Tag: Texas International Pop Festival

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No Rain…No Rain…


Read this morning that Woodstock will be back for another encore. It’s been fifty-six years since half a million young people sat in a pasture, listening to rock music, believing they had changed the world. It was revisited in the 90s and was a miserable mess, even without the rain and mud. Some things should be remembered for what they were and leave it at that. But possibly, this 56-year reboot could be a winner.

Imagine if some of the original musicians returned, and they might if asked. It would be worth the ticket cost to see Stills, Nash, and Young wheeze through a set. They could set a full size cardboard figure of Crosby next to them, since he has gone to Nirvana. Melanie could ride her little scooter onstage and croak through a few tunes. Country Joe and the Fish could do the Vietnam song again, and Joni Mitchell might even make the gig this time. John Fogarty will be born on the bayou again. Of course, Hendrix, Janice Joplin, and the mighty Joe Cocker have checked out, so Santana must fill that void. John Sebastian and Arlo Guthrie could do their hippie single-guitar thing and say “wow” a few hundred times. Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm could run the concessions.

I’m sure the rest of the lineup will consist of current stars. Rappers, dancers, acrobats, and singers fly through the air or take the stage via a zip line suspended from a cell phone tower a mile away. It’s not about talent these days. It’s all, “look at me” and auto-tune. Katy Perry can fly in on a Game of Thrones dragon while lip-singing any of her forgettable songs. Courtney Hadwin, the fiery young reincarnation of Janice Joplin, will probably steal the show. Greta Van Fleet will wow the crowd with their spot-on imitation of Zeppelin. Wonder how that will turn out since Robert Plant will be performing?

I attended the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival and saw most of the acts at Woodstock a few weeks later, so I can say, “been there and seen it all.” It will be fitting for the old-timers to show the young fans how it used to be. ” No rain-No rain.”


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Dispatches From The Cactus Patch March 14th 2024. Remembering The 1960s


A shot of the crowd at Texas International Pop Festival, August 1969. The promoter, Angus Wynn, thought it would be a great idea to have a Yogi or a Swami to lead the crowd of zonked-out teenagers in an hour of Transcendental Meditation since it was the most recent in-crowd thing to do thanks to the Beatles and the Beach Boys who hung out in India with the famous Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Jr. He got a discount on a guy out of Deli, India, who was working in a sub sandwich shop in Brisbane, Australia, but was once a revered holy man in his home country. After a crazy hot night of music that lasted until after midnight, the Maharishi O Mah-ha-Ah-ha took the stage with a sitar player and three nude women beating on tablas and tambourines, all sitting crossed-legged on a rented Persian rug from AAA Furniture Rentals. The crowd, still suffering from the after-effects of too much pot and the brown acid that Wavey Gravy warned them about, eventually got into the groove. After an hour of chanting mantras, swooning and swaying, and all that middle eastern crap, the Maharishi passed hand-woven Indian baskets through the crowd asking for donations. What the good Ah-ha didn’t realize was that even though the young folks were long-haired, dope-smoking teens, they were Texans, and most of them owned shotguns and rifles and drove pickup trucks. Tithing was meant for Sunday church only, not some dude in a robe with a red dot on his forehead. The poor Maharishi was last seen tied to the front fender of a GMC pickup loaded with long-haired hippy Texans shooting their shotguns into the air while speeding down I-35. Best not to “Mess With Texas,” which is where that famous saying was born.

My late cousin, Velveteen, and her late husband, Zig Zag, came up with this idea for a hippy-only tea bag while living in a commune in the mountains of New Mexico. Since they enjoyed sitting around all day doing nothing, they figured why not let the rest of the regular folks enjoy their lifestyle, too. The tea, with its mystery ingredients, was a hot seller for a while until Lipton caught wind of it and sued them into the next galaxy.

