Another year for me and you

Only one day left 'til FREE Stoogemania at Yonge-Dundas, so I couldn't be happier to locate these holy grails in the 8/28/69 ish of the Voice today.

Oh yeah, LED ZEPPELIN just happened to play there a few days earlier, 8/29 and 30. The links have better images of the ads and other artifacts from the shows.

Lots more Pavilion and many other '69 ads to come. Sorry to bisect them like this, but the little Google Archives viewing window doesn't accommodate the full length of these particular ads.

Well it's 1969, OK?

Countdown: Two days 'til free Stoogemania...and just a mere few hours to free X! I'm still knee-deep in the '69 Voice archives, but I wanted to give a little taste of what's to come. Yesterday in the 6/5/69 issue, I came across a personal sort-of holy grail--lineups for the Singer Bowl and N.Y. Pavilion that summer!

Singer Bowl:

7/13/69: Ten Years After, the Jeff Beck Group, Ten Years After, Teegarden and Van Winkle.

8/2/69: Steppenwolf, "Top English Band" (TBA), the Moody Blues, NRBQ.

8/10/69: Israeli Festival

8/16/69: Folk Festival with Tim Hardin, the Incredible String Band, Odetta, Tom Paxton, etc.

8/22/69: Festa Italiana

8/23/69: The Chambers Brothers

8/30/69: "Guitar Virtuoso Show" with Led Zeppelin, "2nd Top Group," Buddy Guy, Larry Coryell.

8/31/69: James Brown.

The Pavilion:

July 11-12, 1969: Grateful Dead, Joe Cocker & the Grease Band, Tribe.

July 18-19, 1969: Chuck Berry, James Cotton Blues Band, Duke Edwards Cycle.

July 25-26, 1969: Three Dog Night, Fleetwood Mac, Sea Train.

August 1-2, 1969: Rhinoceros, the Nice, Spooky Tooth.

August 8-9, 1969: Buddy Miles Express, Pacific Gas & Electric, Santana

August 15-16, 1969: Savoy Brown Blues Band, the Sir Douglas Quintet, Charlie Musselwhite

August 22-23, 1969: Albert King, AUM.

August 29-30, 1969: Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Muddy Waters, Raven.

This isn't complete--some dates are listed as TBA, and I KNOW there was a Stooges/MC5 show stuck in there at some point--so I'll keep my eyes peeled for revised versions of the ad throughout that summer's issues. Still, I was so stoked to find this that I had to make a premature share!

Update-o-rama

Last night's (9/22/2005) archive of WFMU's Aircheck show presented excerpts from the final broadcast (dated 8/28/69) of FMU's original freeform incarnation, featuring DJs Kevin Taylor and Danny Fields. It's a cool listen all around, but it holds particular fascination for me as it includes an announcement for the MC5/Stooges show at the New York State Pavilion. Contrary to the dates listed on an MC5 giglist page, Kevin and a fellow DJ named Bill announce it as happening on September 3, 1969. Here's a partial transcription:


