There's another rock festival anniversary remembrance coming up, July 19. It might be only 45 years, you probably never heard of it, but the attendance was up there with the most notable ones of that era, and was probably more unhinged and a greater fustercluck than what you might have heard about Woodstock or the Isle Of Wight. And I was there. Let me explain...
The Ozark Music Festival, July 19-21, 1974. It took place in a small, sleepy, mid-Missouri town called Sedalia, home of the Missouri State Fairgrounds (where the festival was staged). Sedalia isn't technically in the Ozarks, just a bit north of there, about 1.5 hours east of my hometown of Kansas City, MO, and a third of the way to St. Louis. But "Ozark" was the advertising hook, and with southern/country rock being all the rage then, it seemed to fit. Plus you had the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, from Springfield(to the southwest)emerging onto the national music scene. People flocked to this event from all over the country. Now, I won't get into all the minutiae of what happened, these two articles will explain it better than I could(please read thoroughly)...
ozarkmusicfestival - rodsievers
Ozark Music Festival - Wikipedia
Yeah, Mayberry got sold a bill of goods, and never knew what hit 'em. Invasion of the vandal hoards. Probably a contributing factor was that the festival organization, through Wells Fargo, hired ne'er-do-wells like me to work security. I was fresh out of high school, saw a small ad in the Kansas City Star, and since I had already heard of the upcoming event, it was a win-win. More on that later.
Now, you may wonder, why is it a footnote at best? Well, it happened as the 'counter-culture' was in decline, 'peace and love' was just degenerating into pure hedonism, Vietnam was winding down, and Tricky Dick was on the ropes at that point. These kinds of events were no longer news, and, after all, it took place in the midwest...who cares? Seriously, I always considered Kansas City to be three years behind the times, maybe now with the internet it's three months, but still reactionary. As for me, yeah, I liked most of the music out of Woodstock, saw the film, got the album, bought the trading cards and all that, but it wasn't really my party, just too young. But this, this was my chance to catch up. Thing is, when punk/new wave occurred a few years later, I threw myself whole-heartedly into that, that was my time. Anyway, to keep Missouri State Troopers off the fairgrounds, a deal was struck that W/F was going to handle security. I can only imagine the arrests and riots that might have occurred otherwise. So, in turn, they hired jokers like me, no experience, sorta like letting the fox guard the chicken coop. We were to assemble at Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Cheifs(and, ironically, the site of a reunited CSNY concert that night), and got on busses to be transported to Sedalia. Things started falling apart right off the bat. A half-hour out of town, we convinced/bribed the bus driver to stop at a liquor store. Let the party begin! Plenty of herbals, of course. The problem was that he refused to stop a while later for the inevitable, so, anyone in discomfort(and this bus, in particular, was all-male)just pushed down the windows, and whizzed out on to the highway, in transit. When we got to the fairgrounds, we were issued a "OMF Security" T-shirt, a wristband, and were shown the bunk house facility where we were slated to sleep. Your T-shirt was your ticket back on to the bus when it was all over, plus your credential to log your time there for payroll. There were other crews coming in, with females as well, and we assembled at one of the big mansion type structures(one was used as a medical facility)for 'orientation'. That was a brief explanation of 'duties', maps were handed out, and then we were organized into small groups with a leader, and issued a grocery cart. Wait, what? Why, to wheel the OD's and freakouts(and injured)back to the medical building.
So, we set out on patrol for a few hours, and scooped up this one weeping, gibberish spouting preppy looking guy, who, after we looked at his wallet(and nothing was taken, we had scruples), got his name(he was from the upscale Kansas-side KC suburb of Mission Hills)and wheeled him back to the bummer house. I sat with him for a while, trying to comfort him(I had a wee bit of experience in such things), and this girl, with the proper T-shirt, sided up to us and started helping me help him to cool out. Cindy, from Chicago, yeah; the thing is, she was not someone who was hired. I have no idea how she procured the T-shirt, all I can say is that we spent some, um, quality time together in the next couple of days. Midnight co-ed showers in the bunkhouse, get togethers in some conversion van where an 8-track of "Band On The Run" ran continuously through the night because the couple whose van it was had passed out, so on, so forth. That guitar riff from "Let Me Roll It" is still stuck in my head.
So, rock'n'roll debauchery, loved every minute of it. The stage was at the end of a huge race track, you had to travel through tunnels to get to the inside of the loop to get to where the crown was. That was the location of the 'drug stores'. It was July in the midwest, so, naked girls everywhere, but no assault incidences like at the Woodstock reunions of the 90's. At night, during Lynyrd Skynyrd's set, I was on this detail where I had to run ahead of a golf cart, driven by this groupie-type chick I sort of knew from Cowtown Ballroom(KC's Johnny-come-lately Fillmore style venue); even though we had a roped off corridor, I still had to get people out of the way as we dragged casualties out of the crowd. There was this one guy, obviously gakked on some sort of heavy stuff, chopping unsucessfully at the line with a hunting knife. Lovely. I was on this other detail at a side entrance, where people were supposed to come in with their already purchased tickets, we'd take the stub, and issue wristbands. After a while, stragglers would come up wanting to buy tickets(which we didn't have), and a collective light bulb went on in our group: we started to sell them the stubs we had already collected, and continue to give out the wristbands(which we had plenty of). Pure anarchy. Took away $120 from that deal, a nice chunk of change for those days.
So, yeah, absolute mania for the weekend, came out of it unscathed, got my ride back home. Even actually got payed by Wells-Fargo. Saw some great performances(especially the then-unknown Aerosmith). It was Joe Walsh's summer, when he played "Rocky Mountain Way", he changed the lyrics to 'bases are loaded, and Nixon's at bat, time to change the batter', and the crowd went wild. So you can keep your Coachellas. Cindy from Chicago? Who knows...
