Installment Vol.3

I decided to put all my eggs in one basket, so to speak, and decided I was going to create my own festival. And I had to make it really important. I went through my list of some two hundred fifty bands and advertised for auditions. I picked the most original and the best of these unknown bands I could get to play CBGB. I entitled it "A Festival of the top 40 New York Rock Bands". I took out huge ads in the Village Voice and the Soho Weekly News and a New Jersey music weekly called The Aquarium. The ads hit the stands when the Newport Festival started, so that tens of thousands of people and the press would read them. We actually listed some seventy or more bands and many of the bands played twice during the festival. I tried to give them as much exposure as I could. We did really well. The price was right. People were amazed at how many good new bands their were and came back many times. They started to hang out, getting into this new rock music.

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