Bill: Well, another thing I think is kinda really relevant right this minute is the fact that next Wednesday night, that's September 3, uh, the Pervilion, Flushing Meadow Park--
Kevin: [Corrects Bill on the proper pronunciation of Pavilion...]
Bill: Flushing Meadow Park, now I said that right, with my "bext accent"...Now this is next Wednesday night, you're gonna have the MC5, the Stooges, and a third group yet to be announced.
Kevin: David Peel and the Lower East Side'll be there too.
Bill: Probably the third group.
Kevin: No, there's a fourth group.
Bill: Oh really?
Kevin: There's one more after that.
Bill: And that's only for what, 3 bucks?
Kevin: 3 bucks for the whole night. Starts about 8 o'clock, 8:30.
Bill: And in case the, uh, the train, you're taking the Willets Avenue, the F or E or whatever it is and you get stuck four stations this side of Flushing Meadow, you'll still hear it, just open the window--
Kevin: Sure will--
Bill: Wow, that's gonna be somethin'.
Kevin: The MC5 come on hard and strong--
Bill: Hard and strong, and they don't stop--
Kevin: Right on...[brief discussion of MC5's sense of tuning and dynamics]...[T]he Pavilion is one of the nicest situations for music on the East Coast, man, it's just very together. It's in the old New York State Pavilion.
Bill: The State Pavilion, yeah, I remember being in there--
Kevin: It's all open, it's like a big carousel, and they have, uh, barbecue pits set up upstairs, food, and they have mango punch there, for those of you who are into mangoes--they're really exciting fruits--
Bill: Can you imagine freaking out on mango punch, man?
Kevin: Aw, it's goooood stuff--
Bill: Wow--
Kevin: And if you stay around long enough, they give it away free, so you don't have to spend any money buying it. After about 2 o'clock when they start emptying things out, then you wanna stick around and you get free mangoes and you get free hot dogs and junk, y'know--
Bill: Great!
Kevin: It's good. Plus Lenny the P works there, so--
Bill: Oh does he?
Kevin: Yeah, Lenny's the doorman.
Bill: I didn't know that.
Kevin: Oh sure, he's been there for half the summer now.
Bill: No kidding.
Kevin: Sure, Lenny's into, uh, working at rock & roll concerts now. He's doing a good job, man, y'know, he's uh, y'know, being as righteous as possible.
Bill: Yeah well, I'll never forget the photo of him in the, uh, priest's hat, he looked so righteous.
Kevin: Like Tim Conway in that photo--y'know, the guy from, um, McHale's Navy. BURP! That's something I've been wantin' to do for a long time, really. I did it one night, one night I had my dinner, I'd just finished my dinner and I had to turn the microphone on, and as a good Irishman always does, I always belch after my meals, and boy I let out one--hoo-wee!
Bill: Well, in many places that kinda shows appreciation for what you eat--it's not like, real bad, necessarily.

They go on to rap about the trials and tribulations that had recently faced the station and the importance of freeform radio--plus they thank their supporters, including staff members at the Fillmore East, Zacherle, and Richard Robinson.

Speaking of whom--yesterday I read a couple of recently eBayed back issues of Rock Scene. In the March '75 issue, Wayne County's advice column includes the following exchange:

Dear Wayne,
I'm a trendy made! [sic.--should be male.] When at Club 82 which lavatory should I use, men's or women's?
Jack Zipp, N.Y., N.Y.

Dear JZ: The 82 has changed a lot since it became the well-known hangout for the in-crowd and superstars. At the beginning, it was perfectly okay for men either dressed as men or women to use the same bathroom. Now all that has changed. The 82 has become famous and has been invaded by a younger, and much straighter crowd. Lots of complaints were made by the girls about the men coming into "their" bathroom. The main reason I used the women's room there was because the men's was so absolutely disgusting. Also, a lot of times, I was in full drag. Now that the 82 is no longer after hours and is trying to be more legitimate, they have stopped men from using the women's bathroom and have stopped drag queens from even coming into the 82. Apparently, the owners of the 82 are obeying the law after a friendly reminder from their local gendarme.

The same issue has a pic of John Phillips and then-wife Genevieve Waite seated beside "an antique organ--one used by Nico when she used to perform at Steve Paul's The Scene." The February '78 issue has a Debbie Harry spread which includes a few photos of the Stillettoes at Club 82 (in one shot the gals are backed by the Dolls). It also has a feature on bands from Toronto's Crash and Burn club--but that's beyond my purview.

Have I stayed too long at the Fair?

