The following editorial was published on 4/19/07 in Ozaukee Press
For some Americans of a certain age, mention of the word “Woodstock” still triggers a vision, filtered through a haze of nostalgia, of flower children and the gods of rock and roll gathered together in joyous abandon in the pastoral countryside.
More than a rock concert in a new York state cow pasture, Woodstock is remembered as a cultural phenomenon that in 1969, as a sort of last gasp of the 60s, put the cheerful hedonism of the times on a gaudy display when a half million people assembled for a three-day party on a 600-acre dairy farm.
After it was over, while attendees and their kindred spirits basked in the mellow afterglow of the iconic event, others affected by Woodstock set to work to ensure that nothing like it would ever happen again, at least never in the state of New York. Townships, counties and the state itself passed laws to prevent a reoccurrence of what had been a colossal nuisance.
What happened on Dennis Dahm’s farm in the Town of Belgium on Halloween was no Woodstock. There were no sightings of ghosts of the Grateful Dead or Blood, Sweat and Tears. The crowd was counted in the hundreds, not the hundreds of thousands. Still, it was rock concert on a farm, and the music rocked on until dawn (on 10 stages, no less) and, yes, it was a nuisance, at least to residents living within earshot of the far-reaching music.
Now people are asking the Belgium Town Board to pass a law to ensure something like that never happens again. Without an ordinance or other means to regulate such events, it’s pretty certain it will happen again. The Dahm land along Jay Road is leased to promoters who stage farmland rock concerts for profit.
Belgium roots web project
According to the Ozaukee County Sheriff’s Department, the concerts are advertised on the Internet and draw people from several states. At the Halloween production, deputies issued several citations for disorderly conduct and arrested a few concert-goers for drug violations.
The potential for a bit of bad behavior is probably more a concern for police, whose job it is to worry about these things, than for the public—there is no reason to assume the folks attending a rock concert on the Dahm farm would be any less law-abiding than, say, a crowd of baby boomers attending a Jimmy Buffett concert at Alpine Valley.
The big issue is noise. Police received a number of complaints about the racket caused during the wee hours by the Halloween concert. No surprise there—it’s the norm for music at concerts of this type to be amplified to decibel levels exceeded only by certain types of explosions. And sounds travel far over the flat fields of the Town of Belgium.
The effect is particularly jarring in a place whose character is defined by the peace and quiet of the countryside.
One of the organizers of the concerts argued at the annual town meeting that no regulation is needed. The truth is, almost all outdoor concerts are regulated. In Port Washington, for example, music from concerts at the bandshell or stages set up on the lakefront can be heard all over town, but by 9 or 10 p.m., the show, by municipal fiat, is over.
With good reason. Regardless of the quality of the music, listening it ought to be voluntary.
So, yes, there ought to be a law in the Town of Belgium regulating concerts. There’s nothing wrong with a little rock and roll in the country. But we’re pretty sure the folks living in the township—even any survivors of the Woodstock generation—don’t want to hear it until dawn.
Other articles in this chapter
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