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1970 New York's Pop Festival... Jimi Hendrix...
1970 New York's Pop Festival... Jimi Hendrix...
Item # 723559
July 09, 1970
THE VILLAGE VOICE (weekly), Greenwich Village, New York, July 9, 1970
* New York's Pop Festival - music concerts
* Randalls Island, Manhattan, New York City
* Jimi Hendrix, Steppenwolf & much more
Page 28 has a 8 x 6 inch advertisement for "NEW YORK POP" music festival held on Randall's Island in Manhattan. (see image)
AI notes: The Randall’s Island Music Festival, held July 17, 18, and 19, 1970, was one of the major post-Woodstock outdoor rock festivals and a snapshot of the peak—and beginning of the unraveling—of the late-1960s counterculture concert era. Organized by promoter Howard Stein, the festival drew an estimated 250,000–300,000 people to New York City’s East River island and featured an extraordinary lineup including Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, The Who, Sly and the Family Stone, Santana, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Jethro Tull, Ten Years After, Johnny Winter, Sha Na Na, and Jeff Beck, among others. Hendrix headlined the final night in what would become one of his last major U.S. performances, playing a powerful set just seven weeks before his death. Musically, the festival was ambitious and diverse, blending hard rock, jazz fusion, funk, and emerging progressive rock, but it was plagued by severe organizational failures: inadequate sanitation, food shortages, delayed payments to artists, overcrowding, and escalating tensions between attendees and security. These problems culminated in unrest and clashes with police, reinforcing a growing perception among city officials and promoters that massive free-form rock festivals were becoming logistically unmanageable and financially risky. As a result, Randall’s Island 1970 is often remembered not only for its historic performances—especially Hendrix and Miles Davis—but also as a symbolic end-point of the Woodstock-era festival model, hastening the shift toward more controlled, commercialized concert production in the 1970s.
I suspect this to be an extremely rare item because there was really no reason to save it at the time.
The Village Voice was an American counterculture newspaper known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. It introduced free-form, high-spirited, and passionate journalism into the public discourse - a tradition it maintained throughout its 60+ year history. It is quite common to find great political cartoons, satirical cartoons and articles, thought-provoking editorials, and ads and reviews for both concerts and theater productions - both on and off Broadway. Many iconic writers and musicians credit their appearance in The Village Voice for at least a portion of their success.
Complete in 72 pages, tabloid-size, folded at the center, a little spine wear, nice condition.
Provenance note: This issue comes from The Village Voice's own archives, part of their in-house collection used to create their digital archive and has never been in circulation. Rare as such.
Alert: Many issues of The Village Voice contain articles and/or photos which some consider offensive, and are certainly inappropriate for children. Please purchase with discretion.
Category: The 20th Century
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