Texas had its very own version of “Woodstock” in 1969. It happened in Lewisville, Texas just two weeks after Woodstock. The Texas International Pop Festival was held forty years ago this weekend, and I have to admit to y’all: I lived at the time just a skip down the road in Grapevine, but I don’t remember this festival at all.
I’m sure some of the people who were at the festival don’t remember it at all, either (ba dump bump).
Y’all have heard the saying, “If you remember the sixties you weren’t really ‘there.’” I was “there,” but at fifteen years old I was a little too young and sheltered to be “there.”
Do you get my drift?
I was plumb floored to pick up the Denton newspaper today and read an article by Donna Fielder describing the event. It sounded like quite a party! At Woodstock, the crowd was “half a million strong,” but it had petered out by the time it got to Lake Lewisville. Somehow the lines “by the time we got to Lewisville we were almost a quarter million strong” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it? I guess that’s why the only song to come out of that festival was titled “Lewd and Loose in Lewsville.” You’ve never heard of that either, have you?
Still, 120,000 hippies descending on a small conservative town (population 8,000 at the time) should have been momentous enough to impress itself on my memory. From another article I read this morning, I see there was a lot of music, flower children, free love, and drugs. There were also nekkid people skinny dipping in the lake with no clothes on! I don’t know how I missed it!
Daddy must have hidden the newspapers from me. He didn’t care for hippies.
So you are probably thinking that if it was in Texas it wasn’t much of a festival. You would be wrong, I think. The musical lineup included: Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Santana, Sly and The Family Stone, B.B. King, Chicago Transit Authority, Canned Heat, Sam and Dave, Grand Funk Railroad, and Tony Joe White.
Dang! How come I always miss the good stuff? I think I’ll go get my old records from the 1960s and play them in honor of the festival I missed. I’ll get a strobe light flashing on a tattered psychedelic poster, wear a tie-dyed muumuu, and get high on Diet Coke and dark chocolate while I listen. That’s what I’ll do! Let’s see …. I’ve got a Bobby Goldsboro record, and Sonny and Cher … here’s Andy Williams ….
I wasn’t much more fun in 1969.
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It could have been worse. I was a young suburban mother with two children and a stopping place on the hippie underground railroad on the way to the summer of love in San Francisco. There is nothing quite like working full time, changing diapers, and staying completely sober while your brother in law welcomes the macrobiotic, tie dye, pot smoking crew of the land … smack dab in the middle of it and able to remember it all.
Jamie´s last blog ..September Song
I’m so sorry. Bwahaha. I knew this one would be right up your alley. You would have been out there skinny dipping, baby or no!
I dunno, Shelly. This sounds plenty good to me. I mean, general wisdom is that if you can’t remember it, it was very very good, indeed.
(yeah, okay, I’m stretching here, but it’s fun!)
Susan Helene Gottfried´s last blog ..Susan’s Promo Tales: What’s on the Menu?
Unfortunately, Susan, I “can’t remember it” for the wrong reasons! Or were they the right reasons? I dunno….myself.