My late cousin, Alice, was the only waitress at Woodstock in 1969. She and Wavey Gravy came up with the idea to serve all the attendees breakfast in bed, but she was the only member of the Hog Farm lucid enough to work. When asked how the gig went, she said, ” I didn’t make a cent in tips, damn Hippies don’t have no money anyway.” She met Arlo Guthrie backstage and married him the next day during a Joe Cocker set. They later opened a famous restaurant in upstate New York, where you could get anything you wanted at Alice’s restaurant.

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Erratic, But Informative Ramblings From The Cactus Patch 7/28/23


Pictured above is my first realistic gun, The Fanner 50. It had authentic steel bullets that took green stickum caps, the cylinder turned as you fired it, and cap smoke belched from the realistic barrel. All my buddies in the neighborhood had them, and we thought we were bad assed cowboys. Billy Roy, one of our buddies who turned into a hoodlum child after hanging out with the “hard guys” across the tracks, attempted to rob our neighborhood grocery store with his Fanner 50. He was arrested and sent to the Dope Farm for a few months. After that, he went on to a stellar life in crime, all because of a cap gun.

Port Aransas, Texas, 1967, My Chevy Impala with a mighty V8, 283 engine, and no air conditioning, loaded with my longboards, ready for the waves. Note all the smashed bugs on the grill and front of the hood. Texas, in the summer, is a buggy place. The board over the driver’s side is my 9 ft 6-inch “Surfboard Hawaii,” and the other is a 9ft. “Hansen”; is perfect for the surf in Texas. Leashes weren’t around yet, so if you lost your board, it was a long swim.

My first rock band, 1965 “The Dolphins.” I can’t remember who came up with that name, but I wanted to use ” Don’t Hit Your Sister,” but it was vetoed by the other members. Jarry and I stayed with the band, but had different members the following year and a new name, “The Orphans.” We were playing a gig at the Harrington Park Swimming Pool in Plano, Texas. Left to right; Jarry Boy Davis, Warren Whitworth, Ron Miller on drums, Jerry Nelson and me with my cheap Japanese electric guitar.

One of my favorite books in grade school. Most of the kids were into “Fun With Dick and Jane” and that dog of theirs, the one that bit everyone in the neighborhood. I liked a more realistic read, like Mickey Spillane’s crime novels and The Grapes of Wrath. My second-grade teacher, Mrs. Badger, confiscated this book and escorted me to the principal’s office, which resulted in me getting a butt-whooping when I got home.

1968, my late cousin, Wandering Star. Pictured here with his wife, Saphron, and their nice little hippie family. They lived in a tepe in a commune in the Colorado Rockies. True to the Indian traditions required in the commune, they named their children after the first thing Wandering Star saw when he stuck his head out of the tent after the children’s natural holistic birth. Left to right are; Morning Rain, Chattering Squirrel, Sunny Morning, and Two Dogs Screwing. I heard that later in life, the kids renamed themselves.

Texas International Pop Festival, August 1969, in Lewisville, Texas. Me and my pal, Jarry Boy Davis, are in there somewhere, as well as my wife, MoMo. A crowd of around 200 thousand kids and some adults attended. It was three days of great music, fatal sunburns, LSD freakouts, giant joints passing through the crowd, no food, no water, no sleep, 100-degree temperatures, and no shade. It was worth it; I met Janis Joplin while standing in line to buy a hot dog. This was at night, and this gal asked to cut in line, so being the gentleman that I was, I let her cut in. She turned, introduced herself as Janis with a hearty handshake, and it was then that I knew who she was. She was a fellow Texan, so we briefly talked about the heat. It was the 60s, so you had to be cool and act like it was no big deal, but I about pissed myself. She was a nice gal who had good music later that night and died too soon. This was also the night that Led Zepplin got on stage, and Jimmy Paige declared they would never return to this Hell Hole of a state because of the heat. A few months later, they played a concert in Dallas and had to eat some humble pie. It wasn’t Woodstock, but damn close.