heavy RIPPIN' Stoneground performance! WAR sounds full-bore. Chuck Berry sounds VERY energetic & into it - not always true with Chuck (tho' I could pass on the "My Ding-A-Ling"). Wish we had a full Black Oak Arkansas set from this era, must be fascinating, I dug this Southern communal hippie band circa '70-71 before "raunch'n'roll" - where the hell are the tapes? Most people left this in a happy, dazed blur - many made friends for life, some met their life partners - after all, it was ALL just a dream some of us had. Enjoyed hearing these tapes again after about 20 years of storage - glad they survived. Kind of fitting for them to appear right after we were finally gifted with the Atlanta