Haven't had much time for updates lately--had a lot of stuff to catch up on after my brief visit to NYC last week. For a trip that wasn't meant to be a fun-fest (my main purpose in going was to see my mother's grave/niche), we managed to pack in quite a bit of coolness:

• Hung out with my dear gal-pal Cristina at the Beauty Bar, and only later did I find out there was a Vampyros Lesbos party at Happy Ending that same night (a bar situated in a former Chinatown massage parlor), at which another old friend of mine, Viva Knievel/DJ Chocolatina (I know her as Annie), was go-go dancing.
• Went to the Met Museum for the Chanel (disappointing layout and not enough historical garments for my taste), Diane Arbus (fascinating and easy to describe to Rocky the Blind Lemon Squirrel), and Marquesan tiki exhibits.
• Watched some shows at the TV Museum--a "Fridays" with Sir Douglas Quintet, a doc called "Youth '68" directed by Jim Henson but with nary a Muppet in sight, and Leonard Bernstein's "Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution."
• Saw a fab sign painted high up on the side of the following building: "1650 BROADWAY: THE BEST-KNOWN ADDRESS IN THE ENTERTAINMENT WORLD"--may it never be painted over or otherwise obscured.
• Went record shopping at Rockit Scientist, Kim's, Other Music, Bleecker St. Records and Generation Records--R.I.P. Wowsville (I'll probably devote an entry to that store in the future).
• Tried the Shake Shack at Madison Square Park--decent, but overrated by the burgermeisters at A Hamburger Today and in all the other reviews I'd read...I'll take the super-thick, ultra-succubus concoctions at the NY Milkshake Co. on St. Mark's over the watery ones at the Shack any old day.
• Went for breakfast at the Pop Diner on Queens Blvd. My family frequented the place when it was called the Sage Diner, but it's been completely overhauled as an early-'60s googie fantasy, replete with sputnik lamps, faux Warhol prints, an orange-and-turquoise color scheme reminiscent of Howard Johnson's, and great food--dug it so much I had to go back on another morning. Speaking of HoJo's, its B'way/46th St. location, one of the last vestiges of old Times Square, is making a dodo-like exit sometime this summer.
• Went to the Joey Ramone Birthday Bash at Irving Plaza--highlight of the night was a punky supergroup-type finale, featuring Marky Ramone on drums and a rotating cast of singers...Ronnie Spector (so cool to hear Marky drumming in a non-Ramone manner), Ivan Julian from the Voidoids, Tish & Snooky and another guy from the Sic Fucks, Theo from the Lunachicks, Tommy Ramone singing "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend," Joey's brother Mickey Leigh, and others I'm blanking out on.
• Browsed at the Strand for an hour or so...dig the spacious new art department on the 2nd floor!
• Finally made it out to Magnetic Field, a fab Brooklyn Heights rock & roll cocktail bar owned by fellow Bomp-lister Lee Soundviews (didn't see him there, though), to catch the fantastic Crybabies. While there we were pleased to meet up with our buddy Blair, the most intrepid live music fan in the tri-state area if not the planet, who practically insisted we join him on a trek down to Asbury Park, NJ to catch a late Lyres set at the Asbury Lanes. Not only was it a great opportunity to catch up with Blair, but it was a much-appreciated chance to check out the Lanes, a vintage bowling alley that's been putting on some super-cool rock shows as of late. Blair reports that the block it inhabits, which also houses the Fastlane club and a funky little old movie theater whose name escapes me, might be slated for demolition--take in the rock-n-bowl while you can.
• Didn't make it to Satchmo's house as I'd hoped, but I did get to walk through Flushing Meadows, mega-park of my misspent youth. It's basically the same as I remember it being--a few new additions and subtractions here and there, but no drastic overhauling. Yet there is one feature it doesn't seem to have anymore. When I was very young and my father was teaching me how to ride a bike there, I always noticed a remarkable number of bumps on the asphalt paths. They'd vary in size and shape, and the Parks Dept. maintenance workers would paint big circles and X's on them in yellow or white paint to warn riders away from them. My overactive imagination conjectured that the heat of Hell had caused the warping and buckling (yes, I was a weird kid), but I guess those bumps were symptomatic of the unsteady ground on which the park was built--part swamp, part Fitzgeraldian "Valley of Ashes." Either the Parks Dept. figured out a way to prevent the bumps, or they're more frequently leveled/repaired these days.
  

