Sunday, Sep. 13, 2009

Terry Mackin: MRF was my own little Woodstock

For the record, I wasn't at Woodstock.

I was only 10 years old in August 1969.

I didn't get much farther than the sandlot across from my home or the neighborhood confectionary a few blocks away.

I don't know anyone who attended Woodstock in person, either.

Woodstock attendees are the generation ahead of me. They're 60-plus years old today. Yesterday's flower children are grandparents today.

Far out, man.

Woodstock is receiving a lot of attention this summer due to its 40th anniversary last month.

If, like me, you were a teenager or college student during the 1970s here in the St. Louis region, you know our annual Woodstock was the Mississippi River Festival held on the grounds of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

Don't panic. I'm not going to give details of lawn-seat adventures at an MRF concert in summer 1977. Let's all bow our heads and be grateful there were no camera phones or Facebook pages.

MRF outdoor concerts were not quite Woodstock-like, but they sure were a lot of fun for a generation of music lovers.

MRF concerts at SIU-E started in 1969 and continued until 1980. They were in their heyday in the mid-1970s while I was finishing high school and entering college.

I saw some great bands at the MRF. The Band. The Eagles. Dan Fogelberg. Jefferson Starship. REO Speedwagon. Rod Stewart. B.B King, James Taylor, Harry Chapin. The Marshall Tucker Band. ELO. BTO.

My favorite MRF concert was The Eagles for their "Hotel California" tour. Joe Walsh had just joined the band. We bought reserved seats under the tent. It was worth it.

It rained so hard one summer night at The Doobies Brothers concert that we literally slipped and slid in the mud on the way to our cars, and spent half the night pushing cars out of theparking lot.

I bet I saw The Ozark Mountain Daredevils and Pure Prairie League a dozen or more times. They were the opening acts for what seemed like every show. That was OK. I liked them.

MRF concerts usually were held on weeknights. We'd cram eight or more guys into one car and drive from Belleville to Edwardsville. Interstate 255 wasn't built yet. So we'd take Illinois 157, from Edgemont, through Caseyville and Collinsville, to the SIUE campus.

You could count on the Caseyville Police to be on the side of the road to monitor us on the way to and from the MRF.

I never received a ticket because I knew they'd be there.

The MRF site was on the northern part of campus, on the west side of North University Drive and south of Poag Road. It seemed like a huge farm field. The natural amphitheater was used as the location for graduation ceremonies beginning in 1963, long before the MRF began.

I had no idea where the concerts were actually held on the SIUE campus. We all just followed the traffic, parked our cars for free, and hiked toward that huge tent in the distance.

We splurged for reserved tickets under the tent on only a few occasions. The Eagles, James Taylor and Jackson Browne were exceptions. Mostly, we paid a couple of bucks to sit in the general admission seats in the lawn.

You could barely see the band under the tent way down below but you could always hear the music loudly.

Besides, when you sat in the lawn seats, you didn't have time to watch the bands because there were sights, sounds and people that you didn't see every day, in daylight, in the Belleville area.

Long-haired, freaky people.

Short-haired, scary people.

Flower children.

Bikers, poets, burnouts, lovers and scholars.

And plenty of us wide-eyed, middle-class kids, with our long hair and peach-fuzz mustaches acting concert cool like we were once at Woodstock ourselves.

We didn't dance in the mud, but we watched others do so a few times.

Unfortunately, during the last couple of years, MRF rock concerts were marred by isolated instances of drug abuse, thefts and violence. The MRF began to receive negative publicity. It was time to pull the plug. Nobody protested. All good things must end.

The MRF wasn't quite Woodstock but it allowed me to see some great stars, under the stars.