FROM ROCK 'N 'ROLL TO HARD CORE PUNK - UKZN ...

32
as recording contracts, music equipment and cash prizes. Each
year, the build up to the competitions was enormous, with much
publicity given by radio stations and the press. After the Go!
Show, each moment would be re-lived by detailed articles in the
press, and interviews with bands which were successful.
In keeping with the large rock festivals held in venues
overseas, Durban promoters strove to reproduce such events
locally. The affect of Woodstock on the Durban rock psyche was
vast and many local musicians and fans alluded to the event in
letters to the press, wishing for similar events to take place
in Durban. Each year, numerous open air rock festivals would be
promised the public, with very few of them ever materialising due
to problems in obtaining permission from the relevant authorities
or because of the guest British bands being banned from coming
to South Africa.
A 24-hour beat festival was held at MilnerPark, Johannesburg
in October 1970. A local newspaper article reported the
following:
There were pop fans with long hair, pop fans with
short hair, there were girl pop fans and boy pop fans,
and they all make up the kaleidoscope of colour which
boarded a luxury bus in Durban last night bound for
Johannesburg's first 24-hour beat festival. The beat
cult was strangely subdued when they climbed into the
bus but they were obviously saving up their enthusiasm
for the thundering music which assaulted their eardrums
when they arrived at Milner Park - scene of
Johannesburg's 'Woodstock' .18
The fad for rock festivals (especially the open-air variety)
continued into the mid 'seventies, and seemed to die with the
death of the hippy dream in Durban in about 1974.
It should be noted that, due to the entrenchment of apartheid
policies, rock bands of different races did not play on the same
18 Reporter unknown, 'Just Popping Off to Jo'Burg', Newspaper unknown,
October 1970, page unknown. (From Dawn Selby's scrapbook).