Click play above to hear Radio Interview with Johnny Brower
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As a favor to the father of his friend, Bob Guccione Jr. Brower agrees to produce a rock festival in the wilds of Stateline Idaho for a mysterious character named Jack Butler. Bad idea. With little or no control of the financial dealings but yet out front to the media and music industry, he sets out to bring rock and roll to a failing motor racing track.
Able to hire top bands based on his reputation, Brower brings a top-drawer crew and equipment to town. Hilarity reigns for many weeks as Brower and crew proceed to tear up Spokane Washington in true rock and roll style the likes of which locals have not seen before. But Brower finds out too late that behind the scenes, his employer has fleeced the locals and failed to pay the track owner who reneges on supplying firewood for the weekend. When the temperature plummets on opening night the audience decides to tear every piece of wood from wherever it is nailed down. A night of very cold and angry people turns into a full-scale riot the following morning, as a false rumor spreads that the festival has been cancelled.
With the sound system put away from the night before no one is able to quell the riotous crowd who proceed to burn the site and everything on it to the ground. Brower meanwhile has unknowingly broken the Mann Act countless times in taking up with a seventeen year old local beauty and driving her back and forth across the state line between Spokane and State Line Idaho (bad idea number two). The snookered investors are bent on securing the unsold tickets and destroying them to claim an insurance loss and in the process take Brower hostage at gunpoint.
He is rescued by the Spokane SWAT team and the unsold tickets and full disclosure are turned over to detectives who have arrested over thirty locals in the process of rescuing Brower. The story is again a non-stop, action packed adventure you could not make up. It ends with Brower and his crew safely back in their respective cities but warned never to return to that neck of the woods. But the siren’s call of lust and love wins out and Brower returns in disguise for one last wild weekend with Linda his teenage flame (an even worse idea). A dam break in the area all but pushes the story of the riot from the front pages but Rolling Stone Magazine manages to announce with great fanfare accompanied by a picture of the site in flames: "WELCOME TO YOUR FIRST FESTIVAL OF THE SUMMER..." To Be continued...
Images (c) 2016 to their respective owners and fans who attended the actual event.###
As a favor to the father of his friend, Bob Guccione Jr. Brower agrees to produce a rock festival in the wilds of Stateline Idaho for a mysterious character named Jack Butler. Bad idea. With little or no control of the financial dealings but yet out front to the media and music industry, he sets out to bring rock and roll to a failing motor racing track.
Able to hire top bands based on his reputation, Brower brings a top-drawer crew and equipment to town. Hilarity reigns for many weeks as Brower and crew proceed to tear up Spokane Washington in true rock and roll style the likes of which locals have not seen before. But Brower finds out too late that behind the scenes, his employer has fleeced the locals and failed to pay the track owner who reneges on supplying firewood for the weekend. When the temperature plummets on opening night the audience decides to tear every piece of wood from wherever it is nailed down. A night of very cold and angry people turns into a full-scale riot the following morning, as a false rumor spreads that the festival has been cancelled.
With the sound system put away from the night before no one is able to quell the riotous crowd who proceed to burn the site and everything on it to the ground. Brower meanwhile has unknowingly broken the Mann Act countless times in taking up with a seventeen year old local beauty and driving her back and forth across the state line between Spokane and State Line Idaho (bad idea number two). The snookered investors are bent on securing the unsold tickets and destroying them to claim an insurance loss and in the process take Brower hostage at gunpoint.
He is rescued by the Spokane SWAT team and the unsold tickets and full disclosure are turned over to detectives who have arrested over thirty locals in the process of rescuing Brower. The story is again a non-stop, action packed adventure you could not make up. It ends with Brower and his crew safely back in their respective cities but warned never to return to that neck of the woods. But the siren’s call of lust and love wins out and Brower returns in disguise for one last wild weekend with Linda his teenage flame (an even worse idea). A dam break in the area all but pushes the story of the riot from the front pages but Rolling Stone Magazine manages to announce with great fanfare accompanied by a picture of the site in flames: "WELCOME TO YOUR FIRST FESTIVAL OF THE SUMMER..." To Be continued...
