Applestock, August, 1966. Were you there? Some of you might not remember—but doesn't that, like, prove you were there? Whatever—here's a place to post your choice Applestock Festival memories. . . .

Baba Ray

Hmm. I was definitely there. But I'm having some logical problems--lemme ask a philosophical question. If I'm NOT so sure...does that mean I really WAS there? Okay, but anyway, I've got definite Applestock flashes coming from somewhere. Like the Fudge Lady, at dawn, handing out a million pieces of candy. And the white piano dropping out of the sky. And Dylan circling in the helicopter. I'm a high school science teacher now. Nobody knows I was a total freak in 1966. Yes...I was there! Of course I was there! I want to go back there....

I remember it all. The ski lift. The state patrol cordon (I hitched in with a radio reporter, and wow, they hardly looked at his press pass). And none of the promised acts showed up...except for Melanie. Wait a minute, that wasn't Appletock--that was Powder Ridge!!

Edited by author 12-15-2002 10:40 PM
I'm so excited I found this place! Man! I was with my brother Jimmy and we got there early through all the traffic before it rained and got bad. The mud just kept us there once we got in. I just remember the pa system constantly going down and it didn't really matter! They were just climbing the rafters, singing louder and everybody was there for the guitars mostly and could sing the lyrics anyway. I remember being soaked and sharing a blanket with this guy and following a whole bunch of people I didn't know up to this hill because they said there was food. Somehow this hot dog truck had gotten stuck in the mud. They started serving since all the kids who were hungry had found them there. We all had some food (I don't think we paid) and then helped them get unstuck and the old man running the truck said he'd be back after they did a gig somewhere else. We never saw them again but it was the best food. All these warm, wet people next to each other covered in blankets and all this warm food getting passed around in these huge cooking vats after we had spend hours getting completely lost hiking around looking for this food truck. I didn't see my brother again for three days. When he found me we just stayed for god knows how long and finally packed up the truck with about eight people (we started with three.) The music was incredible. I had no idea who I was really listening to until the festival at Woodstock, when everybody knew.

Well, now, *this* is a blast from the past. Takes me right back to the day of Applestock, when I realized my true calling: Separating all these hippie suckers from their money. Standing there, looking out over all that humanity, I was actually kinda pissed off -- here was the biggest damn crowd anybody had ever seen, and I had not yet figured out a way to make any $ off of them. Talk about your missed opportunities! But I more than made up for that later, and I owe it all to you Baba Ray.

-- Gus DeGrande (CEO, Grandiose Concerts, Inc.)

Everything bad that ever happened to me began at Applestock. My parents met there, of course. Silly fucking boomers -- leave it to them to take mob-think and repackage it as counterculture. Dad liked the shoes, Mom liked that she didn't have to cross her legs when she sat down in mixed company. They were Midwesterners.

If not for Minor Threat, I'd be dead of boredom, or lost in my parent's house among the piles of fondue sets, Cuisinarts, Betamax machines, cheap Monet posters, and brochures for assisted-living centers. But I have discovered the joys of homelessness, sobriety, and the free market. I am the logical outcome of my parents' solipsism. I am straight edge.

More to come, if I don't freeze tonight.

III

Being a so-called Brit, I take American cultural icons with many grains of salt. However, I must say that Applestock, was truly the "stealth" progenitor of everything "hip," the opening shot of the REAL sixties. I consider being there the most magical, most influential experience of my life. I vividly recall every moment of it, but, oddly enough, as a dream, as if it existed not in this world, but in some parallel universe of pure imagination and soul. Oh...I lost my virginity there.

i was there.
all these yrs since, i wasn't sure, i thot i had dreamed it. glad to know it really happened.
I,ME,NOW, go Grateful Dead/FISH, right-on, brothers&sisters, the man can't bust our MUSIC!!
(was that me?)
--scoundrel

i was there because my car got lost (i was in it of course) on my way to work and i couldn't get to my job at the library which i never went to again...what is a "Brit?"