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Florida Rock Show Promoters Arrested
Bithlo, Fla., March 29 -- Sheriff's deputies arrested the promoters of a dude ranch rock festival today, but after eight hours of Easter morning silence the cow pastures rang again to the strident sounds of hard acid rock.
Deputies converged on a downtown Orlando motel room that served as the festival headquarters and arrested Mike Foreman, Bert Cohen, Stephen Mashuri, Fred Wasserman, and ranch owner James Brown.
They were charged with violating the country's zoning ordinance by staging the Winters End Rock Fest on Brown's Econ ranch some 15 miles east of Orlando.
Faces Legal Maze
The festival has faced a maze of legal entanglements since the county commission steadfastly refused to give them a permit to stage the program. Shortly after the arrests this afternoon, a rock group known as "Storm" appeared on the makeshift cow pasture stage and cranked up their guitars.
By the time the music had restarted, however, the crowd that had swelled to 40,000 last night had diminished to less than 10,000.
"Storm's" opening number was an apparently deliberately off key rendition of the Star Spangled Banner dedicated to "all the judges in Florida."
