05 Oct
652: 1969 Atlantic City Pop Festival
The 1969 Atlantic City Pop Festival took place in Atlantic City, NJ just a couple of weeks before the Woodstock Festival. More than 100,000 people packed the Atlantic City race track for the three-day festival. Some concert-goers consider it the pre-Woodstock, since many of the same artists performed at both festivals, including Janis Joplin, Santana, Joe Cocker, and Jefferson Airplane.
Visit the official site of the Atlantic City Pop Festival
Bruce Niedt of Cherry Hill, NJ remembers the AC Pop Fest
Bob Conner of Millville, NJ remembers the AC Pop Fest
I was their! Thats where I heard about Woodstock. In many ways AC was more fun. But after Woodstock became a slice of ‘Americana” Atlantic City was seldom heard of. At the time ,I believe it was the largest concert of all times. Tom Taras
October 6th, 2007 at 9:36 pmI was there for 3 days, and it was two weeks prior to Woodstock. The lineup was comparable to Woodstock and the music was, of course, phenomenal. My greatest memory of the AC festival had to be the Byrds doing “Eight Miles High”. The crowd erupted and rushed the stage, causing the promoters to temporarily shut the sound to restore order. For me it was a heady thing to hear live what was one of the pyshedelic anthems of that period. Another crazy memory was the Mothers playing “King Kong” for about half an hour. Their only song!
November 30th, 2007 at 9:59 am