The Rockologist: Concert Hippies, Beer, and Rock And Roll

With the summer concert season just around the corner, let's be honest here - this is also the time when the hippies start to come out of the woodwork.

Personally, I've no idea what these long-haired leftovers from the psychedelic era do for the remaining nine months of the year — least of all, how they are able to support themselves — but come summertime, the freak flags fly high once again, and particularly so on the outdoor concert circuit.

You know the ones I'm talking about. They are most often seen during the festival season, at places like Bonnaroo, Coachella, and perhaps to a somewhat lesser extent at Lollapalooza in Chicago. The women sport way too much underarm hair, wear long flowing granny dresses (when they aren't going topless anyway), and they do that inexplicable fertility dance thang that they do.

The guys? Well they go mostly shirtless, gray, and hairy as hell, with their braided ponytails batting you about in the face at right about the point you just want to see Sting singing about "Roxanne" during that first Police encore.

You know them. You love them. They are the concert hippies.

Here in Seattle at least, this year promises to be a particularly big one on the concert hippie circuit. Out at the Gorge Ampitheatre overlooking the Columbia River, we've not only got the annual Dave Matthews Band Labor Day shindig, there's also a two-night stand with perennial concert hippie faves Phish, and a triple bill with the Allman Brothers, the Dead, and the Doobies.

The view will be panoramic, the music will be great, and the hippies - well, they'll be there too. Why? Because we're talking nothing less than concert hippie heaven here.

As a longtime concert veteran, I've been interacting and otherwise dealing with concert hippies for years. Generally speaking, they come in several varieties, but what I've largely found is that the stoner guys can be a lot of fun, while the drunk guys are much less so.

During a Rolling Stones show around 1990 for example, I had the unfortunate instance of having a drunk hippie seated next to me in my seventh row seat at Seattle's Kingdome - a seat I paid some pretty decent scratch for I might add. The guy stank something fierce of the same sort of rotgut wine I drank as a teenager (Who besides me out there remembers Mad Dog 20/20?).

Article Author: Glen Boyd

You'll find Blogcritics assistant music editor Glen Boyd sharing his Thoughtmares on his personal blogs The World Wide Glen, and The Rockologist. In a previous life, Glen was a music professional and journalist whose work has appeared in The Rocket, SPIN, Pulse!, and The Source. …

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