The announcer was the great Wolfman Jack. It was one legendary band after another (there were two stages while one band was playing, the roadies for the next band would be setting up on the other stage). The music, the people, the spirit that was among the attendees… you had to be there to “understand”. What an incredible weekend it was! I hitchhiked from Florida to the Festival… I was 17 years old, I had just graduated from high school. Rock N Roll is not the same, but in those days we thought they were going to last forever!!!!!! There are also some VERY good semi-professional photos there, the guys that took them are glad to share them. Please, come ask to Join, it’s a fun page & it’s fun to reminisce. The Facebook page “Ozark Music Festival July 19-21, 1974” is my baby & everyone that comes there is as amazed as I am every time someone new joins & brings their Polaroid and/or Kodak images out of their photo albums & to the OMF page, solidifying the fact they were there & they survived. I hope people ignore the negative label & enjoy the memories. They put all those people & that whole town in danger, failing at something that COULD have been better, safer & LOTS more comfortable. I hope the promoters got everything that was coming to them. Having been in the promotional biz, this was a nightmare for the town, the bands & the people. We came to hear great music & do lots of drugs. The sex acts & prostitution was NOT evident unless you LOOKED for it. Out of ALL those people, very few girls even went topless & not THAT many people went totally nude. The young & relatively healthy fared well, the people doing too many drugs didn’t.Ībout this Sodom & Gomorrah label, this concert was NOT that bad, the forefathers put that label on it because they weren’t there & their assumption of what it was, was wrong. Our group was from Tulsa, campers like us brought everything with us, we only suffered the heat, we had all the food & water we needed, we guarded it well. We came, we danced, we did drugs, we laughed & sought out places to cool off for 4 days. We were lucky & got into the fairgrounds at 3:30 AM on Fri….they opened the gates to relieve some of the shut down on the highway, which was 22 miles long on Thurs afternoon at 6PM. My friend & I got there on Thurs, found a close parking lot to park in & proceeded to have fun. I concur with everyone on the Ozark Music Festival being hot, crowded & the best danged line up EVER for a concert, ‘cept maybe the CA Jam. Frequently, nude women promoted drugs with advertisements on their bodies.”Įxplore the sounds of the Ozark Music Festival with our Southern Rock playlist. Natural and unnatural sex acts became a spectator sport. The scene made the degradation of Sodom and Gomorrah appear mild. It became a haven for drug pushers who were attracted from throughout the United States. “The Ozark Music Festival can only be described as a disaster. We’ll leave the last word to The Missouri Senate and a committee report on the event. Given the breadth and depth of the performers, the Ozark Music Festival can justifiably claim to be one of the ten all-time great gatherings of the era. Bizarrely, the Italian prog band, Premiata Forneria Marconi also played, and given the rest of the bill it’s hard to imagine how they went over let’s just hope they didn’t have to follow a bluegrass band. Not a household name by any means and it would be interesting to know how they ended up on the bill. There was apparently even an English band that played – Babe Ruth. Others that played but went unbilled on the poster include, Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult, and Boz Scaggs. Other bands not on the poster that played included The Ozark Mountain Daredevils and The Southern Hillman Furay Band – refugees from The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and The Flying Burrito Brothers the cream of California country rock. The festival was billed as one featuring bluegrass as well as rock so it was that The Earl Scruggs Revue and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band were included. The Marshall Tucker Band from Spartanburg, South Carolina was making a name for themselves with their brand of Southern Rock. Similarly, Joe Walsh and Barnstorm had done well on the album chart with their second long-player, The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get. While the Eagles hit singles may not have been as big as America’s, their first two albums had done well on the chart in the USA, and so they were considered headliners as well.
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