| Subject: Re: Stevens Point, Wisconsin (?) Rock festival 1970 |
Author:
Toby
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Date Posted: 17:53:53 04/10/07 Tue
In reply to:
gt bob
's message, "Re: Stevens Point, Wisconsin (?) Rock festival 1970" on 17:56:18 04/09/07 Mon
Bob,
I eventually got it from www.newspaperarchive.com (not free). They charge about 8 or 9 bucks a month for a yearly subscription or $25.00 for one weeks use. I opted for the later, there were other things I wanted to look up. The articles are in PDF format. Based on the kind of typos, it appears they use OCR software to scan them in. Google also has http://news.google.com/archivesearch, however the search result links lead to sites (many of them www.newspaperarchive.com) that require a one time fee or a subscription to view the whole article.
I do believe it was Sunday morning when the actual battle occurred. I was not too far from the barn and one could feel a lot of tension was building up. The previous two days one could occasionally hear screams coming from the barn and there were many rumors of brutal rapes and other bad things going on. I remember some people saying we ought to do something and apparently they eventually did. As I said before, I was awoken by what sounded like firecrackers and the sensation of the ground rumbling. When I peered out of my tent there was a stampede of freaks running away from the general direction of the barn. I saw this guy I knew from the streets of Milwaukee’s Eastside (where I grew up). If I remember right, his street name was Gorilla Bob or was it Big Bob, any way I asked him what the hell was going on. He explained there had been an on going confrontation with the bikers and that he had just shot one with a handgun who had been pointing a shotgun at him (this guy was a dealer, a connected kind) . He said the guy dropped and he wasn’t sure if he was dead (he was tripping and very upset). I had no reason to doubt him given the context. There were various rumors I heard later about what had gone on (many of them probably false). Some of them involved revenge on the bikers that involved the trashing and burning of two motorcycles and the execution of their owners in the woods. I never read about any bodies being found in the woods but I’ve always wondered about the validity of those rumors . Back about ten years ago or more, I read some where that a biker had been killed at that rock festival but that was probably the guy who had the fatal motorcycle accident the newspaper article mentions. Anyway that led me to believe that at least some of the rumors I’d herd were true.
One other thing about that Sunday morning I’ll never forget is while all this commotion was going on, when I looked towards the stage (quite some distances off) the bands where still playing, people where milling about, there was no sign most of the festival was aware of what was going on.
Still, for the most part I remember having a great time. But the whole biker thing was a new up in your face kind of reality that sort of popped the Woodstock ambiance for me. It became apparent that if the counter culture was going to survive it would need to come to grips that in certain situations it would have to defend itself (man does the sound of that bring back memories, the rhetoric and etc.). Oh well it was a fantastic trip while it lasted.
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