Post by Jon Dupee on Jun 11, 2014 19:20:24 GMT -5
MOUNTAIN JAM
I was looking forward to Mountain Jam, in the little town of Hunter Mountain in upstate New York and less than twenty miles from Woodstock. The Allman Brothers topped a Fantastic line-up which included Bob Weir's RATDOG and the Chris Robinson Brotherhood all of whom I was anxious to enjoy. The festival had been founded by Warren Haynes some ten years ago, this was the tenth anniversary, all was set fair for a wonderful few days in the mountains. New promoters had taken the festival over and they were expected to add even more glitter glamor and general pizazz to the event.
We arrived the day before the festivities were due to begin and sailed thru the accreditation process with ease and everything seemed to be superbly organised with adequate signage and parking and sufficient security for the Berlin Wall. Vendors were displaying their wares, trucks were delivering equipment, band busses were arriving, all of the glamor and anticipation of the circus coming-to-town was in abundance. By a stroke of good fortune, dear friends had a small cabin in the town of Hunter, so we were to stay with them and be accommodated less than three minutes from the festival. I was glowing with anticipation, eager to see friends, happy that music in abundance was on the menu.
The following morning when I arrived at the festival I heard a somewhat alarming report from someone working with security. A van had been stopped coming off the New York State Thruway by the state police, and inside had been found large amounts of money, semi-automatic weapons and a considerable amount of drugs - the van was obviously not headed for a quiet weekend in the country and the occupants were duly hauled away. I thought to myself 'who the hell brings automatic weapons to a pop festival?' I then rationalized that this is America and dismissed the thought.
Over the course of the first day several people told me about busts coming off the main NYS thruway. The police were systematically stopping and searching cars, many people had been arrested, a depressing litany of news assailed me and I wondered at the policy at work in the local community. Across the Main Street of the local town hung a banner welcoming people to Mountain Jam, whilst less than a few miles from the banner people were being arrested for minor offenses, it seemed wildly inconsistent and savagely unfair.
During a break from talking to people about the police, the Stones and Grateful Dead, I wandered up the mountain to get a good view of the stage and heard a video clip I had previously recorded welcoming Weir and the Allman Brothers Band and saying something along the lines that it was wonderful to see them still playing. RATDOG were superb. Weir's voice was clear and authoritative, the band well balanced and organized, and his original songs sounded well chosen sophisticated and sat well within the Grateful Dead tunes he chose to play. A great set and as I was about to wonder back down the hill I got more depressing news.
A man approached me who I assessed to be around thirty years old. He had wild 'feral' hair and told me he was a post graduate student. He had passed a joint to someone sitting beside him some ten minutes before speaking to me, and it transpired that the person was an undercover police officer. the cop had given him an option, to be arrested or to go down to the ATM at the bottom of the hill and pay an 'on the spot fine' of three hundred dollars. The man chose the second option and three hundred bucks went from his account into the pocket of the police officer. I wondered where we were - was this Mexico or Thailand? Some third world country? Or was this the land of the free? The 'victim' (needless to say) was not given a receipt for the three hundred dollars.
That evening I took my sweetheart to Tannersville for dinner, for a quiet time away from the madness of the festival. Across the Main Street hung the banner mentioned earlier welcoming festival goers - we had chosen to eat in a hotel complex which advertised home made Italian food, and which happened (as it happened) to be owned by the mayor of the town. We sat down and Mr.Mayor acting as the perfect host came to say hello. I couldn't help but point out the irony of publicly welcoming festival goers on the one hand and busting them for minor offenses on the other ! His reply was stunning.
For years, he explained, ever since the festival had begun he had tried to get the police to 'lighten up' but to no avail. They had a 'zero tolerance' policy and that was that, take it or leave it. The festival had changed hands, Warren Haynes the founder had moved on, and now a corporation owned the festival, and they too (it was explained to him) had a zero tolerance policy. Several bands were being accommodated at his hotel, and potentially they were in danger of being busted. Warren Haynes equipment truck had been stopped, emptied of its contents and thoroughly searched which must have taken considerable resources of manpower on the police's part and been part of a deliberate policy that targeted musicians. The mayor was deeply disturbed and very unhappy.
We chatted on whilst waiting for the food to arrive and it transpired he was establishing a library in town so he purchased two of my books. He didn't know what the long-term impact of the zero tolerance policy would be on the viability of the festival but tendered the thought that people would soon be telling one another what was happening and that at the very least it was 'a bad look' which might discourage festival goers next year. I told him about a conversation I had three weeks earlier with a cop from a small town Ohio sheriff's department about their experiences of festivals.
The cop told me that all of them hated the music the hippies liked and couldn't wait for a country music festival which was to follow the 'hippie' gathering. By the time the country music festival was over the cops looked like they'd been in a war zone. One of his deputies had a broken arm, one had stitches in a cut over his eye, one was on sick leave with a badly sprained back, and goodness knows how many redneck good old boys had been arrested for fighting and public drunkenness. He smiled grimly as he described the situation, and looking around at the assembled hippies said to me, 'the music sucks but the people ain't so bad'.
America is at an interesting stage in its 'social evolution'. In some states grass is legal, in others (like New York) it is illegal. In some states their is a 'zero tolerance' policy (like New York) in others the cops 'look the other way' if they assess that the grass is merely for personal use. The 'evolution' of American attitudes to Marijuahna has been a continuing 'movie' since it was first criminalized - there have been hundreds of thousands of people imprisoned and fined and otherwise law-abiding citizens hampered with the stigma of a felony on their records. America incarcerates a higher proportion of its population than any country on earth ! Is this not the land of the free ?
We returned to the festival the following day. Cops roamed the festival grounds behind drug sniffing dogs, people were being arrested for small amounts of grass, festival security personnel were searching people at the entrance with police-like thoroughness and openly announcing that there was a zero-tolerance policy. I asked one of the security people what would happen if they found grass, they said they would have the person arrested and that this had already happened several times. Festival personnel were actively assisting the cops in busting people !
The truth is the truth. This is what happened at Mountain Jam. It didn't directly affect me as I don't smoke Marijuahna or consume drugs - I gave that stuff up years ago. BUT, it made me think about all the poor folks who had been attracted by music to a particular place, encouraged to purchase tickets, and who were then targeted by the police, with many of them subsequently being arrested. NOT exactly a fun weekend for THEM. A shame really, because the music was great this year - I wonder how many of the musicians will want to participate once they realize what was happening to their fans ?The new promoters of the event should consider carefully their stated policies - there's nothing worse than throwing a party which people decide not to attend - as they say in the movies 'you have been warned'.
I've had quite enough of rock n roll festivals and am off to a cabin in the woods to complete a novel that I have been working on for almost two years. I am fortunate to be accompanied by my sweetheart - now what more could a man desire than the sacred solitude of creativity sweetly leavened by the company of the woman he adores ? Sounds perfect to me !
