"The Largest Music Gathering Ever"

Although I have been focusing on 1960s pop culture so far, today I wanted to write about something that resulted from 1960s pop culture. The 1969 Woodstock rock festival inspired the July 28, 1973 Summer Jam at Watkins Glen.

Over 30 artists had performed at Woodstock, but only 3 major bands performed at Watkins Glen, which also took place in New York:

• The Allman Brothers Band
• The Grateful Dead
• The Band

Although far fewer musicians performed at Watkins Glen, the turnout was greater than at Woodstock by about 100,000 people: 600,000 people attended the Summer Jam, which was advertised as "The Largest Music Gathering Ever."

This huge turnout of young rock fans naturally produced a number of intriguing stories at the Summer Jam. Pirate radio station CFR AM broadcast the event. Each band performed for astonishing lengths of time; the Grateful Dead gave the longest concert at 5 hours. There was even one young woman who gave birth at Watkins Glen.

My mom was one of the 600,000 rock fans in attendance at the Summer Jam. She was happy to be a part of the experience but acknowledged that the event did not have as much cultural impact as Woodstock did.

Rock fan Robb Strycharz wrote an account of the Summer Jam. He gave some explanation as to why the huge turnout at Watkins Glen did not make much history. Strycharz explains that "the protests, the placards, the defiance, and the true revolutionary zeal of the young had actually subsided" since the 1960s. While young people in the 1970s still loved coming together for rock, they may not have had as much desire for social change as for listening to music. The Summer Jam at Watkins Glen shows an interesting social transition between the 1960s and 1970s.