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

[JR]

Woodstock.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/arts/music/09pare.html?hp

The sine qua non of rock concerts.

The Vietnam war was at its peak, and after the Kennedy & Martin Luther King assassinations and the police riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Woodstock was one of the few happy moments of the late 60's.

No, I wasn't there. I was working that weekend but a bunch of my friends headed down.

I'm sure their stories grow with the telling.

When the hippie subculture surfaced en masse at Woodstock, two years after the Summer of Love, it was still largely self-invented and isolated. There were pockets of freaks in cities and handfuls of them in smaller towns, nearly all feeling like outsiders. For many people at the festival, just seeing and joining that gigantic crowd was more of a revelation than anything that happened onstage. It proved that they were not some negligible minority but members of a larger culture — or, to use that sweetly dated term, a counterculture.

And four months later came Altamont.

 

[TwoGloves]

"By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong, and everywhere was a song and a celebration ..."

 

[hondo]

Mud, rain, drugs and the idiots who organized it. It wasn't as much of a party as people romanticize it to be now.

 

[Bubbler]

This is one event that's been anniversaried to death with the same **** about it repeated over and over every 5-10 years. No thanks.

 

[Songbird]

The story I'd like to see is of 10 kids who were conceived at Woodstock. Who are they, what are they doing at age 40, are any of their parents still alive, etc.

 

[JR]

Mud, rain, drugs and the idiots who organized it. It wasn't as much of a party as people romanticize it to be now.

Trust Hondo to take one of a generation's most memorable moments and come up with his patented, "Hey, you kids, get off my lawn"

Did you come out of the womb a grumpy old man?

 

[JR]

A few weeks back the Daily News had a story about the couple who became the symbol of the Festival and whose photo appeared on the album cover. Still together after forty years.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/2009/07/07/2009-07-07_woodstocks_undercover_lovers_.html#ixzz0Loo79kGk

 

[Johnny Dangerously]

Snoopy smiles.

 

[slappy4428]

Snoopy smiles.

 

[dreunc1542]

Here's a link to the trailer for "Taking Woodstock" by Ang Lee which comes out at the end of the month:

 

[User 1019]

A few weeks back the Daily News had a story about the couple who became the symbol of the Festival and whose photo appeared on the album cover. Still together after forty years.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/2009/07/07/2009-07-07_woodstocks_undercover_lovers_.html#ixzz0Loo79kGk

Great story, I'm sure. But that picture's ****ing disgusting.

I went to Bonaroo a few years back, and wasn't impressed there, either.

Same people. Same smell, I'm sure.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

I was there. Had a good time, too. Left when it rained on Sunday, so I missed the mud part. Not too sorry.
Many great performances, and a few clinkers (Grateful Dead had major equipment problems, 7 a.m. EDT was really not a time when Jefferson Airplane felt, looked or sounded their best).
The Atlantic City Rock Festival earlier that summer at the old race track there was almost as good, if not as many acts. Last three acts were Janis Joplin followed by Ike and Tina Turner followed by Little Richard.

 

[Batman]

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

 

[schiezainc]

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

 

[NoOneLikesUs]

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

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.

 

[albert77]

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.

 

[DanOregon]

We still have the Sean Hannity Freedom Concerts.

 

[BYH]

Mud, rain, drugs and the idiots who organized it. It wasn't as much of a party as people romanticize it to be now.

Trust Hondo to take one of a generation's most memorable moments and come up with his patented, "Hey, you kids, get off my lawn"

Did you come out of the womb a grumpy old man?

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

 

[Michael_ Gee]

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.

 

[Magic In The Night]

I was there. Had a good time, too. Left when it rained on Sunday, so I missed the mud part. Not too sorry.
Many great performances, and a few clinkers (Grateful Dead had major equipment problems, 7 a.m. EDT was really not a time when Jefferson Airplane felt, looked or sounded their best).
The Atlantic City Rock Festival earlier that summer at the old race track there was almost as good, if not as many acts. Last three acts were Janis Joplin followed by Ike and Tina Turner followed by Little Richard.

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