Like a rising tide at the Jersey Shore, waves of anticipation swept through the crowd at Atlantic City Race Course on the afternoon of Friday, Aug. 9, 1974.
Like a rising tide at the Jersey Shore, waves of anticipation swept through the crowd at Atlantic City Race Course on the afternoon of Friday, Aug. 9, 1974.
For once, horses weren’t the center of attention.
Instead, it would be a day for music and politics.
A month into their reunion tour, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were in South Jersey for their first appearance in the region since a June 1970 concert at the Spectrum in Philadelphia.
Opening the show would be Santana, who had performed five years earlier at the track as the Santana Blues Band during the three-day Atlantic City Pop Festival.
Some fans came out Thursday night to camp in preparation for the show when the biggest news story of the year broke.
President Richard Nixon became the biggest casualty of the Watergate scandal by going on national television to announce he was quitting. Nixon’s resignation took effect at 11:35am Friday and Gerald Ford became the 38th president shortly after noon. As the afternoon progressed, about 42,000 fans had gathered at the track.
Tickets for the show were $10, a price some felt was too high.
(In 2012 dollars, that $10 ticket would cost $46.55 and would seem like a bargain today.)
Still, track officials estimated a few thousands fans had scaled the fences and got in for free. Everything seemed in place for a concert to remember. It would be, just not in the way that was expected.
Two other letters could have been added to CSNY that day – R and M. Rain and mud became the day’s unexpected headliners.
Santana played in a drizzle as the band took the stage around 5:30pm and ran through such songs as “Evil Ways” and “Soul Sacrifice."
The light precipitation was the opening act for a steadier rain that began as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young opened their set around 7:30pm with “Love the One Your With” from a protected stage set up on the track’s infield.
John Scanlon, then a 22-year-old newspaper reporter from Gloucester County and a big Neil Young fan, attended the concert with two friends. He recalled the deteriorating conditions that day.
“The track’s infield area was just crammed with people, most of us sitting, but the rain was heavy,” he said. “It just went on and on as if the cloud had stalled above the track, and it turned the place into a quagmire of mud and water. Everybody had to stand; there was no choice about it.”
At 67, Neil Young still performs with the youthful exuberance that his surname might imply, galvanizing legions of fans of varied ages who showed up for a Superstorm Sandy benefit show at the Borgata Event Center Thursday evening, Dec. 6. All proceeds from the event were donated to the American Red Cross.
The proceeds from the Atlantic City show — tickets ($75 and $150) go on sale Nov. 30 at 10am — are going to aid victims of Superstorm/Hurricane Sandy.
The musician and artist will make two special Jersey Shore appearances this weekend , including a show at Borgata and an artist reception in Stone Harbor at Ocean Galleries.
"It just blazed. But it was freezing cold and pissing down rain and we played until we were going to get electrocuted and we had to stop."
Twelve days after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took mankind’s initial steps on the moon, Atlantic County braced for another first — the staging of the Atlantic City Pop Festival. The roster of acts spanned the musical spectrum.
As purveyors of some of the most poignant songs of the rock era, it would seem that David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash were working from an agenda when they were turning out their counterculture messages more than 40 years ago.
THE FOLK-ROCK TRIO Crosby, Stills and Nash make a stop during their summer tour at the Borgata's Event Center Friday night. Although they're without sometime band mate Neil Young, the trio is armed with a new double-CD by a couple of its members (Crosby-Nash) and a presidential campaign in full swing. That's right, as announced recently, David Crosby and Graham Nash are jointly running for President of the United States. When asked who their vice president candidate would be at a press conference last month, Nash replied, "We'll have two presidents, and between us we have vice covered." Even though Nash was born in England and the legendary singer-songwriters clearly endorse the Kerry-Edwards ticket on their official web site (crosbystillsnash.com), the comical campaign includes a light-hearted commercial that can also be viewed on line at crosbynash2004.com. Recording and touring together -- and with solo projects -- for the past 35 years, CSN (and sometimes Y) are responsible for a plethora of music over the years. The trio's self titled 1969 debut, which included the songs "Long Time Gone," "Marrakesh Express" and "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," and the following year's Déj� Vu, with the classics "Our House," "Almost Cut My Hair" and...
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1. HUGE CSNY Fan said... on Sep 5, 2012 at 03:53PM
“I WISH I was there!! Oh boy! Anyone got audio?”
2. strick said... on Sep 8, 2012 at 09:03PM
“If I remember, the newly formed band, Foreigner, actually opened first,
followed by Santana.”
3. Pete Fernandez said... on Mar 11, 2013 at 10:34AM
“Yeah I was there with dudes I hung around with, my first concert, I was just 17. Hitchhiked, picked up by friend, we lived 10 miles away. BEST seats in the house. We climbed up and sat on the doorway box. Its a set of of doors you go into before main doors to help keep air condition in. We could see everything. The sound was great up there and the rain set the mood. It was awesome. One thing that was funny was to hear friend yell "all man" because the pocket size water pipe fell off and broke. In the lingo back than..."Far Out"”
4. JOE SANTO said... on Mar 12, 2013 at 03:01PM
“I WAS THERE ALSO WITH 8 FRIENDS FROM THE PENNS GROVE CARNEYS POINT AREA WEST OF AC. A FRIEND AND MYSELF SCALED THE CYCLONE FENCE THEY HAD ERECTED AT THE END OF ASPHALT BEFORE THE DIRT WHICH WAS THE RACE TRACK. IT WAS WANNA OF THE BEST CONCERTS EVER, IT RAINED THRU ALL OF SANTANA AND HALFWAY THRU CSNY, CLEARED UP AND THE AIR WAS CRISP AND THE ACOUSTICS WERE AWESOME. IT WAS MUDDY ON THE DIRT TRACK, BUT WE HAD HUGE PLASTIC BAGS THAT THE OTHERS WERE PASSING OUT. STAYED THE WHOLE CONCERT RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF THE STAGE, GOT BLASTED, PLENTY OF POT TO GO AROUND ALSO. I CAN REMEMBER WHEN IT WAS OVER WHEN WE LEFT PEOPLE WERE DRIVING THEIR CARS THRU THE HUGE HEDGES THAT LANDSCAPED THE TRACK IT WAS SOMETHING TO SEE THEN. THIS IS ONE EVENING I WILL NEVER FORGET. LIKE I SAID ONE OF THE BEST TIMES I SAW AND HAD!!!!!!!!!!! LATER”
5. Jerry Smith said... on Apr 12, 2013 at 07:49PM
“I was there that day. I had just graduated from army boot camp at fort dix a couple pf days before. Santana was incredible, playing though light rain. The heavy stuff started coming down between acts, and we didn't think CSNY would even play, because of the lightning close by. We stayed on the track, in the mud. Someone had a large roll or sheets of plastic, that moved about over our heads as people pulled on it from every direction to get some cover from the downpour. We all chanted the rain chant from woodstock. Being just 17 years old and just out of army boot camp , I, of course, was indestructible. It was a great concert. Completely unforgetable.
Of course we all knew that Nixon had resigned that day, so Four Dead In Ohio was particularly memorable.”