Jerrystock - The Forgotten Festival

Michael Lang [promoter and producer - Ed.]'s 1968 Miami Pop Festival had been a massive success, even though bad weather brought it to an early close (inspiring Hendrix's Rainy Day, Dream Away). Woodstock was already at the back-of-an-envelope stage, but Lang wanted to bridge the gap with something quick and easy, on a smaller scale, without the high-stake risk. He and Artie Kornfeld [promoter and producer - Ed.] got together in his tarpaper shack behind Jerry's Used Tire And Muffler Mart in New York's fashionable Canarsie, and spitballed a few ideas.

"It was crazy," Artie remembers. "We'd just grab these ideas out of thin air, or actually bong smoke if I'm honest. Michael started riffing on the stock thing, this-stock, that-stock. This was even before Woodstock, leave alone all the other stocks that came later, like Watergate ... stock ... anyway ... Jerry, right, this guy Jerry that owns Michael's pad, he comes by for the rent - he was always hassling Michael for the rent on account Michael never paid it - and Michael says, Jerry, I can't give you the rent, but I'm giving you a music festival instead. You'll be rich and famous! So Jerry gives Michael the finger and until Thursday and the hell with his music festival shit, what does he think he is, like that. When he's gone Michael takes this huge hit on the bong and says, in this squeaky voice I'll never forget, Jerrystock!"

And so the world's smallest music festival was born. Lang and Kornfeld drew up a list of all the artists they could think of called Jerry. Five, including flautist Jeremy Steig, who refused to be billed as Jerry and was scratched. But Jerrys Corbitt (Youngbloods), Jeff Walker (Circus Maximus, Jerry Jeff Walker), and Yester (too many credits to mention) all agreed to support headliner Garcia [lead guitarist for The Greatful Deads rock group - Ed.]. The festival took place in the upstairs room at Pies n' Poetry, Canarsie's hipster hangout, and was attended by a sell-out standing-room-only crowd of well over a dozen or so people. "We made enough bread on the door to pay the rent!" laughs Lang today, adding, "still didn't pay it, though."

Although no recordings of the epochal event were made (Lang's trusty reel-to-reel was in hock), the attached recordings give an idea of the quality of the musical fare on offer on that forgotten day. Walker's first solo album doesn't give much indication of the Outlaw Country direction he would take, Corbitt's is homespun rockin' ("My brain's goin' blind," he sings), Yester's collection of vintage gems Pass Your Light Around is drop-dead gorgeous. Garcia is represented by The Cauldron Journey For Healing (that's what it's called), a kind of hippie self-help cassette made by Nicki Scully (me neither). The music (by "Roland Barker and Jerry Garcia") is the same both sides, but on one side Nicki gets to blather spoken word Hippie Wisdom all over it, which is funny for about one minute, then terrible, then a fucking nightmare, leaving this listener baying for the blood of the narrator, which is not presumably the kind of healing she had in mind. I "lost" this side in a freak internet tsunami, so you can't hear it, as a bonus.