Mother Earth has left the building.
On a rainy night, the old hippies are being hustled out the door. It was supposed to be a reunion party for the radicals, scenesters and music freaks who, from 1971 to '74, frequented the rotting, rococo, hangarlike second floor of the El Torreon Building at 31st Street and Gillham, back when it was the all-rockin' Cowtown Ballroom.
A growing crowd of 100 or so people, mostly in their 60s, has come out for the second night of festivities surrounding the premiere of the locally produced documentary Cowtown Ballroom ... Sweet Jesus! Most of them haven't set foot in the place in more than 35 years.
The night before, at an advance screening at the Tivoli, many had watched themselves onscreen, talking about the years when rock superstars such as Alice Cooper, Van Morrison and Frank Zappa made the Ballroom the place to be for live music in Kansas City.
Tonight, the men who made the film invited them to return to their toking grounds. Joe Heyen and Anthony Ladesich spent the last two years interviewing hundreds of people and pulling together mountains of decades-old film reels, posters and photos to piece together their 85-minute love letter to the Kansas City of the early '70s.
But now, about an hour into the party, a representative from the Haddad Restaurant Group, which owns the building, arrives to shut it down. The cross-looking woman accuses Heyen of not having insurance or a permit or something. There's no liquor, so people have been milling around drinking soda while Chet Nichols strums his guitar, amplified by a small PA. Off in the corner, a flower child in a rain poncho twirls and pirouettes unselfconsciously through his entire low-key performance.
The party moves to the Tower Tavern, which in some ways is an improvement because there's a bar. Still, people are reeling a bit from having been kicked out of their old home away from home.
"There are a bunch of geriatric hippies celebrating something wonderful in their lives that happened in the '70s. That's threatening!" jokes Dan "Mort" Moriarty.
Moriarty was among the four founders of Good Karma Productions, which operated the Ballroom. "We wanted this San Francisco feel," Moriarty told me the night before. "What happened, in a totally miraculous way, was it had a Kansas City feel."
At the beginning of the film, between sound bites from Black Oak Arkansas singer Jim Dandy (who looks like he has lived about eight and a half of his rock lives and who says the Ballroom "was a social experiment in terror"), Michael Brewer of Brewer and Shipley says the biggest part of the '60s happened in the '70s.
That was certainly true of the Midwest. People of my generation won't recognize the Kansas City in the film.
For years, Volker Park (now known as Theis Park) was a mini-Woodstock every Sunday, entire hippie families filling the grounds from the Nelson-Atkins to Brush Creek for drug-addled, music-enhanced revelry. In Westport, head shops such as Tiny Tim's Magic Circus were everywhere.
Mary Ann Wynkoop, head of the American studies program at UMKC, gives the academic perspective on free love; singer-songwriter and '70s survivor Howard Iceberg sums up the layman's side: "It was a time when people enjoyed each other."
Why the fuck hadn't I heard of Fanny? The California four-piece (no pun intended) wasn't only the first all-female rock band signed to a major label but was also multicultural, with two members originally from the Philippines. Fanny played the Ballroom twice, in '73 and '74, and Cowtown features footage of the slender, longhaired "original godmothers of chick rock" living the teenage boy's rock-and-roll dream.
Handsome British bluesman Rory Gallagher guitar-gasmed for two and a half hours on 3/24/74, and Springfield's Ozark Mountain Daredevils, which got its start at the Ballroom, was the original Kings of Leon.
The film also touches on Kansas City's racial history, tracing the venue's origins as one of the nation's first integrated jazz clubs (est. 1927), through its two midcentury decades as a roller rink, to its zenith as the wild concert hall that hosted white bluegrassers the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and black bluesmen B.B. King and Danny Cox.
And there was the war. In the film's most moving moment, local Vietnam vet Bill Beaumont talks about being under fire in the jungle. He reproduces, with eerie accuracy, the whistling sounds of mortar shells and describes the false autumn of falling leaves cut by bullets and shrapnel. After coming home, Beaumont threw himself into the Cowtown scene and designed posters for the venue.
Critics may say the film won't seem relevant outside Kansas City. But I think anyone interested in the history of rock and America in the '60s will find lots to love.
Certainly everyone in town should see it during its two-week run at the Tivoli starting May 22. More than anything, it shows — with humor, pride and vigor — a time more recent than the jazz era when KC was truly wild and cool.
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This article was UMKC and volker park related so I thought somone might want to read it:
http://www.intellectualconserv...
This article was UMKC and volker park related so I thought somone might want to read it: http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2010/12/08/how-to-create-a-crisis-and-steal-a-nation/
I think this is a wonderful idea and any of us who was there will enjoy it I know I will!!!! That area was my old stomping grounds anyone remember The Place??
