Wikipedia:
The Atlantic City Pop Festival took place in 1969 on August 1, 2 and 3rd at the Atlantic City race track, two weeks before Woodstock Festival... [T]he stage the acts performed on was created by Buckminster Fuller...Let me be your "citation needed," Wikipedia. Joni Mitchell played "Real Good For Free" and stopped in the middle to lecture us about not paying attention. We were moving around and enjoying ourselves and each other in the manner she celebrated in her song "Woodstock" (about that festival that happened 2 weeks later and where she did not appear). Sorry, Joni, we were stardust, we were golden and we didn't want to feel like a cog in something turning. She hated the hippies in person, but loved them from the distance. Fine! Who wouldn't? And now the distance is 50 years.
Memorable performances included:
- Procol Harum performing "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and a series of songs from "A Salty Dog" while the wind whipped up the lake behind them.
- Iron Butterfly's extended set of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida".
- The Chambers Brothers followed Iron Butterfly with a memorable rendition of "Time Has Come Today" that had many in the crowd dancing on the huge speakers on the stage, some even with clothes on. They were the final Friday night act.
- Dr. John the Night Tripper performing "Gris-Gris" and "Walk on Gilded Splinters."
- Little Richard filled in for Johnny Winter playing a set on a white grand piano and rocked the track as he invited the audience to come up and dance on stage.
- Janis Joplin and her Kozmic Blues Band electrified the audience with "Try", a cover of The Chantels "Maybe" and "As Good As You've Been To This World". She joined Little Richard on stage for a few tunes as well.
- Joni Mitchell performed one song, complained that people were not listening, "I've just played the same verse twice and no one noticed," then left the stage.[citation needed]...
Ah! Here's a new article in the Philadelphia Inquirer from a few days ago, "Joni Mitchell ran offstage crying, Little Richard brought the house down: Why doesn’t anyone remember the Atlantic City Pop Festival?":
As another A.C. attendee, I would argue that the overall bill at our regional fest was more interesting, eclectic, sophisticated than [Woodstock]. Our lineup boasted global stars like Afro-jazz legend Hugh Masekela and B.B. King. It delivered the roaring Buddy Rich Big Band, and likewise horn-flecked but poppy Chicago and Lighthouse groups, plus envelope-pushing Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (serving a slab of “Uncle Meat”), soul-jamming Booker T. & the MGs and Buddy Miles, plus psychedelic sets by The Chambers Brothers, Lothar and the Hand People, Dr. John, Iron Butterfly, the Tex-Mex spiced Sir Douglas Quintet, quasi-classical Procol Harum and The Byrds.... The broodish folk/jazz poet Tim Buckley connected more fervently to the New Jersey crowd than did John Sebastian at Woodstock....Yeah, I stayed at a hotel — with my parents who didn't go to the show, but did whatever in Atlantic City while I (with a friend) took the bus to the race track.
A.C. Pop didn’t suffer the indignities that made Woodstock fodder for instant fame – with headlines about overcrowding and TV news footage of Army rescue helicopters flying in talent and much-needed food....
"For most show-goers A.C. Pop was a suburban commuter festival. You went home, took a shower and slept in your own bed," said Vitka, who lucked out with a hotel room near the beach and a dream-come-true after-show party where he shared a schmooze and a joint with the Jefferson Airplane’s Jorma Kaukonen. (They’re still friends.) “At Woodstock, we abandoned our car 10 miles away and started marching to who knows where, not knowing where our next meal or bath or anything was coming from.”
“The race track had turnstiles, fencing, even private security guys on horses, guarding the perimeter,” said Herb Spivak, the senior partner of Electric Factory Concerts (now part of the Live Nation empire), who shepherded the project and cooled out potential incidents. “When a gang of Hell’s Angels-style cyclists loudly stormed the place, I calmly showed them where to safely park their bikes,” Spivak said. “But I didn’t let them in for free.”..."Cactus Tree"? I remember it as "Real Good For Free." Ah, well. There are no recordings of the performances. I was very interested in hearing Joni Mitchell and quite close to the stage when this happened. It seemed so unjust to blame us for not communicating if we noticed that she did one verse twice. The most polite and reverential thing to do if we noticed would be to trust that she did it for some unknowable good reason, and the second-most reverential thing would be to think she'd forgotten where she was in the song and made a mistake and that's okay, Joni, we love you in all your greatness and with all your flaws. But she interpreted us: We were louts who were not paying attention. We didn't deserve you. We were not worthy.
While Electric Factory Concerts, like other regional promoters) had been shopping for a festival site “ever since Monterey Pop in ‘67” had jump-started the new counterculture rock revolution, Spivak said the original hook-up with the Atlantic City Race Track was almost accidental. “I was driving down the White Horse Pike in January or February of ’69 to look for a summer rental property for the family, saw the track, and just spontaneously drove in. I found the office and asked, ‘Is the owner around?’... We made a handshake deal for the three-day festival, there and then...”...
[Joni Mitchell] freaked out when people wouldn’t stop talking, a beach ball kept flying around in front of her, and no one bothered to shout out during song four (“Cactus Tree”) that “you just repeated a verse.” Had it been a test? Mitchell ran off stage mid-song in tears.
"Nobody stopped to hear him/Though he played so sweet and high/They knew he had never been on their TV/So they passed his music by...."
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