I wanted to write a full-blown entry on bands that played the WORLD'S FAIR, 'cause I've always fantasized that it must have been a hotbed of mid-'60s rock & roll action--after all, '64/'65 were the prime post-British Invasion years when garage bands sprouted like fungi. Truth be told I haven't had much time to research this topic, and what little time I have had hasn't yielded much info. So far I can confirm the following: New York surf band the Malibooz, who played at the NYS Pavilion and appeared in the first color-TV broadcast from the RCA Pavilion; the Galaxies IV from Trenton, N.J., who played over 80 times at various Pavilions (including their home state's) and were such a hit that Robert Moses set aside one '65 date as "Galaxies IV Day"; Candy Johnson and the Exciters Band, who performed four to eight energetic sets a day during the '65 season at the New Orleans Club; and ska band Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, who played at either the Singer Bowl or the Jamaican Pavilion in 1964 (I've heard that other ska bands also appeared at the Fair that year in an effort to introduce ska to an international audience, but I haven't yet been able to confirm names). Apparently there was a discotheque called the Cafe Au Go Go Upstairs at the Carnival Pavilion during the '65 season. I'll try to unearth other bands/performers at another time.

[UPDATE 7/20/2006: Billy and Miriam of Norton Records recently published an essential interview with Mary Weiss on their site. Turns out there was a Shangri-Las Day at the Fair too!]

Since we're focusing on the area we might as well examine SHEA STADIUM for a bit. (A "Subway Series" was going on there while we were in town.) Despite the legend of "the Beatles at Shea" (August 15, 1965 and August 23, 1966), the stadium hasn't been used as a concert venue all that often, probably due to excessive noise from LaGuardia's flight paths. [Side note: the Beatles took a helicopter to get to the '65 date; it landed at the heliport atop the Fair's four-sided-T-shaped Port Authority Building. The building later became a catering hall called Terrace on the Park; my father worked there as a bartender on weekend shifts for many years.] Here's a short list of those who have given concerts there (God bless the Mets' website):

• Summer Festival for Peace, August 6, 1970, featuring Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.
• Grand Funk Railroad, July 9, 1971. (Some sites say it was June 9. Legend has it this show broke the Beatles' ticket sales record. The Maysles brothers filmed it for a TV special which was never aired.)
• Jethro Tull, with support from Robin Trower and Rory Gallagher, July 23, 1976. (My brother went to this one; I guess he wasn't lying about the "Tull-A-Vision" video screens.)
• The Who's so-called Farewell Tour, with the Clash as openers, October 12 & 13, 1982.
• Simon & Garfunkel, August 6, 1983.
• The Police, August 18, 1983.
• The Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels Tour, October 10, 11, 25, 26, 28, & 29, 1989. (I was at one of these shows, and though I can't recall the date, I do vividly remember being freaked out over how much the tier above me visibly bounced to the rhythm of dancing Stones fans--I was certain it would collapse at any second.)
• Elton John and Eric Clapton, August 21 & 22, 1992.
• Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, October 1, 3 & 4, 2003.

Finally, a word about shows in the post-Fair Flushing Meadows itself. Some time in the summer of '92 a Cure concert at the park was announced. It was never specified exactly where in the park it was to take place, but tickets were sold and the aforemented Cristina and I made plans to go (I was no huge Cure fan, but what the hell, the park was 2 blocks from my house!). Before we could get our tickets, however, the show was cancelled. No sweat--there was no chance it could have ever topped the event I'd witnessed there on June 27, 1987--a free show in honor of Queens Day, featuring the Queens Symphony Orchestra, the Wailers (sans Bob Marley of course), Leslie Gore, Lou Christie, Vernon Reid's Living Colour, and the freakin' RAMONES!!! This was the first time I'd ever seen them live--and call me a naive, starry-eyed teenybopper, but it truly felt as if they were giving it up for their real hometown crowd. Meat Loaf headlined the following day's festivities, and though his career was mired in a mega-limbo equidistant between the two highs of "Bat Out Of Hell" and "Bat Out Of Hell II," I was impressed with his showmanship.

