Flashback: The actual worst music festival of all time
You get Woodstock, and then you get the Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival, the actual worst music festival of all time!
The latter not outshining the former, on the contrary likened to the worst music festival EVER.
There have been many festivals in the area of ‘worst ever’ and 2017 even saw its fair share with ‘Fyre Festival’ and ‘The Gathering,’ but none can compare to the calibre of disaster that was Soda Pop.
Soda Pop was held in Indiana on Labour Day weekend, 3 years after the iconic ‘Woodstock 1969.’
The star-studded bill featured acts like Fleetwood Mac, Black Sabbath, The Allman Brothers and The Eagles and the novice promoters expected 50 000 people to attend.
Pop goes the festival
However the people from Chandler, Indiana were having none of it and the mayor shut the event down before it even began.
While promoters were looking for a new venue, acts like Rod Stewart and Black Sabbath cancelled.
Eventually they stumbled upon the swampy terrain of Bull Island, and thus Soda Pop was fizzing up again.
On Labour Day weekend 250 000 people, possibly riding the Woodstock afterglow, possibly still tripping, descended upon Bull Island expecting their world to be rocked.
The literal and figurative flood gates opened as a quarter million people crammed into camp grounds meant for 50 000 while the heavens opened up to drown them like ants.
They ran out of all supplies excepting for drugs as one partygoer remembers how “It was easier to buy drugs than it was to buy water.”
Sadly, two people died at the event (which is actually a quite minimal considering the carnage that ensued).
To read the full story, check out the feature on the Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival at Ozy.com – this one seems to take the cake as the worst music festival of all time!