I think this is a wonderful idea and any of us who was there will enjoy it I know I will!!!! That area was my old stomping grounds anyone remember The Place??
I was in K.C, living with a bunch of hippies around the westport area...help build that freedom palace place,...then split for Calif/oregon and am still here...where did all the hippies go?
I was in K.C, living with a bunch of hippies around the westport area...help build that freedom palace place,...then split for Calif/oregon and am still here...where did all the hippies go?
I'm so glad I got in on the tail end of the well produced chemicals. Completely changed my life for the better!
I'm so glad I got in on the tail end of the well produced chemicals. Completely changed my life for the better!
that is neat I used to go there all the time when I was young I like the park it was real neat
that is neat I used to go there all the time when I was young I like the park it was real neat
Devin, you definitely did the right thing going to the library. The Missouri Valley room is probably your best bet in finding older things from the Star. If you haven't asked the staff for assistance, be sure to do that.
You may also want to stop by the Marr Sound Archives at UMKC. They have archival collections apart from recordings and since he was a musician there may be something there. You could pick Mr. Hadddix's brain for memories of your father as well.
Devin, you definitely did the right thing going to the library. The Missouri Valley room is probably your best bet in finding older things from the Star. If you haven't asked the staff for assistance, be sure to do that. You may also want to stop by the Marr Sound Archives at UMKC. They have archival collections apart from recordings and since he was a musician there may be something there. You could pick Mr. Hadddix's brain for memories of your father as well.
One more thing - Mom also used to work at the Freedom Palace.
God, things had cooler names back then...
Forgot to include my contact info: Devin Sells, (816)399-5002, 3435 Holmes, KCMO 64109, cdsells1969@yahoo.com...
Thanks!
I would very much like to see that film.
Turns out my father, one Steve Mitchell, met my mother (Susan - she used to work at the Cowtown Ballroom and the Genuine Article, among other places) at a concert he was playing there at Volker Park (would've been 1968, I guess - I was born in July of '69).
She mentioned that he played at The Aquarius on 39th and Main, and I used to have two clippings from the KC Star (1969 - 1971, I think, can't remember exactly). It's hard to locate old articles on microfiche at the library without an index - I did manage to find one of the two there a few years back, but it was just a small, wide-angle photo and caption.
One of them (the one I found again at the library) showed him playing at Westport Road and Pennsylvania (near Kelly's), and the other showed him playing guitar onstage at Volker Park, along with an interview with him and some lyrics from a song of his. I think the article was lamenting the hippie crowd and their pot-smoking ways[Heavens!], or something like that...
Anyhow, if any of you folks happen to remember anything about my father, Steve Mitchell, I'd appreciate it if you'd call me or drop me a line, or reply here.
I've only seen these very small, grainy B/W pics of him from the clippings, and if anyone could help me fill in a few blanks, or point me in the right direction, I would be very grateful. I don't know if he's still alive or not, or how I feel about him, or how he feels about me - but I'd still like to know a little more than I do now, y'know?
Thanks again - now, I gotta go see that movie!
One more thing - Mom also used to work at the Freedom Palace. God, things had cooler names back then...
Forgot to include my contact info: Devin Sells, (816)399-5002, 3435 Holmes, KCMO 64109, cdsells1969@yahoo.com... Thanks!
I would very much like to see that film. Turns out my father, one Steve Mitchell, met my mother (Susan - she used to work at the Cowtown Ballroom and the Genuine Article, among other places) at a concert he was playing there at Volker Park (would've been 1968, I guess - I was born in July of '69). She mentioned that he played at The Aquarius on 39th and Main, and I used to have two clippings from the KC Star (1969 - 1971, I think, can't remember exactly). It's hard to locate old articles on microfiche at the library without an index - I did manage to find one of the two there a few years back, but it was just a small, wide-angle photo and caption. One of them (the one I found again at the library) showed him playing at Westport Road and Pennsylvania (near Kelly's), and the other showed him playing guitar onstage at Volker Park, along with an interview with him and some lyrics from a song of his. I think the article was lamenting the hippie crowd and their pot-smoking ways[Heavens!], or something like that... Anyhow, if any of you folks happen to remember anything about my father, Steve Mitchell, I'd appreciate it if you'd call me or drop me a line, or reply here. I've only seen these very small, grainy B/W pics of him from the clippings, and if anyone could help me fill in a few blanks, or point me in the right direction, I would be very grateful. I don't know if he's still alive or not, or how I feel about him, or how he feels about me - but I'd still like to know a little more than I do now, y'know? Thanks again - now, I gotta go see that movie!
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