Yesterday...And Today, at the "Tent of Tomorrow"

NEW YORK STATE PAVILION--in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, situated northeast of where the Grand Central Parkway and the L.I.E. intersect. It's a crying shame that one of the few structures deemed fit to remain from the 1964 World's Fair--a Philip Johnson-designed building, no less--has been left to such derelict, decrepit rot. There's pipe-dream talk of using the structure's bones as the basis of an Air & Space Museum. More likely it will meet the same wrecking-ball fate as the old Aquacade/Amphitheater--but I hear a new pool is slated for construction at that site, so who knows? For historical background and pictures of the Pavilion past and present, click here, here, and here.




This page is particularly informative on the brief late '60s/early '70s period when the Pavilion was actually in use, first as a cultural institution, then as a roller rink called "Roller Round." Seems like a few rock shows were held there in '69. Steppenwolf, Spooky Tooth, and Rhinoceros shared abill on August 1-2, 1969. Charles Aybar, who worked at the building during that time and is frequently quoted on the nywf64.com page, believes the Byrds played there, but I found no reference to it on a Byrds info site. Similarly, the Grateful Dead is listed here as having played the Pavilion on July 11 and 12, 1969--but I couldn't find a reference to these shows elsewhere. This and other Led Zeppelin websites list a mystery March, 1970 show, but I'm highly dubious--no exact date is cited, and there'd be no logic to an open-air show in cold March when they were easily headlining the likes of Madison Square Garden by then.

[UPDATE 9/28/2007: An exiled Brooklynite named Lewis recently hipped me to the following: "Yes there was a Led Zeppelin show at the Pavilion. I know because I was there. I think the '70 date is wrong, it was more likely '69 since it was early in their career, the same time period when I saw them play at Central Park. And it could have been March because it was not an open air facility, it was definitely indoors. I almost certainly was stoned but I definitely would have noticed if I was outdoors, as opposed to being indoors." Now, this blows my mind. Were temporary walls erected inside the Pavilion during the concert era? Or was the round snack bar building adjacent to the site--later converted into the Queens Theatre in the Park--used for the rock and roll shows?]

[UPDATE 12/15/2012:  Jeez, so embarrassing. Obviously I dropped the ball here--but when I put this post together seven years ago, I guess there weren't many super-comprehensive Zep sites around.  August 29 and 30, 1969!] 

But I'm quite sure about this one, and boy do I wish I could have been there--David Peel and the Lower East Side, The Stooges (apparently in their NYC debut), and the MC5 on September 3, 1969! Here are some eyewitness accounts from Please Kill Me by McNeil and McCain, p. 63 (New York: Grove Press, 1996):

Steve Harris: Iggy looked at the audience, picked his nose, somebody threw a beer can, Iggy threw it back, sang a couple of lines, somebody threw another bottle, the bottle broke on the stage, and Iggy rolled around on it and cut himself all over the place...Alan Vega: The Stooges launched into one of their songs, and the next thing you knew, Iggy was diving off the stage onto the concrete, and cutting himself up with a broken guitar. It wasn't theatrical, it was theater...but with Iggy, this was not acting. It was the real thing. Iggy's set ended in twenty minutes, and somebody had the f**kin' genius to play Bach's Brandenburg Concerto through the speaker system. The audience was throwing bottles and roses at him. I swear it was beautiful...It changed my life because it made me realize everything I was doing was bullshit...the MC5 were one of my favorite bands, but I couldn't watch them after the Stooges. They knew it, too. They were just boogying their ass off all night trying, but baby, they knew they were outdone by Iggy.

