Miami Pop Festival (December 1968)
| Miami Pop Festival | |
|---|---|
 Poster/ad for Miami Pop Festival with scheduled performers | |
| Genre | Pop music, rock music |
| Dates | December 28–30, 1968 |
| Location(s) | Gulfstream Park in Hallandale, Florida |
| Years active | 1968 |
| Founded by | Tom Rounds, Mel Lawrence and others |
| Attendance | 100,000 |
The Miami Pop Festival was a rock festival that took place from December 28-30, 1968, at Gulfstream Park, a horse racing track in Hallandale, Florida, just north of Miami. It is sometimes confused with a separate event that took place seven months earlier, at the same venue, though the two events were unrelated. The earlier event was officially publicized on promotional materials and in radio ads as the "1968 Pop and Underground Festival," and "The 1968 Pop Festival," but later came to be referred to colloquially as the "Miami" Pop Festival, a practice which has led to confusion between the two events.
History
The Miami Pop Festival was the first major rock festival on America's east coast.[1][2] It was produced by a team led by Tom Rounds and Mel Lawrence, who had previously produced the seminal KFRC Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California. The crowd size for the three days was estimated to be around 100,000.[3]
Performers covered a wide range of music genres,[4] and included:
- The Amboy Dukes
- Chuck Berry
- Blues Image
- The Box Tops
- Paul Butterfield Blues Band
- Canned Heat
- Wayne Cochran
- Cosmic Drum (aka Train of Thought)
- James Cotton Blues Band
- Country Joe and the Fish
- José Feliciano
- Fish Ray
- Flatt and Scruggs
- Fleetwood Mac
- Marvin Gaye
- The Grass Roots
- Grateful Dead
- Richie Havens
- Ian & Sylvia
- Iron Butterfly
- Junior Junkanoos
- Jr. Walker & The Allstars
- The Charles Lloyd Quartet
- Hugh Masekela
- Joni Mitchell
- Pacific Gas & Electric
- Procol Harum
- Terry Reid
- Buffy Sainte-Marie
- Steppenwolf
- The Sweet Inspirations
- Sweetwater
- Joe Tex
- Three Dog Night
- The Turtles
Many of these musicians were cast as superheroes in a commemorative
This festival was unique in that it was the first rock festival to have two entirely separate 'main' stages several hundred yards apart (the Flower Stage and the Flying Stage), both operating simultaneously and offering performers of equal calibre.[4][6][7]
See also
- List of historic rock festivals
References
- ^ Santelli, Robert. Aquarius Rising - The Rock Festival Years. 1980. Dell Publishing Co., Inc. Pg. 77.
- ^ Sander, Ellen (January 12, 1969). "The Miami Festival: An Inspired Bag of Pop". The New York Times.
- ^ Santelli. Pp. 77, 265.
- ^ a b c Sander.
- ^ "Miami's 350G Gate Tops Year of Pop Fests; Two-Ring Rock at Racetrack". Variety. January 1, 1969.
- ^ Santelli. Pp. 78-79.
- ^ Kubernik, Harvey and Kubernik, Kenneth. A Perfect Haze: The Illustrated History of the Monterey International Pop Festival. 2011. Santa Monica Press LLC. Pg. 57.