On Labor Day weekend 1972, quite possibly the worst rock festival ever, known as The Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival, was held near Griffin, Indiana on Bull Island, a strip of land on the Indiana side of the Wabash River. The island is however actually in Illinois, which was important because it had previously been ruled in the courts that the promoters were not allowed to hold the festival in Indiana. They found their loophole.

The festival was originally billed to be “bigger than Woodstock” and was to be held near Evansville Indiana, with The Faces as the feature act. The Faces dropped out but the final scheduled lineup was still pretty impressive: Black Sabbath, Joe Cocker, Allman Brothers, John Mayall, Cheech & Chong, Canned Heat, Fleetwood Mac, Ballin' Jack, Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes, Bob Seger, Bang, Ravi Shankar, Albert King, Brownsville Station, Mike Quatro, Gentle Giant, Black Oak Arkansas, Eagles, The Chambers Brothers, Boones Farm, Slade, Nazareth, and Delbert & Glenn. However, after the festival kicked off, several scheduled bands sent in their agents to assess the situation, received their reports, packed up and departed. (You’ll soon know why.) Sabbath, Cocker, the Allmans, Mayall, Seger, and Fleetwood Mac did not perform and were replaced with the likes of Flash Cadillac & the Continental Kids, Ramatam, Santana, Flash, Farm, CK Thunder and Vince Vance and the Valiants. Supposedly Nugent, Shankar and Brownsville Station ultimately highlighted the performances. The last remaining headliner, Cheech & Chong, helicoptered in, played 15 minutes in a downpour, and left.  

A crowd of about 55k was initially estimated to be in attendance but attendance swelled to at least  200k. The only access to Bull Island was through Indiana but Indiana provided no police presence since the show was technically in Illinois. Initially, the only police on the festival grounds were 3 county deputy sheriffs from Illinois.  That’s one cop per every 66k fans. You can probably guess how things eventually turned out. Over the three days, the festival drifted steadily into anarchy. Some highlights:

-The rampant act cancellations left long periods of silence on stage.

-Food and water were in short supply. A truck bringing food into the festival was hijacked, looted and burned. When vendors overcharged for food and drinks, the folks turned over many of the RVs and robbed the vendors

-A torrential rain soaked the festival.

-A concert goer drowned in the Wabash River, one died of an overdose and a third was run over by a truck as she slept in a makeshift campsite.

-As the festival ended, the remnants of the crowd burned the music stand. Following the concert, the promoters were ensnared in multiple lawsuits by the owner of Bull Island, vendors, the Internal Revenue Service, the State of Illinois, and the State of Indiana. The promoters were eventually found in contempt of court and fined several thousand dollars. See wrist, slap.

Hard drugs and marijuana appeared to be the only materials readily available. “The dope district looked like double rows of fish stands at the county fair!” noted an attendee named Dennis. “There were rows of big, old-style washtubs full of sugar cubes, with a sign stuck in saying “25c a hit.” It wasn’t all good vibes and wavy gravy, though. Much of the acid for sale was laced with strychnine. Festival organizers took to the speaker system to warn people to avoid it. Even worse, numerous accounts note that some peddlers in the dope district sold bleach posed as a number of substances.

The sanitation situation was just as chaotic. “The promoters had planned to drill thirty to forty wells and create around four hundred outdoor toilets,” states Mof Giffard of Anorak. “What punters ended up with were a few stagnant or dry wells and six privies.” As the rain turned the festival grounds into a muddy slurry, a particular pasture was named “The Turd Fields,” as people relieved themselves in the slop.

Have a good Labor Day, ya’ll. And stay away from The Turd Fields.