Hippies vs. Punks: Bloodrock 1970

Tonight Hippies vs. Punks returns once again to the year 1970.

The Ohio National Guard shootings on the campus of Kent State University took place in early May of 1970 and so did the reaction -- student strikes and campus shutdowns at over 800 colleges across the country. There was also the famous counter-riot, known as the Hard Hat Riot, of pro-war construction workers who attacked students protesting Kent State in lower Manhattan. The initial protests at Kent State that led to the Guard being called out were about Nixon's invasion of Cambodia.

The nation was at war with itself in 1970: the country was on fire, and youth were willing to fight.

In June of 1970, the Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival was staged at the home of the Reds, Crosley Field. Daylong or multi-day rock 'n' roll festivals were a big draw, despite Altamont, and promoters were always eager to cash in. The Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival is remembered because of the television film that was shot that day and then broadcast nationally in August; it featured the famous performance of The Stooges doing "T.V. Eye" where Iggy Pop goes crowd surfing. Other bands that appeared on television were Traffic, Alice Cooper, Mountain and Grand Funk Railroad.

But there were plenty of other bands performing that day who didn't make it on the Midsummer Rock broadcast. Several of these bands I had never heard of, such as the Fort Worth hard rockers Bloodrock.

The experiment I want to engage in periodically on Friday nights is to take a band from the undercard of either the 1970 Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival or the 1969 Aquarian Family Festival in San Jose or the 1976 100 Club Punk Special and, having immersed myself in their music during the work week, see if I can, with a beginner's mind, divine the time-spirit of Hippie vs. Punk. I took a stab at this with Joy of Cooking (1971), but it was really more a feint.

All week at work I listened with my ear buds to Bloodrock's first album, Bloodrock (1970), and I never tired of it. On a track here the band might sound a little too much like Blood, Sweat & Tears, and a track there you can hear Steppenwolf; other times, such as "Fantastic Piece of Architecture," Vanilla Fudge. But all in all Bloodrock sounds fresh and forceful. I particularly like the lead vocals of Jim Rutledge.

How many bands like this -- how much great music -- lie buried in the past? (I searched in vain on Robert Christgau's web site for any indication that he ever reviewed a Bloodrock recording in his forty-plus years of criticism.) The guilelessness of Bloodrock is refreshing, even its poses and pretentiousness seem more honest than the pervading Punk "everything is shit" sentimentality.

True to the spirit of the time, the Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival ended with a midnight police riot rock and bottle melee. Seventy-four arrests were made and 12 concert-goers ended up in the hospital.

I remember the summer of 1970. I remember the black asphalt road that ran in front of our house throbbing in the sun. I remember my uncle's wood-paneled Hi-Fi that took up a length of the living room blasting "Back in the U.S.S.R." I remember my father sitting with me in front of said Hi-Fi and reverentially explaining how The Who's Pete Townshend swung his electric guitar over his head and then smashed it to pieces.