And here's some further reportage from Clinton Heylin's From the Velvets to the Voidoids (New York: Penguin, 1993):

On 29, August 1969 both of Detroit's arch-exponents of garage-rock shared a New York bill, at the State Pavilion in Queens. Though the Stooges would later make some of their most infamous appearances in New York, on this occasion they were watched by just a small enclave of New York rock fans who had come to see what all the fuss was about with these Detroit punks. Iggy's final act before leaving the stage was to pick up two drumsticks and "cut long welts into his chest with the tips of the drumsticks."

I know of no other Pavilion shows, and certainly none as cool as that.



After the roller rink operation was shut down, and the unstable fiberglass roof panels were removed rather than repaired, the building was pretty much left to its own devices. I have fond childhood memories of roller-skating and bike-riding over the New York State map on the Pavilion's then still-smooth terrazzo floor (now hopelessly cracked and weed-strewn), and my older brother used to regale me with tales of climbing the towers and making mischief on the observation deck. One of my high school friends had a brother in a band that briefly had a major label contract; I'm "senior momenting" on the band's name, but I distinctly recall that their CD longbox featured pictures of them inside the Pavilion. The site's photogenic potential was also realized in The Wiz, Men in Black, and the video for They Might Be Giants' "Don't Let's Start." But the ravages of time, weathering, vandalism, and neglect have taken their ostensibly irreparable toll on the "Tent of Tomorrow." The Pavilion has been fenced off from public access for many years, and only the most intrepid or morbidly curious of urban explorers dare go beyond the gates. Few ruins have ever looked so anachronously futuristic.





[UPDATE 5/14/2010: I went to see Iron Man 2 last night, and much to my surprise a CGI restoration, or should I say re-imagining, of the fairgrounds plays a major part in the film!!! The Unisphere and particularly the Pavilion are prominently featured, as is a scale model for the so-called "1974 Stark Expo," which was basically a replica of a '64 World's Fair scale model as far as I could tell. See the Bowery Boys and the NY Daily News for more details. And here's a report about current efforts to restore the Pavilion.]


[UPDATE 6/17/2010: Here's an ad for the 1969 season from the 6/5/69 issue of the Village Voice. It's a tad incomplete, so I'll keep looking for revised versions of the ad in the archives.]

[UPDATE 6/25/2010: Here are more 1969 Pavilion ads.]

[UPDATE 11/15/2010:  I recently finished Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), and among its many delights is a 1969 piece about the Pavilion entitled "Summer of Love in Queens."  It's a review of a Joe Cocker/Grateful Dead show held there, and includes this description of  the milieu:

At the Pavilion, it soon became evident that the rest of the crowd shared our expansive mood.  They kept coming in, thousands of happy kids--almost five thousand by the end of the evening.  The Pavilion was large enough to accommodate everyone without strain.  The ground level served as a huge round dance floor; on the balcony there were tables and chairs, the food concession (the main culinary attraction was tacos, a beautiful idea, though the reality was mediocre), and a nice view of the park.  The atmosphere was totally relaxed.  As in the San Francisco ballrooms, people were free to dance, crowd in front of the stage, sit in a corner, wander around, eat, or do whatever impulse dictated.  There were no intrusive guards or cops.]

[UPDATE 3/15/69 issue:  Revised and improved post on 1969 Pavilion ads here.]

Flushing the Bowl

My husband and I usually stay at a certain Manhattan hotel when visiting NYC, but it's all booked up this week, so we have a reservation at a new Ramada in Corona, my real hometown--overlooking scenic Grand Central Parkway and Shea Stadium. I've got to spend lots of time with what's left of my family (my mother passed away recently), so it's more convenient for my pops anyway. The hotel's proximity to Flushing Meadows Park (more pics/info here, here and here) is prompting me to ponder past rock and roll action in the area. I'll start with a long-lost hotbed of hippiedom:




(Via The Bowery Boys.)
SINGER BOWL--At the northern edge of Flushing Meadows, near the Shea Stadium/Willets Point stop on the 7 train. The Singer Bowl was an open-air stadium built for the '64 World's Fair and apparently sponsored by the Singer sewing machine company. Seems it was used primarily for sporting events until the late '60s, when it became a major venue for big summer rock shows. Some notables who played there:



The Doors, with the Who and the Kangaroo as openers, performed on August 2, 1968--an event which caused a riot, though of course volatility was not uncommon at Doors gigs (or Who shows for that matter!). There's a ticket stub for sale here, and the Doors' setlist for the night can be read here.

