Summer Jam at Watkins Glen

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The Summer Jam at Watkins Glen was a July 1973

Many historians claimed that the Watkins Glen event was the largest gathering of people in the history of the United States. In essence, that meant that on July 28, one out of every 350 people living in America at the time was listening to the sounds of rock at the New York state racetrack. Considering that most of those who attended the event hailed from the

Northeast, and that the average age of those present was approximately seventeen to twenty-four, close to one out of every three young people from Boston to New York was at the festival.^[5]

Summer Jam was the last concert event to be held at Watkins Glen International until 2011, when the rock band Phish organized and performed at a three-day festival, called Super Ball IX, at the complex.^[6]

Production

Bill Graham's FM Productions provided lights, staging and a 50,000-watt sound system.^[7] The sound system introduced a new concept: digital delay lines to compensate for the speed of sound in air, allowing speaker towers to be placed at intervals from the stage, allowing distant audience members to hear clearly. New Jersey electronics company Eventide brought three digital delay units each capable of 200 milliseconds of delay. Four speaker towers were placed 200 feet (60 m) from the stage, their signal delayed 175 ms to compensate for the speed of sound between the main stage speakers and the delay towers. Six more speaker towers were placed 400 feet from the stage, requiring 350 ms of delay, and a further six towers were placed 600 feet away from the stage, fed with 525 ms of delay, the audio signal coming through all three modules. The most distant audience areas were unable to see the stage because of terrain, but they could hear the concert. Each Eventide DDL 1745 module contained many 1000-bit shift register integrated chips, and cost the same as a new car.^[8] The concept meant that the people in the front were not blasted with too much sound in an attempt to reach the back, and the people in the back enjoyed high fidelity sound. The system worked very well.^[7]

This concert was attended by 600,000 people - twice the number that went to the

The Band followed the Dead with one two-hour set. However, their set was cut in half by a drenching thunderstorm; in a scene again reminiscent of Woodstock, people were covered with mud. During the storm, keyboardist Garth Hudson performed his signature organ improvisation "The Genetic Method"; when the rain finally let up, the full Band joined Hudson on stage, and segued into their signature song "Chest Fever".

Finally, the Allman Brothers Band performed for three hours. Their performance included songs from their soon-to-be-released album Brothers and Sisters, along with their standards "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed", "Statesboro Blues", "Les Brers in A Minor" and "Whipping Post".

Following the Allmans' second set, there was an hour encore jam featuring musicians from all three bands. The jam featured spirited renditions of "Not Fade Away", "Mountain Jam", and "Johnny B. Goode".

Discography

• The Allman Brothers Band — Wipe the Windows, Check the Oil, Dollar Gas (Capricorn Records, 1976). "Come And Go Blues" was recorded on July 28.
• The Band —
  Woodstock Festival in 1969.^[12]
• Grateful Dead — So Many Roads (1965–1995) (Arista Records, 1999). This 5-disc box set includes an 18-minute jam performed as part of the Dead's sound check the day before the concert.