9. Downer Event?
There may be one good reason Woodstock is more celebrated than Summer Jam. Preceding the Watkins Glen Raceway event, Woodstock had been the largest music festival in New York. One journalist made the obvious comparisons. “There were the same nude bathers in the same muddy ponds,” reported Judy Klemesrud in the New York Times. “The same casual sex. The same rampant drug scene… “ Klemesrud wasn’t impressed. Summer Jam offered a different drug not found at Woodstock, pharmaceutical downers or Quaaludes, otherwise known as “ludes.” This was post-war America, but also Nixon’s America. Folks felt depressed.