[UPDATE 5/14/2010: Quite a bit of footage from the Doors show wound up in When You're Strange, as shown on PBS the other night. Not so much of the band performing, but you do get to see Morrison mingling with some people in the crowd before the show (including a guy selling Who programs), and of him backstage comforting a girl who got hit with a chair during the melee. I tried to see if there was more on youtube, but no dice...however, I did find audio of "Light My Fire," and of the Who's whole set.]

Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company and the Jimi Hendrix Experience were the big draws on August 23, 1968. This show is often called the New York Rock Festival, but I've seen the Doors/Who show referred to as such also--perhaps this was an overall title for concerts at the Singer that summer. I'm not absolutely sure who else was on the bill, but it may have included the Soft Machine and the Chambers Brothers, if this guy's memories are correct. Audio and video of Hendrix's set has been well-circulated among Jimi-philes.

[Oddly, this August 23 date conflicts with a reference I found for a bill featuring Country Joe and the Fish, the Byrds, and the 1910 Fruitgum Company.]

[UPDATE 5/25/2012: I just found some vintage reviews and photos for this show at a French Hendrix fan forum.  And a lady who attended the show recently posted a couple of Janis snapshots at the "You Know Your [sic.] From Flushing" FB group.]

Two of the NYC-area's finest, The (Young) Rascals and the Vagrants, shared a bill there on August 30, 1968--here's a ticket stub.

The Singer Bowl Music Festival happened on July 13, 1969, and appears to have been the heaviest show in the stadium's history. I haven't seen a copy of the full bill, but based on various websites I've perused, it included the Edwin Hawkins Singers, Raven, Jethro Tull, Ten Years After, Vanilla Fudge, the Jeff Beck Group, and Led Zeppelin--plus a jam session (no late-'60s fest was complete without one) comprising various members of those last three bands.

Later that summer, Poco, the Chambers Brothers and Albert King shared a bill on August 23. On August 29-30, Zeppelin played the Bowl again, with support from Buddy Guy and Foreplay, which featured Larry Coryell, Cream's Jack Bruce, and Mitch Mitchell from the Hendrix Experience. The Jimmy Castor Bunch played the Bowl in the early '70s, but I can't confirm the date.

On July 4, 1973, the Bowl was rededicated as the Louis Armstrong Stadium, a fitting tribute to Corona's most famous longtime resident. A concert in honor of what would have been Satchmo's 73rd birthday was held there that summer (presumably on August 4, though I haven't confirmed the date), featuring Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Eubie Blake, Gene Krupa and other jazzbos. But the stadium's days as a music venue were numbered. In 1978, Armstrong Stadium was adapted for use as a tennis facility called the USTA National Tennis Center, and it became the new home of the U.S. Open (formerly held at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills--a place with its own musical legacy, to be discussed in a future entry). Armstrong Stadium still stands today, albeit in a much-renovated form; it serves as a supplemental facility to the larger Arthur Ashe Stadium, which was built beside it in 1997. Thousands still flock to the area every summer--but instead of rock and roll, they're more likely to hear grunting tennis players, balls whacked against racquets, and the otherworldy hum of the Fuji blimp circling overhead.

I'll cover more of Flushing Meadows' musical happenings next time.

[UPDATE 5/23/2010: Why I failed to learn about or mention the important role that Gary Kurfirst played in all of this until just now is a mystery for the ages.]


[UPDATE 6/17/2020: Here's an ad for the 1969 season from the 6/5/69 issue of the Village Voice. It's incomplete, so I'll keep looking for revised versions of the ad in the archives.]

[UPDATE 3/15/2012:  Revised and updated post on Singer Bowl and NY Pavilion ads here.]