1971

Brand new to me.

Harry Manx.

All Fall Down

The first thing I thought of when I heard that harmonica, was the Mckenna Mendelson Mainline performance at the Rock Hill rock festival back in 1971.

Second song is playing now. Awesome. Not Mainline stuff. Just mesmerizing. Then again, I've had a couple of pipeloads. Man, I love this stuff.

So, it was 1971. I was in Grade 11 at Westmount. How can I be so certain? Because, every grade I completed ended the same year I completed it.

• Grade 1 - 1961
• Grade 2 - 1962
• Grade 8 - 1968
• Grade 11 - 1971

So, I really wanted to go to this rock festival near Orangeville. I was still at that age where I believed Woodstock was a very kewl and meaningful event, not the mud infested pre-woke shithole fest it actually was. I really felt like I had missed out on something.

"A love supreme," is playing now. I recognize the tune. John McLaughlin/ Santana. No wonder I like this stuff.

I ended up hitchhiking up to the event with the late Jim Anderson.

We didn't have any tickets or campsite reservations. Who thought of such trivialities back in 1971?

Nope. All we had was a pup tent, a can of fruit, and a two-four of Carlsberg Beer. No one can say we were not prepared.

So we get to the campground, only to discover there were entrance requirements. That was something we hadn't thought of prior to embarkation.

Anyway, and I can't remember how or why, we ended up in a yellow Cadillac convertible with some guy who looked just like Cat Stevens. I vaguely remember leopard skins playing a role, though I can't remember whether he was wearing them, or whether they were draped over his hood. Does it really matter?

He had a plan. With his appearance and Caddy, he figured we could get through the back entrance, reserved for band members and roadies.

We got through like a hot knife through butter.

Now to the next part of my story.

It wasn't long before Jim and I hooked up with our peers from Westmount.

I will list their names here, because I don't believe releasing this information fifty years after the event will cause harm, or embarrassment, to any of them, and because I believe that even though those who were not there, but knew these people, will enjoy a little bit of nostalgia.

• Myself - Hans Wienhold
• Jim Anderson
• Kim Zivanovich
• Dino Camposilvan
• Dave McKenzie
• Mike Rea

There were more, but my mind fogs up at that point.

I welcome any corrections to my version of events, but this is how I remember it.

Okay, like I sort of remember it.

Like the legendary Woodstock mudfest, drugs were freely available. I recall a pathway in the park, where drug vendors had set up their tables. There were cops there, but they didn't intervene.

So I ended up buying a blotter of acid. I was always cautious with acid, even in those days, so I might have only taken half. It was tattooed with either "Love Saves," or "Frog."

Needless to say, whatever dose I took turned out to be a mind blower.

I could feel myself getting a little queasy, as I often did on LSD, but I gave myself a stern warning. "YOU WILL NOT FREAK OUT TONIGHT."

One of the reasons, I think, that I followed my own advice, was the beams of light that were circling the park, at night, for the whole weekend. It was like something out of Apocalypse Now.

It was the ambulances that were filing into the park to pick up the victims of the insanity that had engulfed almost all of the attendees. I told myself, "no matter what happens tonight, I will not end up there.

Dino took me on a magical mystery tour. We walked around the park while he explained to me what was actually going on. I wasn't really listening to much of his story. I was just too busy trying to control the chemically-induced psychosis I was experiencing.

The stars were bright that night and I think the Milky Way was very prominent. I looked at the sky as each star exploded, and melted down the dome. I said to myself, "It's just a hallucination caused by the LSD. It's not real." But it was a fucking hell of a show.

In the end, I managed to get through it all. Amazing.

I remember, at one point, Jim Anderson, Dave McKenzie, and I crawled into our pup tent to smoke some hash. All of a sudden, Dave shook his head, as if waking up from a dream, and blurted out, "I didn't even realize I was here!"

If you weren't there at that moment, Dave's response would make no sense to you. But it made perfect sense to me. And I am confident that if you grew up in that era, you understand it too.

Even to this day, I have the occasional episode where I exclaim, "I didn't even know I was here!"

"I didn't even know I was here!". Nope. You won't.

And soon enough, all of the people in my age bracket will have the same realization, implicitly.

So what else can I remember?

Oh yes, it was the Mainline performance.

Despite all of us being in various stages of neurodiversity, we found some common ground.

We were all fucked up, but somehow we all agreed, that we were going to get as close to the Mainline performance as possible.

So we all held hands, so no one would get lost, despite our homophobia, as we wandered into the dust bowl in front of the stage. They were playing that song, "My baby's long and Tall, Weeps Like a Willow Tree." We let go of each other's hands and started dancing, clapping, and playing air guitar in front of the stage. It was one of those moments I will never forget.

Oh, the dust bowl?

I figured that out during one of the daytime performances. The dirt in front of the grandstand had been trampled into a fine dust. A giant cloud of dust rose into the sky adjacent to the bandstand.

And that dust was why the beams from the ambulances streaming in to the first-aid tent over the weekend gave the whole event that "Apocalypse Now" aura.

That's what I remember of the Rock Hill rock festival of 1971.

I could go on, but I ran out of rum.