SPUDSTOCK

Aroostook Country, ME--If you take a map of the United States and place your thumb over Maine, Aroostook County lies directly under your thumbnail. And where the eastern part of your thumb meets the Canadian border, you'll find Fort Fairfield, home of "Spud-stock."

Billed by its promoters as the largest outdoor music festival in the history of Maine, Spudstock was expected to attract well over 30,000 music lovers from around the region.

It didn't

By the Monday after the festival, local radio newscasters had deemed the three day affair "Dudstock."

But having already driven four ours to this area of Maine known for its potatoes, I was determined not to let my press pass go to waste.

Mosh pits, however, are not terribly conducive to reloading a camera.

One by one, the featured acts took the stage: The Outlaws, Rick Derringer The Guess Who, Eddie Money, John Anderson and Doug Kershaw. Blue Oyster Cult, also scheduled to play, left before performing amid rumors of a fistfight.

Quiet Riot, returning to Maine for the first time since 1983, attracted the most enthusiastic and energetic crowd.

The characters in the audience were twice as interesting as the personalities on stage.

A band of anarchists from Pittsfield, Maine bemoaned the fact that you can't enter Canada if you've recently been convicted of driving drunk, After discovering that I was a Harvard student, a man in a straw hat revealed to me that he was the great -great nephew of the father and son responsible for creating the University's world-famous glass flowers collection.

People offered me drugs, alcohol and ham-burgers in return for promising to run their picture in the paper. It wasn't long before I found out that potatoes, the namesake crop of the festival, were not the only greenery to be found in the county's fields.

History may not look back on Spudstock '95 with awe. In fact, it may not look back on it at all.

So these photos may be your only glimpse of the music festival that for three days brought limited fame to that part of Maine which lies where your thumbnail meets the Canadian border.