re: That time hippies came to Pointe Coupee Parish - 1971 Festival of Life

How old are you?

Drugs, alcohol, music and all the naive girls a guy could handle.

quote:

---

how many SJW's could we get to swim in the Mississippi River if a similar concert was held today?

---

They’d be too busy screaming at the sky that it was being held at an old plantation.

I’d like to say that I am joking......

That Grateful Dead show is available online and has some epic moments.

LINK

Pretty decent documentary on it.

Damn, sounds legit

quote:

---

Next you had to scrounge enough food for the day, since anything you had brought had probably been stolen

---

I highly doubt any of them were hungry.

quote:

---

I think they were trying to make this another Woodstock. The drugs showed up, but the bands didn’t.

---

This is what it was to be, but didn't happen. Yep, made one day of that hell.

I believe the Subdudes have a song about it, "Papa Dukie and the mudpeople"

LINK

Celebration of Life was pretty crazy. People showed up from all over the world in hopes of another Woodstock. Three of us drove over from Lake Charles, but we saw very few people from Louisiana. Hell, I saw more people from Japan than I saw from Louisiana.

The site was supposedly surrounded by a canal and the Atchafalaya, so they advertised it as being on an island. People that drove or hitch hiked from god knows where would show up too broke to buy their way in, so they would swim the Atchafalaya at night to get into the site. We heard rumors that several drowned, but can't substantiate. The canal would have been a lot easier to cross, but they thought the river went all the way around I guess.

The actual rock festival started days late due to local politicians trying to block the event through the courts. But that didn't stop the partying from happening. Days before the actual start of the festival, cars and tents lined the roads around the venue. And like someone said, you could buy any drug you wanted, by the hit or by the joint, from vendors that walked the roads shouting out what they had to sell. One night I personally saw a Trooper from the NOLA area take a hit off a joint he was offered. That doesn't sound like a big deal now, but at that time most of Louisiana was clueless.

Besides bands,they had some other "acts" that filled the dead time between bands. So few of the bands showed up, they had to stretch things out you might say. So one night they actually set up a tight wire act on stage. The wire was probably 20 feet high and about 30 ft long as I remember. The act was really good, but unfortunately there was "electric wine" (wine laced with acid) being passed around in the first couple of rows. They also had access to some bottle rockets that they started shooting at the guy when he got out in the middle of the wire. The only thing redder than the rockets red glare was that dudes face as he was trying to get back to the platform.

My best memory happened later that night. I'm thinking it was like three in the morning. The crowd was half asleep or passed out. That's when Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes took the stage and got the party going big time. He wasn't well known in my part of the country yet, and that made it even better.

Anyway, sorry for the long post. Just an old man reliving his youth....what I can remember of it.