Talking Heads at the Dr. Pepper Central Park Music Festival, August 27, 1980
there's good points and bad points.
When I took the Metro-North train from Stamford, CT into Manhattan to go see Talking Heads on a Wednesday in late August of 1980, I wasn’t expecting anything except the four people who put out Fear of Music, which had come out the previous year. I walked up Park Avenue, turned left at 57th Street, entered Central Park and walked over to Wollman Rink. This location was, as the name hints at, a skating rink that in the summer was turned into a concert venue. It originally started as the Schaefer Music Festival back in the 60’s1, and you may already be aware of this locale depending on your personal frame of historical musical reference; for example, it is the place where Bruce Springsteen opened for Anne Murray in 19742.
The queue for concerts at Wollman formed in a chute between two metal railings - one was park fencing, and the other was similar piping that created a pathway, like a line at Coney Island. The entrance for the concerts was the entrance for when it was actually used as a skating rink in the summer, a stone staircase that went down several flights to rink level. Someone always had a radio or a boombox. It was mostly shaded by overhanging trees so you didn’t get too much sun and if it rained lightly you were mostly okay. But you had to be okay with rain if you went to shows at Wollman because there was literally nowhere to hide. I once brought a tarp to use as a shelter and all that happened was that I ripped the corner when there was a line surge, which usually happened an hour or two before doors when someone invariably showed up and tried to cut in the front, and that’s when everyone packed up their shit and compacted the line to try to prevent that from continuing to happen. It’s a long fucking time to wait only to have a couple jabronis show up at 3:30pm and think they can just join the line wherever they find a gap.
