The troubled Woodstock 50 Festival now looks like it will be relocated to Merriweather Post Pavilion. Organizers of the anniversary concert—initially scheduled to be held on the 50th anniversary of the now legendary music festival at Max Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm in upstate New York—recently lost a final bid to keep the event near its original location when the town of Vernon, New York rejected their application.

On Thursday, several national outlets including Bloomberg and the New York Times reported producers of the event—including Michael Lang, one of the organizers of the 1969 festival—were hoping to shift Woodstock 50 to the Columbia venue.

In an email to Baltimore magazine, I.M.P. chairman Seth Hurwitz, owner of the 9:30 Club and The Anthem and operator of Merriweather Post Pavilion, said Woodstock 50 organizers had approached Merriweather about hosting the concert here in Columbia.

“The Woodstock folks are working on securing the artists now,” Hurwitz wrote. “If the bands come, we’ll produce the show. We’re looking forward to getting an update as soon as Woodstock 50 has one.”

In March, Lang had announced that the lineup for Woodstock 50 would include John Fogerty, who performed at the original festival with Credence Clearwater Revival, and other period performers including David Crosby, Santana, Robert Plant, Canned Heat, Hot Tuna, Country Joe McDonald. The lineup also featured big names such as Jay-Z, The Killers, Imagine Dragons, Chance the Rapper, and Miley Cyrus among others.

After the announcement of the switch to Columbia, Fogerty said he would perform at a smaller anniversary event not connected to Woodstock 50 near the festival’s original site at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel, New York.

The Associated Press also reported that Jay-Z was pulling out of the concert. When the show was first announced, it was planned for the Watkins Glen racetrack in upstate New York, but when organizers failed to secure a mass gathering permit from the state Department of Health by June, the racetrack’s owners pulled out. By then, organizers were already feuding in court with former financial backer Dentsu Aegis.

“When we heard that there was an opportunity to save this festival and bring a piece of American history to our community this summer, we jumped at the chance,” Calvin Ball, the executive with Howard County, wrote in a note to Greg Peck, one of the organizers, according to reporting by Bloomberg. “Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia is a jewel of Howard County and one of the top music venues in the nation. It felt like such a natural fit to host a historic festival on our storied stage.”

Coinciding with the anniversary of Woodstock, a replica of the colorful VW touring bus of the 1960s’ Baltimore band Light—which became known as the “Light Bus” after photos of the bus at Woodstock made newspapers and magazines around the country—will be launched August 12 from the American Visionary Art Museum.

Woodstock wasn’t the only music festival in summer of ’69, of course, just the biggest. In fact, a few weeks prior—just 11 miles from Merriweather—the Laurel Race Course hosted the two-day Laurel Pop Festival, which included epic 1960s bands Led Zeppelin, Sly and the Family Stone, Jethro Tull, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Johnny Winters, Jeff Beck, and the Guess Who.

As legendary ’60s rock festivals go, the Laurel Pop Festival doesn’t quite reverberate the same way Woodstock, the Monterey Pop Festival, or the Newport Pop Festival does. But it should. The lineup was incredible.

Led Zeppelin’s website—the heavy English rockers headlined—dedicates an entire page to the “lost in the smoky haze of 1960s history” festival.

Blues guitar great Buddy Guy opened the wet and wild two-day event—which happened 50 years ago this evening—at the Laurel Race Track. Guy was followed by the Edwin Hawkins Singers, Al Kooper, the former lead singer of Blood, Sweat and Tears, and then . . . Jethro Tull, Johnny Winter (who would also perform a month later at Woodstock), and finally Led Zeppelin, who had their second album coming out later that year.

With more 10,000 on hand the second night—reserved seats went between $5.75 and $6.75—things got a little crazy. Lightning and thunderstorms filled the sky before The Guess Who kicked off round two of the concert two hours later than scheduled. By the time Baltimore-born Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, the third band on the bill, wrapped up—it was past 1 a.m.—at which point cold and damp fans began building a bonfire with their wooden folding chairs.

The Jeff Beck Group, including Rod Stewart and future Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, nonetheless managed to get in abbreviated set. So did Sly and the Family Stone (who also would play Woodstock), but then a policeman took the stage when they were done and waved everybody home before the final act Savoy Brown, another British blues rock band, could get started.

The late Bethesda-raised musician Tommy Keene, who would go on to some critical acclaim in the 1980s, attended the concert as an enthralled middle-schooler with his two brothers—and father on pick-up duty.

“The crowd itself was something we weren’t prepared for,” Keene later told Magnet magazine. “This was the summer of Woodstock, and various long-haired freaks and topless chicks were running around crazed and stoned out of their minds. We must have looked ridiculous—three kids, age 10, 11, and 13, with our little outfits. I distinctly remember some hippie dude coming up to me and offering me a hit of acid. Er, no thanks, man. Zeppelin came on about 1 a.m., and we were having such a great time we hadn’t thought about Dad or anything else, although if he had wanted to find us, especially after we moved seats, he was out of luck—there had to have been more than 10,000 people there.”

In hindsight, the entire venture—some of the greatest acts in rock history joining forces for two nights of cheap thrills at the Laurel Race Track—seems impossible to imagine. But not so at the time, says Maryland filmmaker Jeff Krulik, whose documentaries include the cult classics Heavy Metal Parking Lot (chronicling a 1986 Judas Priest show at the Capital Centre) and Led Zeppelin Played Here (the story of a mythical Zeppelin performance at a Wheaton Rec Center).

“There was precedent,” Krulik says, noting Baltimore music promoters Elzie Street and James Scott. Together, they had promoted the successful Laurel Jazz Festival since 1967, and teamed up with national promoter George Wein, who directed the Newport Jazz Festival, to promote the Laurel Pop Festival. “It was new for [the promoters] in that it was rock, not jazz, but rock festivals were happening all over the place.”

“Of course,” Krulik adds, “everything in 1969 was overshadowed by Woodstock. It is kind of cool, though, that the Laurel Race Track is still around.”

Music writers from The Baltimore Sun and Washington Star, who covered the concert, both said Johnny Winter stole the show the first night, but largely panned Zeppelin. Same with a young writer from The Washington Post, who became famous a couple of years later for breaking the scandal that was Richard Nixon’s presidency.

“”I really missed it on Led Zeppelin,” Carl Bernstein said in a 2001 interview (“Stairway to Watergate”) with the Washington City Paper’s Dave McKenna. “I get Led Zeppelin now. I love them. But, boy, did I not get that band then. I’m ashamed. But what can I say? You get to be wrong once in a while.”

This evening, the North Laurel Community Center, in conjunction with the Laurel History Boys, hosts a Laurel Pop Festival 50th anniversary celebration from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Admission is $5 and includes a screening of Krulik’s documentary, Led Zeppelin Played Here.

“Hopefully, some people who were there 50 years ago will show up and share some stories,” Krulik said.

Want more? Check the bootleg of The Guess Who’s set from the show.