{"id":234897,"date":"2026-07-03T18:49:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T18:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/234897\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T18:49:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T18:49:22","slug":"david-squires-dives-into-the-comedy-of-the-erie-canal-soda-pop-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/234897\/","title":{"rendered":"David Squires dives into the comedy of the Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"David<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ David Squires<\/p>\n

Fri 3 July 2026 14:00, UK <\/p>\n

In January, as you look ahead to a much-needed summer, festivals<\/a> stand out as a vital chance for humanity to reconnect to its roots and reckon with the crooked modern age. By mid-September, you soberly realise how far humanity has come. <\/p>\n

Showers, toilets, roofs, mattresses, taps, all acquire a magical wonder that no daft healing tent could ever possibly hope to conjure\u2026 especially if we\u2019re talking about the mid-September of 1972, shortly after The\u00a0Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival,\u00a0also known as the Bull Island Rock Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Roughly 55,000 people had been expected to rock up to Evansville, Indiana, to see the likes of Black Sabbath, Joe Cocker, Fleetwood Mac, the Allman Brothers Band, John Mayall, Santana, Bob Seger, the Eagles, Canned Heat, Ravi Shankar, Albert King, the Doors, and a whole lot more play. <\/p>\n

But as the savvy music fans among you might have noticed, that\u2019s one hell of a line-up. So, the Soda festival ended up drawing an unsuspected surplus of around 200,000 attendees. That brought the total to a safe estimate of around 250,000 in total, and with hardly enough provisions for even the original estimate, chaos ensued.<\/p>\n

In the cartoon below, David Squires brings you up to speed<\/a> with the craziest festival of the \u201970s with his unique comic stylings. Enjoy\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"David<\/a>Credit: David Squires ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> The Far Out Classic Rock Newsletter<\/p>\n

All the latest Classic Rock content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ David Squires Fri 3 July 2026 14:00, UK In January, as you look ahead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[101361,101362,815,58603,101363,136,138,137,12925,8698],"class_list":["post-234897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-1970s","tag-101362","tag-america","tag-classic-rock","tag-david-squires","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-festivals","tag-homepage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}