The Ozark Music Festival, July 19-21, 1974. It took place in a small, sleepy, mid-Missouri town called Sedalia, home of the Missouri State Fairgrounds (where the festival was staged). Sedalia isn't technically in the Ozarks, just a bit north of there, about 1.5 hours east of my hometown of Kansas City, MO, and a third of the way to St. Louis. But "Ozark" was the advertising hook, and with southern/country rock being all the rage then, it seemed to fit. Plus you had the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, from Springfield(to the southwest)emerging onto the national music scene. People flocked to this event from all over the country. Now, I won't get into all the minutiae of what happened, these two articles will explain it better than I could(please read thoroughly)...
ozarkmusicfestival - rodsievers
Ozark Music Festival - Wikipedia
Yeah, Mayberry got sold a bill of goods, and never knew what hit 'em. Invasion of the vandal hoards. Probably a contributing factor was that the festival organization, through Wells Fargo, hired ne'er-do-wells like me to work security. I was fresh out of high school, saw a small ad in the Kansas City Star, and since I had already heard of the upcoming event, it was a win-win. More on that later.
Now, you may wonder, why is it a footnote at best? Well, it happened as the 'counter-culture' was in decline, 'peace and love' was just degenerating into pure hedonism, Vietnam was winding down, and Tricky Dick was on the ropes at that point. These kinds of events were no longer news, and, after all, it took place in the midwest...who cares? Seriously, I always considered Kansas City to be three years behind the times, maybe now with the internet it's three months, but still reactionary. As for me, yeah, I liked most of the music out of Woodstock, saw the film, got the album, bought the trading cards and all that, but it wasn't really my party, just too young. But this, this was my chance to catch up. Thing is, when punk/new wave occurred a few years later, I threw myself whole-heartedly into that, that was my time. Anyway, to keep Missouri State Troopers off the fairgrounds, a deal was struck that W/F was going to handle security. I can only imagine the arrests and riots that might have occurred otherwise. So, in turn, they hired jokers like me, no experience, sorta like letting the fox guard the chicken coop. We were to assemble at Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Cheifs(and, ironically, the site of a reunited CSNY concert that night), and got on busses to be transported to Sedalia. Things started falling apart right off the bat. A half-hour out of town, we convinced/bribed the bus driver to stop at a liquor store. Let the party begin! Plenty of herbals, of course. The problem was that he refused to stop a while later for the inevitable, so, anyone in discomfort(and this bus, in particular, was all-male)just pushed down the windows, and whizzed out on to the highway, in transit. When we got to the fairgrounds, we were issued a "OMF Security" T-shirt, a wristband, and were shown the bunk house facility where we were slated to sleep. Your T-shirt was your ticket back on to the bus when it was all over, plus your credential to log your time there for payroll. There were other crews coming in, with females as well, and we assembled at one of the big mansion type structures(one was used as a medical facility)for 'orientation'. That was a brief explanation of 'duties', maps were handed out, and then we were organized into small groups with a leader, and issued a grocery cart. Wait, what? Why, to wheel the OD's and freakouts(and injured)back to the medical building.
So, we set out on patrol for a few hours, and scooped up this one weeping, gibberish spouting preppy looking guy, who, after we looked at his wallet(and nothing was taken, we had scruples), got his name(he was from the upscale Kansas-side KC suburb of Mission Hills)and wheeled him back to the bummer house. I sat with him for a while, trying to comfort him(I had a wee bit of experience in such things), and this girl, with the proper T-shirt, sided up to us and started helping me help him to cool out. Cindy, from Chicago, yeah; the thing is, she was not someone who was hired. I have no idea how she procured the T-shirt, all I can say is that we spent some, um, quality time together in the next couple of days. Midnight co-ed showers in the bunkhouse, get togethers in some conversion van where an 8-track of "Band On The Run" ran continuously through the night because the couple whose van it was had passed out, so on, so forth. That guitar riff from "Let Me Roll It" is still stuck in my head.
So, rock'n'roll debauchery, loved every minute of it. The stage was at the end of a huge race track, you had to travel through tunnels to get to the inside of the loop to get to where the crown was. That was the location of the 'drug stores'. It was July in the midwest, so, naked girls everywhere, but no assault incidences like at the Woodstock reunions of the 90's. At night, during Lynyrd Skynyrd's set, I was on this detail where I had to run ahead of a golf cart, driven by this groupie-type chick I sort of knew from Cowtown Ballroom(KC's Johnny-come-lately Fillmore style venue); even though we had a roped off corridor, I still had to get people out of the way as we dragged casualties out of the crowd. There was this one guy, obviously gakked on some sort of heavy stuff, chopping unsucessfully at the line with a hunting knife. Lovely. I was on this other detail at a side entrance, where people were supposed to come in with their already purchased tickets, we'd take the stub, and issue wristbands. After a while, stragglers would come up wanting to buy tickets(which we didn't have), and a collective light bulb went on in our group: we started to sell them the stubs we had already collected, and continue to give out the wristbands(which we had plenty of). Pure anarchy. Took away $120 from that deal, a nice chunk of change for those days.
So, yeah, absolute mania for the weekend, came out of it unscathed, got my ride back home. Even actually got payed by Wells-Fargo. Saw some great performances(especially the then-unknown Aerosmith). It was Joe Walsh's summer, when he played "Rocky Mountain Way", he changed the lyrics to 'bases are loaded, and Nixon's at bat, time to change the batter', and the crowd went wild. So you can keep your Coachellas. Cindy from Chicago? Who knows...
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