Tag: rock

Outside Lands and Altamont. Golden Gate Park now and what was not then

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 8.8.2026 UPDATED

This August weekend is the now annual Outside Lands three day concert at the Polo Fields near the blogger’s home. 75,000 fans a day are expected to attend.

The hordes at Outside Lands – 8.7. 2026

Golden Gate Park was not always a cash register for corporatization.

One only need look back at rock and roll history to learn that in 1969 the Rolling Stones wanted to give a “free” concert in Golden Gate Park. San Francisco officialdom, mainly in the person of Mayor Joe Alioto, wouldn’t let it happen.

Instead the Stones concert was moved to Altamont Speedway in the East Bay which turned into a total disaster for the musicians and hundreds of thousands of fans. The tragic event is memorialized forever in the classic documentary ‘Gimme Shelter’ which is available on multiple streaming outlets and as a DVD in The Criterion Collection.

The days of San Francisco looking askance at massive concerts in park spaces are a thing of the past. What counts in the current Big Tech, AI monied metropolis is anything is permitted as long as it brings in money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Free_Concert

The Altamont Speedway Free Festival was a counterculture rock concert in the United States, held on Saturday, December 6, 1969, at the Altamont Speedway outside of Tracy, California.[2][3][4][5] Approximately 300,000 attended the concert,[2][4][5] with some anticipating that it would be a “Woodstock West“.[6] The Woodstock festival had taken place in Bethel, New York, in mid-August, almost four months earlier.

The event is remembered for its use of Hells Angels as security and its significant violence, including the killing of Meredith Hunter and three accidental deaths: two from a hit-and-run car crash, and one from a drowning incident in an irrigation canal.[4][5] Scores were injured, numerous cars were stolen (and subsequently abandoned), and there was extensive property damage.[7][8] During the Rolling Stones’ headline performance, violence erupted close to the stage, resulting in the fatal stabbing of Hunter, a spectator. MusicRadar noted that the tragedy, captured on film in Gimme Shelter, eclipsed the event and marked a dark ending for the 1960s counterculture.[9]

Outside Lands (festival) – Wikipedia

A “love letter to San Francisco,”[2] the festival is named for the city’s western neighborhoods, which were known as The Outside Lands in the 1800s. The 80-acre festival grounds feature art installations and exhibits by local artists and San Francisco-centric areas devoted to cannabis, activism and sustainability. With stages named after San Francisco locations including the Panhandle, Lands End, Twin Peaks, the Sutro and the Presidio, the San Francisco Weekly wrote that Outside Lands “was about the city, rather than just in it.”

Outside Lands, formerly known as the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, is a three-day music, art, food, wine, beer and cannabis festival held annually in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Multi-genre and multi-generational, it is the largest independently owned music festival in the United States. It was founded in 2008 by Another Planet Entertainment, Starr Hill Presents, and Superfly.

Golden Gate Park is not a cash register for greedy promoters

Lou Reed: King of New York

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 7.7.2026

Lou Reed – Wikipedia

I came upon ‘Lou Reed – King of New York’ written by Will Hermes while having lunch with my daughter at a neighborhood Cafe which has an extensive selection of books for purchase.

My first connection with Lou Reed was in the late 1960’s when I purchased the classic ‘Velvet Underground and Nico’ album which, on its cover, had a banana peel which could be peeled off.

Since that time I followed Lou Reed’s musical odyssey. He was definitely one of the most cutting edge American musicians. For both his style and political commentary. Following are three of my favorite Lou Reed compositions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/nyregion/lou-reed-king-of-new-york.html?unlocked_article_code=1.wFA.zJBJ.Fk3xonZYW-Ji&smid=url-share
I’m Waiting for the Man – Wikipedia

The Velvet Underground & Nico was released in March 1967 and peaked at No. 171 on the U.S. Billboard 200.[33] Much later, Rolling Stone listed it as the 13th greatest album of all time; musician Brian Eno once stated that although few people bought the album at the time of its release, most of those who did were inspired to form their own bands.[40] Václav Havel credited the album, which he bought while visiting the U.S., with inspiring him to become president of Czechoslovakia.[41]

Vicious (Lou Reed song) – Wikipedia

Reed’s commercial breakthrough album, Transformer, was released in November 1972. Transformer was co-produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson, and it introduced Reed to a wider audience, especially in the UK. The single “Walk on the Wild Side” was a salute to the misfits and hustlers who once surrounded Andy Warhol in the late ’60s and appeared in his films.

Sweet Jane – Wikipedia

“Sweet Jane” is a song by American rock band the Velvet Underground. Appearing on their fourth studio album Loaded (1970), the song was written by band leader and primary songwriter Lou Reed, who continued to incorporate the piece into live performances after he left the band.

New York (album) – Wikipedia

The 1989 album New York, which commented on crime, AIDS, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, then-President of Austria Kurt Waldheim, and Pope John Paul II, became his second gold-certified work when it passed 500,000 sales in 1997.[62] Reed was nominated for a Grammy Award for best male rock vocal performance for the album.[53]

Top photo: Lou Reed with Patti Smith

‘Parachute Women’ The Rolling Stones ongoing sexual odyssey

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 1.25.2025

It may only be rock and roll. And I Iike it.

I need a break from the Felon Trump.

What better way than to write about some good old rock and roll. Taking a walk this evening I stopped at a Little Lit Library near my house and found the book ‘Parachute Women’ by Elizabeth Winder. The 2023 tell all about the Rolling Stones wives and companions is a play on their song from the 1968 Beggars Banquet album.

The Stones did a memorable performance of the song in London as part of the ‘Rock and Roll Circus’ in 1968. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rolling_Stones_Rock_and_Roll_Circus_(album) Listen to the lyrics as Mick Jagger rattles off a number of cities as he riffs through Parachute Woman.

Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull

The well received book goes into documentary style tabloid detail about the Stones well chronicled personal lives.

The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus is the fifth release of the Rolling Stones music by former manager Allen Klein‘s ABKCO Records (who gained control of the band’s Decca/London material in 1970) after the band’s departure from Decca and Klein. Released in 1996, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus is a live album that captures the taping of their ill-fated 1968 TV special, which was not broadcast until almost three decades later.

https://storiesla.com/item/lUy-ceNRsMXAyspstxoBzg/lists/7RTDeXp-ph8/

Frank Zappa. The bicycle before it became a political punching bag

SAN FRANCISCO – THANKSGIVING DAY 2024

Lee Heidhues 11.28.2024

The bicycle is now the motorists favorite political punching bag.

There was a time when the bicycle in America was a curiosity piece and the favorite delivery vehicle for another American icon, the morning newspaper.

Back in 1963 Frank Zappa, soon thereafter to become famous with his group The Mothers of Invention, appeared on The Steve Allen Show. His instruments of choice were a pair of bicycles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa#

Frank Zappa earned enough money to allow him in 1963 to stage a concert of his orchestral music and to broadcast and record it.[11]: 74  In March of that same year Zappa appeared on Steve Allen‘s syndicated late night show playing a bicycle as a musical instrument[26][27]: 35–36 — using drum sticks and a bow borrowed from the band’s bass player he proceeded to pluck, bang, and bow the spokes of the bike, producing strange, comical sounds from his newfound instrument. – Excerpted from WIkipedia

A couple of years later Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention became musical icons. Their perhaps most famous album was the 1966 Freak Out! Which included the overtly political song “Trouble Everyday.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freak_Out! Composed after the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_riots