For Your Weekend Listening Pleasure: The Texas International Pop Festival "Box Set"

By Robert Wilonsky Sat., Nov. 20 2010 at 11:00 AM

Categories: Music

Richard Hayner, keeper of the Texas International Pop Festival website, maintains he's still -- still -- writing a book about that Labor Day Weekend when Angus Wynne brought Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, B.B. King, Ten Years After, Santana, Johnny Winter, Sly and the Family Stone and on and on and on to Lewisville in 1969. Hayner too is the man who took it upon himself to raise the dough to make the historical marker he intends to sink in the soil where once the old Dallas International Motor Speedway. But as recently as Thursday, per the Texas Pop Fest message board, it would appear his efforts have stalled; wrote Hayner, left to overcome are "legal issues, insurance, all kinds of budget items" he's not equipped to handle.

For now, and since forever, the story of the Texas International Pop Festival remains a thick scrapbook scattered all over the place. There's the unreleased doc Got No Shoes, Got No Blues, excerpts from which show up on YouTube regularly. (See: Grand Funk Railroad. Zep. The James Cotton Blues Band. Ten Years After.) The September 5, 1969, Associated Press piece in which Mayor Sam Houston declares: "No more pop festivals held in Lewisville." This New York Times excerpt: "More than 25,000 youthful rock fans gathered in a grassy drag strip here to shout, clap and groove on the music and each other." And, of course, Hayner's website, which remains the ultimate repository.

So, then, to the music: More than once we've directed your attention to the Zep set -- which, as Angus has recounted, the band didn't know it had agreed to play till it was too late to back out. But here you'll find the infamous, coveted box set: 13 volumes of sets complete and abridged. (A tip: Megaload.) It's almost easier to recount who's not here -- no Nazz, sadly, or Freddie King. Still, in time for Thanksgiving, a rock-and-roll-and cornucopia.

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