Pop Group Came
There it was, man, pop
culture in the middle of an unreal dust bowl with a wide asphalt rim, somewhere
between fifty and a hundred thousand, groovin' on the Sun and the heat and the
noise, a totally, physical experience-two days of the Atlanta International Pop
Festival at Atlanta International Raceway.
Maybe you could dig
it-everybody aware of bodies and sound, cats copping (borrowing) cigarets, and
asking for a bite of your popsicle.
Hundreds of tents and
thousands of cars and clay dust everywhere, with anybody who was tired crashing
(sleeping) in the nearest shade.
(DECORATIONS
It was an exclusive club,
those who made up the heart of the festival. In the club where all these
brassiere-less girls and bell-bottomed guys in clothes you have to work to
find. Dull metal rings and shiny metal buttons were the only decorations
besides the bright head-bands.
They weren't the ones who stood in the long lines waiting for
Cokes. They had their cheap muscatel and they seldom even-rolled, even when
caressed by their chicks. Only when Delaney and Bonnie or Ian and Sylvia would
sway with them did they rise from their blankets.
The World War II victory sign
that has become part of the culture's communication flashed up everywhere while
the community gathered next to the fire trucks to be sprayed or sat in small
groups and communed.
"Will John the Hash-Man
meet Joe and Pete near stage left?" the announcer read. Hashish is another
staple of the drug culture, a part of the bigger pop culture.
SLOW MOTION
The community was the
dedicated ones who came to camp for the weekend and rap (talk) with others in
the movement, It was those who wandered around the raceway's infield in slow
motion who could be stirred from their blankets only by the Chicago Transit
Authority in the 100-degree heat.
The community was the group
that lined the tunnel from the track's infield to the outside, hiding from the
sun, who could be stirred only by a Cadillac limousine with a fat chauffeur who couldn't resist tapping
repeatedly on his horn, even though nobody was in his way. Somebody mustered
enough energy to kick the black car with his boot.
The community included
virtually no Negroes. The community excluded the fraternity boys and sorority
girls. Those in button-downed collar shirts and pale blue or white jeans. You
had to have more than dirty clothes. You had to have the look of leather vests
and bell-bottomed blue jeans with a worn, wide belt. The chicks were better
dressed than the tall, slender rugged looking guys.
BUMPER STICKER
In the parking lot Illinois,
the Land of Lincoln, had rolled in next to Alabama, the Heart of Dixie. Cobb
County sat next to California. "What if they gave a war and nobody came?'
asked a bumper sticker from Florida.
Maybe some year it will
comeback, and the community will come again from all over the country to the
little town with the big race track south of Atlanta and. the liquor stores
will run out of wine end the infield will be filled with cans.
The hangers- will be there,
too, but they won't grip (under-stand) it, they won't dig it, because this is
not. their, convention.
And maybe again the biggest
gas of them all will sink from the sky about 8 o'clock, but nobody will notice
because the Spirit, flailing its strings on' the bandstand, will have the ears
and eyes of the community all to itself.