AJC July 4, 1969 16A

Joplin, 80,000 Rock Buffs

To Make Festival Scene

By MICHAEL V. ADAMS

"To put the South on the map. that's what it's all about," the man from Chicago said Wednesday.

For those who always have thought the states below the Mason-Dixon line were well represented in geography schoolbooks, the speaker was not uttering a political insult.

He was speculating an the possible effects of the first annual Atlanta Pop Music Festival, scheduled July 4 and 5 at the International Raceway, 30 miles south at the city.

According to sponsors at the two-day campout-concert, 21 musical acts costing $150,000 will draw 40,000 spectators each day.

Advance ticket, sales ending Thursday numbered about 15,000 a 99 per cent of that total representing weekend passes, not single-day admissions, the sponsors reported.

Conviction rang in Alan Pariser's voice when he said Atlanta's festival probably would be the best of some 40 such events planned this summer around the country.

Pariser should know. He produced the first and most successful pop festival two years ago in Monterrey Calif.

Today that event is legendary in the hippie community for it freed a temporarily stationary rock and roll, much as the Beatles success two years earlier had.

Where the Lennon-McCartney music rejuvenated rock with a simple yea-yea-yea beat, reminiscent of the 1950’s beginnings, the Monterrey happening signaled a more sophisticated approach.

It began an eclectic trend culminating in today’s mish-mash of rock styles – blues, country, classical, jazz, soul, folk, psychedelic and foreign

At Monterrey, Janis Joplin washed her blues down with Southern Comfort whiskey. Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar. The Who smashed their amplifiers and stomped their drums. Ravi Shankar mystically droned his sitar and the Mamas and Papas blended their high harmonies.

This weekend Janis will come to Atlanta, but few of the others from Monterrey will join her.

As one might expect to rear from the California festivals organizer, Pariser said Atlanta's talent lineup probably is inferior to Monterrey’s, at least on the surfaces.

But he also said Atlanta's probably is better than anywhere else’s.

According a Pariser, a dramatic fee increase from $12,000 to $35,000 a performance keeps many of the more established musicians off this season's festival circuit.

For this reason, he said, relative newcomers such as Johnny Winter, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Credence Clearwater Revival and Al Kooper dominate the Atlanta festival.

“This weekend's musicians may be just as good as those at Monterrey. But since they're fairly new to massive record sales, they can’t afford to sit at home or go on individual tours the way the big money-makers can,” Pariser said.

“So we’ll have a groove this weekend. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”