A Gathering of the Tribes

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A Gathering of the Tribes was a two-day music festival organized by The Cult's Ian Astbury with Bill Graham at the head of Bill Graham Productions. This two day music and culture festival was a precursor to the Lollapalooza touring festivals of the 1990s. Held at the Shoreline Amphitheatre Mountain View and the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa on October 6 and 7th 1990, the artists featured were Soundgarden, Ice T, Indigo Girls, Queen Latifah, Joan Baez, Ian Jones of The Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, The Charlatans UK, The Cramps, The Mission U.k. and Public Enemy. Ice T (in 1991) and Soundgarden (in 1992 and 1996) would later go on to play at Lollapalooza.

Due to recent violence at Public Enemy concerts, Public Enemy did not appear on the bill for the first concert in Mountain View. The news covered the potential security cancellation all day. The crowd was starting to drive in. Before disappointed Public Enemy fans arrived at the The Tent, it was announced they would not be performing.

Lenny Kravitz, also on the bill, did not perform that day.

Joan Baez sang a duet with The Inidgo Girls. Chris Cornell rocked his hair. Iggy Pop cut himself with glass and was bleeding during his performance of Lust For Life. The Cramps stole the evening. Queen Latifa and Ice T were at the top of their game and ruled the stage during the day. The gathering was a diverse, exciting sharing of a concert space of large pop sub-cultures that did not at that time normally attend concerts together. These two days capped a period of extreme eclectic cultures - Rap, Modern Rock, Grunge, Classic Rock, and Folk and brought them together in a way that defined the rest of the decade.

While the both concerts were sold out and the event influential, they were also problematic for Astbury. He believes he spent $50,000 of his own money without a profit return.

Held at the height of a "retro-sixties" psychedelic era, LSD, mushroom and marijuana use was commonplace in the crowd. The two day multi-location California event was held to raise money for and awareness of Native-American-related causes. Tribal Native American blessings were performed from the stage at the start each day's of music. The Cult leader was inspired by a chance meeting while on a 1989 tour with Metallica in North Dakota. After watching a Native American man fix his truck, he was invited to his house for dinner.

During an animated conversation, he found his new friend was about to study resource management at college to help purify his tribe's drinking water. "Then he asked me what I was doing for my community," Astbury recalled. "I could only answer 'Fuck all' and that came as a bad shock to me....I began to plan the Gathering of the Tribes, which was definitely the inspiration for Lollapalooza."

[edit] Other Gathering of the Tribes

A Gathering of the Tribes is also the name of an alternative Rainbow Gathering, held in Missouri and described as a Peaceful Freedom Assembly.

A Pagan festival called Gathering of the Tribes was held in the forests of Northwest Maryland in 1967 by Y Tylwyth Teg. There is an event called The Original Gathering of the Tribes, hosted by Darkwood and the Celtic Church of Dynion Mwyn at PanGaea Sanctuary in Georgia, which seems to be the same event. Others claim the Dynion Mwyn Gathering is not affiliated with or associated with any other festival using the name Gathering of the Tribes, whether held in the U.S. or a foreign country. They have held it in Georgia since 1971 in various locations: near Atlanta, near Athens, Georgia, then Unicoi State Park, and several other locations including Indian Springs State Park, and Etowah River Campgrounds. [1]

There is another Pagan festival called Gathering of the Tribes in Virginia, held both in the spring and the fall, and sponsored by Out of the Dark, Inc. & FCMS Inc. They claim that the one run by Y Tylwyth Teg has copied them and their materials. Their event and claims can be viewed at [2]