For a town inhabited by just 2,000 people and covering just 4 square miles, Watkins Glen, NY is a pretty famous place.
Winos (and their hygienically advanced brethren, wine connoisseurs) know the wineries that surround the Glen produce some of the best wine to ever say ‘hello’ to a cork. Fans of fast cars and loud noises know that the Watkins Glen International Raceway was where Mario Andretti became the first American to win the U.S. Grand Prix in 1977.
And rock and roll fans know that the biggest rock and roll concert in history — Summer Jam At Watkins Glen — started 35 years ago today at the very same spot.
I grew up just 15 miles south of the Glen, in the big city of Elmira, so even though I was just 10 years old at the time, I remember Summer Jam vividly.
I remember clearly the photos of the concert splashed across the front page of the Elmira Star-Gazette, the local newspaper where my father worked*.
I remember the thousands of cars parked along route 17, the “flower children” hitching up route 14, the micro-buses full of people, like hippie clown cars at a circus, the young cats in bell-bottoms flashing peace signs at us at the local convenience store.
The older sister of my best friend worked at the screen printing shop that made the concert posters and t-shirts. I don’t need to Google the concert to remember it was the Band, the Dead and the Allman Brothers who were playing. I remember her wearing that shirt for years afterward.
Musically, the Dead and such could’ve been Eastern European death metal for all I knew; I was into Top 40 and that’s about as far as I went. But, culturally, I remember a being fascinated by the whole scene. Though they didn’t go to the concert, my sister and brother were 19 and 22 at the time; I’d seen a lot of hippies pass through my life already.
To see 600,000 of them all in a row, though, now that was something.
Grateful Dead - Watkins Glen Soundcheck
Photo Source: Grant Gouldon’s Flickr page
*I don’t see anything today on the home page of what Dad used to call “the Starry Eyed Gazootsky,” but there is an important report on the annual pirogi festival at St. Nick’s Church. Joe Stanky And The Cadets were the headliners!.
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