Everybody ready? Just a few more days 'til the 40th Anniversary of

Sadly, we missed the 10-year anniversary of the 30-year anniversary. Same smelly people, but now with 100 percent more violence!

 

Hmm, how to best describe Woodstock? I wonder........http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/overrated

 

I turned down an invite to that one. I have no doubt that my two best friends at the time were involved in setting fires. Probably looting too.

I'm glad I don't talk to them anymore.

 

For a different, and unromanticized opinion about Woodstock, I refer you to Rock Scully's book, Living With the Dead. Scully was the Grateful Dead's manager for 20 years (1966-86) and, while his book -- entertaining as it was -- was rather factually dubious, he did offer some strong views on those times, and he had a very low opinion of the whole festival scene.

It goes back two years to the Monterrey festival, when he was convinced John Phillips (of Mamas & Papas fame) conspired with some L.A. slicks to defraud the performers at that festival out of their rightful share of the royalties from any record or film of that event. That's why he (Scully) demanded that the Dead be paid in advance at Woodstock, which they were.

He also places the blame for the Altamont disaster less than four months later squarely on Mick Jagger's shoulders, that it was Mick's idea to hire Hell's Angels as security. Having seen the Angels working the gates at a few Dead shows back in the day, I rather doubt that, but that's his story and he's sticking to it.

Anyway, his whole belief is that Woodstock and Altamont were simply flip sides of the same coin, that the whole festival scene was a chance for some hustlers to make a fast buck off the integrity of the performers and the idealism of the kids who attended these shows.

 

We still have the Sean Hannity Freedom Concerts.

 

You gotta admit, though, it was the most easily predictable post of 2009.

 

Unscrupulous promoters in the music business? Unpossible.
Hey, how could I have been ripped off by Woodstock? I didn't pay.
I felt in the immediate aftermath of the event (the next month or so), and of course I feel even more strongly today, because history has proved me right, that Woodstock was the most amazing example ever of the American national compulsion to read too much into things.
It was a large and entertaining rock concert. The end. The rest is just hooey.

 

I thought the old saw was, if you say you remember Woodstock, you weren't really there!

 

Dear Magic: That line was about the entire '60s. I find it slightly different. There's all this stuff I remember that appears to have happened outside the boundaries of the time-space continuum.

 

Ah. Shrooms or acid?

 

I now it was a couple of years earlier and lacked ther "cultural" significance of Woodstock, but, to these ears, the music at the Monterey Pop Festival blew Woodstock out of the water.

 

Thank you. Very refreshing to read that.

Because if I have to hear one more aged baby boomer rocker in a nostalgia show produced by and for baby boomers shoving down my throat how respledent Janis was as she flew into the festival on a helicopter with her lover, I'm going to go all Pete Townsend on someone with my, er, digital recorder.