Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 8-30-1969, Part 1: Chicago

Many months ago, in late 2024, I got everything ready to post the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival here at this blog. But I've been putting it off and putting it off, because it's a lot to deal with. I have no less than 19 albums to post from the festival! So rather than keep delaying, I've finally decided to post it in chunks, to make it a more manageable task. This first chunk starts with a set by Chicago.

1969 was the first big year of large rock festivals, and it was arguably the best year, before problems with hard drugs and commercialism crept in. One 1969 festival overshadows all others: Woodstock. Certainly, that had the biggest cultural impact. But in terms of the actual music, there were some other festivals that were almost as good. The problem is, most of these other festivals weren't recorded, or if they were the recordings either are poor audience bootlegs or they're sitting in some record company vault. The Texas International Pop Festival is the one big exception to this. For some reason, soundboard bootlegs exist for much of the festival (though certainly not all of it), and high quality audience bootlegs can fill in some of the important missing bits. Between the sheer number of quality acts in the festival, and the quality of the recordings, this is a "must have" for anyone interested in the music from the era, in my opinion.

Since this is the first album I'm posting from the festival, let me give some background to the festival as a whole. There were over 40 rock festivals in 1969, most of them in the summer, but there were only a handful of really big ones. The first really big one took place in Atlanta in July, the Atlanta International Pop Festival. A 25 year old Texan named Angus G. Wayne III attended. He was the son Angus G. Wayne, the founder of the Six Flags Over Texas amusement park, so he had some money, and he wanted to get into the music promotion business. He loved the Atlanta festival and decided Texas needed one. So he immediately joined with Alex Cooley, the main promoter of the Atlanta festival, to quickly put one together before the summer ended. 

Wayne and Cooley didn't have much time, and they didn't have much money. They only had $120,000 to pay for the music acts. But that much money went a long way back then, apparently, because they were able to put together a stellar line-up of 26 different acts for a three-day festival, while spending no more than $10,000 on any one act. For the location, they chose a racetrack in Huntsville, a town of only 8,000 people on the outskirts of the Dallas-Ft. Worth area.

As chance would have it, another big festival took place two weeks before the Lewisville one: Woodstock! At the time the Lewisville festival was planned, the planners had no idea what a big deal Woodstock would be. It definitely increased interest in their festival too. Many people who missed out on Woodstock came from all over the U.S. and beyond to at least attend this similar festival.

But at the same time, Woodstock increased negative publicity on what they were trying to do. Keep in mind that Texas was a very politically and cultural conservative state back then, even more than it is now. That went doubly so for rural towns like Lewisville. The promoters got all the necessary permits before the Woodstock festival. Once the conservative leadership of Lewisville heard the news coming out of Woodstock, they tried to stop it, but there were too late. However, there was a concerted push to at least bad-mouth the festival, especially in the media. For instance, the Dallas Morning News published an editorial before the festival, titled "Nausea at Lewisville." 

Here's just a short except from that editorial, which reads today almost like an over-the-top parody of intolerant conservatism: 

"Young people assembling to hear music is one thing. Young people assembling in unspeakable costumes, half-naked, bare-footed, defying propriety, and scorning morality is another. ... Who and where are their parents? Where do these young people get the money to loaf around the country in their smelly regalia? ... The great majority of youngsters in this area are at home where they ought to be, mowing yards, working part-time jobs, and preparing for useful lives. In the meantime, the lewd and loose in Lewisville will swing and sway. They are to be pitied."

Due to that sort of backlash, many people were scared off from attending, especially due to parents who wouldn't let them go. The promoters were hoping for 200,000 or more to attend, but the real attendance was more like 120,000. Tickets were $6 per day, which was cheap even for the era. The promoters ultimately lost money, mostly due to increased insurance and security costs due to fears generated by the conservative backlash. 

But still, it was widely seen as a successful festival. The weather was sunny all three days, which meant no mud, and the crowd was cheery and peaceful. Only one person died (due to heat exhaustion, not drug use). The police were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers and generally stayed outside the venue. That meant drug use inside the venue was rampant, but mostly just pot and psychedelics, because hard core drugs like heroin hadn't become a big problem with hippies yet.

The main "problem" was that some men and women went skinny dipping in an adjacent lake each day of the festival. This drew lots of curious outsiders, who rushed to the lake to see naked people. The police actually spent most of their time and energy trying to keep reactionary onlookers away from the nude bathers, who probably only numbered a couple dozen at most.

So that's the basic gist about the festival. If you want to know more, here's the Wikipedia page:

Texas International Pop Festival - Wikipedia 

But I found a fan site about the festival that's more interesting: 

https://www.austinnewsstory.com/TIPF/pop.htm

That had links to a longer essay about the festival. The links are dead, but I found an archived version. Most of the information I'll be writing about the festival comes from this multiple-page account, which starts here: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20160831184630/http://www.watermelon-kid.com/history/dallas/features/sonbeth/SixtiesDallas-sonbeth2.htm

Now, let's get to this album, and the surviving recording of it. Chicago released their first album, called "Chicago Transit Authority," in 1969. (The band was also called "Chicago Transit Authority" at the time, but I'm choosing to ignore that because they quickly changed their name when the real Chicago Transit Authority, a government entity, threatened to sue them.) At first, the band was unknown, but they began to slowly grow in popularity due to lots of touring, especially at festivals like this one. In fact, their first album wouldn't peak in the album charts until 1971, two years after it was released! So it's a safe bet that few people in the audience knew of the band beforehand, but they were well received.

The recording for this album is rather unusual for the festival because it comes from three different sources. Some acts played twice, or even occasionally three times, over the three days of the festival. Chicago was one of these acts, playing sets on both the first day, August 30, and the second day, August 31. The first eight tracks here are from a soundboard of the August 30th set. Tracks nine and ten are from a soundboard of the August 31st set. The last three tracks are from an audience bootleg, also from August 31st. (There were a few more songs from the audience boot that I didn't include since there are soundboard versions from August 30th.) 

Those last three tracks don't sound as good as the others, but they still sound fairly good. The audience boot was a pretty good one for the era. But also, I used some tricks to make them sound better. I used the MVSEP program to reduce the crowd noise during the songs. I also used the UVR5 program to boost the lead vocals relative to the instruments.

Note that I'm not entirely sure of the order of music acts at the festival, but I have a rough idea, thanks to that longer essay linked to above, and other sources. Chicago didn't open the festival; Grand Funk Railroad did. However, their set from this day isn't available (though a later one is). But Chicago was one of the first, I think. If anyone knows the exact order of the musical acts, please let me know (especially before I post the rest of the festival). It probably was late in the day by the time the band got on stage though, since the first act, Grand Funk Railroad, didn't start until about four in the afternoon.

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 talk (Chicago)
02 Introduction (Chicago)
03 Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is (Chicago)
04 South California Purples (Chicago)
05 talk (Chicago)
06 Beginnings (Chicago)
07 talk (Chicago)
08 25 or 6 to 4 [Edit] (Chicago)
09 talk (Chicago)
10 I'm a Man (Chicago)
11 talk (Chicago)
12 Questions 67 and 68 (Chicago)
13 Poem 58 (Chicago) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zyQpygBQ

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/17ZYS81wzAIujz2/file

I had a hard time finding a good photo of Chicago. It's not easy finding good photos of them because they have so many band members, scattered all over the stage. So instead of using a really crappy photo of just one or two band members, I chose a shot of the audience. I think it's a good introduction to showing what the festival looked like as a whole. I used the Krea AI program to improve the details.

As for the text, the top part is taken directly from a concert poster for the festival. I then tried to match that style with the text at the bottom.