Ghost In The Machine: 1981/82

US Festival 'creatively' better than Woodstock...

Carlos Santana wasn't the first performer to mention Woodstock from the US Festival stage, and he probably won't be the last. But he had better reason than most, having been both places.

"I feel very grateful to see all the beautiful people from Woodstock here. Thank you very much for your presence," he said, somewhat enigmatically, during his band's hour-plus set on Saturday, the second day of the weekend rock marathon in progress here.

Perhaps he thinks of Woodstock as a state of mind. It's anybody's guess as to how many of the thousands here may have also been at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, held near Bethel, N.Y., in August 1969.

Carlos Santana was there. So was Bill Graham, the US Festival promoter who was also one of the organizers of Woodstock. "Woodstock was not a success," he said, asked in a short interview to compare the two. "Too many people had a lousy time. We have a vastly improved system here. We have all the latest advancements in sound technology. The size of the stage is massive. We have better visuals, a wider spectrum of entertainers. Creatively, this is better, absolute Creatively, this is better, absolutely."

Graham would have found few arguments among festival goers Saturday, as the US Festival Saturday, as the US Festival passed the halfway point with a 12 hour siege of rock 'n' roll that started at noon and extended past midnight.

If the theme of Friday's opening concert was New Wave, the general idea Saturday was straight- ahead mainstream rock. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers headed a ty and the Heartbreakers headed a line-up that featured veteran bands such as Santana and the Kinks and such relative new- comers as Pat Benatar and the Cars.

An estimated crowd of nearly 200,000, significantly larger than Friday's audience, dotted most of the landscape within the 57-acre grass amphitheater carved out of the Devore hills. But nobody had any trouble hearing the music, boomed with 300,000 watts of power through a massive system of more than 300 speakers.

Many in the audience had been present the night before when Fri- day's headliner The Police provided an emotional climax to the US Festival's opening day.

A full moon in the night sky was answered below by the brightly illuminated, rainbow coloured US Festival stage, which resembled the mother ship in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." The thousands of people gathered in the night cheered wildly when The Police took the stage at 11pm, their images enlarged on two screens beside the stage and on a smaller but sharper Diamond Vision screen overhead.

"Do you see the full moon?" cried lead singer Sting, pointing to the sky. "It's no accident!"

The Police, which has transcended its New Wave-reggae roots to become one of the premier bands in rock music, kept the spirit alive with an intense hour-and-a-half performance of most of its most popular material, including 'Spirits in the Material World' and 'Roxanne'.

Saturday got off to a somewhat laconic start, and it may have been that many in the audience were drained after Friday's high-voltage dose of New Wave. Or it may have been the fact that the crowd was more congested, and the concert bill was longer, and the day was hot and there were rumours of a water shortage. Or it may have been that festival-goers were simply sitting back a bit, like baseball fans do during the middle innings of a game.

Whatever the reason, during most of the daylight hours Saturday the crowd was much less demonstrative than Friday's crowd had been.

"Watch when Santana plays," predicted Louie Valdez, of Highland Park, as he sipped a beer shortly after noon in one of the festival's two beer gardens. "No matter what colour you are, you're gonna see everybody dancing when Santana comes on."

But it didn't happen. Though the fans cheered noisily, there was none of the duststorm-raising dancing that had been going on Friday during the English Beat's set.

Saturday's opener Dave Edmunds set the relaxed tone with his good-natured brand of English rockabilly, featuring such tunes as 'I Hear You Knockin' (But You Can't Come In)' and Juice Newton's 'Queen of Hearts'.

Next up was Eddie Money, a former Brooklyn cop with a husky voice and sexy hip-grinding mannerisms, a la Engelbert Humperdinck, which sometimes made him look like a lounge lizard lost in the desert. But he got a big hand with his big hit, 'Two Tickets to Paradise'.

Santana took the stage next, and the venerable band played a full sampler from its long repertoire of Latin-jazzed rock. The band's older, better-known material scored the most, particularly an extended jam from the classic 'Abraxas' album, during which keyboardist Herbie Hancock made a cameo appearance.

As the day waned the crowd seemed to catch a second wind. The Cars, a Boston band led by slack-jawed singer Rik Ocasek, got things in gear with its glossy blend of catchy tunes and synthetic effects. The band did most of its big numbers, starting off appropriately with 'Let the Good Times Roll', its first hit.

Next up was the Kinks, a survivor of the '60s British invasion with one of the most likeable and well-aging sounds and one of the longest playlists in rock. Lead singer Ray Davies kept everybody's memory tickled with such Kinks classics as 'Lola'
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The evening was set to end with musical fireworks featuring Pat Benatar, who has become one of rock's four-octave heavyweights with such potent hits as 'You Better Run' and 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot', and headliner Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, a no-nonsense power-hitting band with a long string of monster hits such as 'Restless', 'I Need to Know' and 'Refugee'.

The US Festival closes today with the following schedule: The Grateful Dead, 9:30am to noon; Jerry Jeff Walker, 12:30 to 1:15pm.; Jimmy Buffett, 1:45 to 2:45pm; Jackson Browne, 3:25 to 4:55pm, and Fleetwood Mac, 5:45pm. to closing.

(c) The San Bernardino County Sun by John Weeks