Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Powder Ridge Rock Festival

This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Keep. Rx StrangeLove 16:54, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Powder Ridge Rock Festival

Subliterate substub about a rock concert that never actually happened. Delete. Calton | Talk 07:54, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

• Keep, notable, not a substub. Also please don't bite the newbies. Kappa 10:42, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Indeed. However, I see that JvaGoddess's first contribution to Wikipedia was 13 December 2001. (!). So let's just say "please don't bite people." Dpbsmith (talk) 13:20, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

• No vote yet. I sorta like it. The question in my mind is whether this was a notable fiasco. Was it mentioned in the national press? In _Billboard_ or _Rolling Stone_ or publications that chronicle rock concerts? That is certainly one notable bunch of musicians. Do biographies about them mention the failed concert? The article is so badly written I can't actually tell whether the event took place or not. "Rock Doctor William Abruzzi ... was there to treat bad LSD trips, and said there were more bad trips at Powder Ridge per capata, than any other music festival he'd ever worked." Dpbsmith (talk) 13:00, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Mark for cleanup of course. See this interesting article in The Hartford Advocate. These two paragraphs in the article convince me the event was notable:

"Powder Ridge was a disaster waiting to happen, and it happened," Middletown author William Manchester wrote in his 1974 book The Glory and the Dream .

"A cloud of marijuana hung over the central portion of the resort last night, and drug dealers sold their wares openly. Some moved through the crowd crying, 'Acid, mescaline, acid, mescaline,'" the New York Times reported.

So, it was mentioned in a Manchester's quite notable book (subtitled "A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972" and still in print,) and it was mentioned in The New York Times. A tip of the hat to JvaGoddess for starting the article and roughing it in. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:07, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

P. S. Since writing this, I've dug up a copy of Manchester's book. It isn't just a brief mention in passing, he spends nearly two pages on it. He considers it important in relation to the whole rise and fall of the hippie-rock-concert phenomenon. Mentions that despite the court injunction the promoters kept hinting that the festival might take place anyway, and people believed it because basically that is what had happened with Woodstock, which had been banned from its planned location and moved elsewhere. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:15, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

• Delete. Andrew pmk | Talk 23:10, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Got a reason? Dpbsmith (talk) 12:09, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. I was able to find a reference to this in the August 10, 1970 issue of Barron's National Business and Financial Weekly (Vol. 50, Iss. 32; p. 3). The article in which the reference appears, "Rated "X"; The Movie Business These Days Is Not for Widows and Orphans," is about the poor financial showing of a documentary about Woodstock, but the article itself begins by saying, "When last month's Powder Ridge Rock Festival failed, so to speak, to come off, no one had more of a bummer than an enterprising company of independent moviemakers from Hollywood . . . But the big-time, big-name music--raison d'etre of any rock fest--was missing, offically turned off at the last minute by Middlefield's city fathers." According to an article in the June 30, 1985 issue of the Chicago Tribune about the Live Aid concert, 30,000 fans showed up at Powder Ridge in 1970 even though it was cancelled. That people were talking about it in the news media 15 years later is evidence of notability. Crypticfirefly 04:00, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, there was an article in Life magazine at the time about the concert fiasco. See [1]. --Metropolitan90 04:22, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Notable non-event, widely discussed and covered at the time, in the context of Woodstock, Altamont, etc. and rock-festival culture. I had contemporaneous knowledge of it via mass media (TV, radio, newspapers) even though I was not in the region. MCB 06:52, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
• Comment Great stuff, hope I won't be alone in nibbling away at this article when I get time. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:17, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep If it is subliterate, then clean it up User:Calton. "Subliterate" is no reason to delete. This was a highly notable event that failed at the last minute with thousands of fans showing up. --AI 05:35, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep - OK, this rock concert was no Woodstock, but it is notable because it demonstrates what could happen (with drugs, general rowdiness etc.) if a gig isn't organised properly, and proves to be a commercial failure at the last minute. Andrew 11:11, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.