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E-minor7

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Wrote this thread some weeks ago, but determined it should be delayed till August where the big gathering took place 42 years back. Now on the Speaking of Time machines thread j45nick commented on larry58's avatar and that got me goin' a month too soon :

 

Once in a while some of the veteran Forumites reveal they have pretty hip trails behind them – and I'm talking back in the Golden Age of rock'n'roll'n'folk'n'soul'n'blues here. Some were close to warning up for The Fab-4, some did hitch hike across the nation, others attended Dylan or even Joni Mitchell shows back when those were utterly groundbreaking and etc. Often there were guitars and songs around – people obviously started playing as youngsters.

 

Here's my European Q.: Did any of you pioneers take part in Woodstock ? At close range or maybe from a distance – had friends who went and so on. . .

 

Let's hear some stories, , , and if you remember John B. Sebastians acoustic guitar ~

 

******************************************************************

 

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I didn't go. I was working on my family's farm in Mississippi that summer, and remember watching the news reports. My conservative southern parents were appalled at the whole thing, as you might expect. Somehow, they were ignoring the fact that their only son had his hair in a ponytail halfway down his back, and a beard down to his chest. "Just a stage", my mother would say to friends. Never mind that I was 22.

 

I sort of looked at Woodstock with morbid curiosity, trying to sort out the logistics. Where do half a million people take a pee, etc? That's the engineer side of my brain at work.

 

Huge crowds have always bothered me. I came out of customs at a small airport in India a couple of years ago, and there was a crowd of hundreds outside the exit at 6 AM, pushing, shoving, and raising a clamor as they waited for relatives who had been working in Abu Dhabi to come out the door. I was in a near-panic until I saw my driver holding up a sign with my name on it.

 

I fear the collective instincts and responses of large crowds.

 

A couple of years ago, I discovered that a friend's wife was at Woodstock. She's the most uptight, strait-laced person I know, and went on a lark with a bunch of other straight friends. Go figure.

 

And by the way, "straight" had a much different meaning in those days than it does now!

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I knew a couple of people who went. They didn't stay for the whole thing, the weather chased them off.

I've come to regard Woodstock not as the "high point" that many think it was. I contend that it signalled the end of the "Love Generation" or whatever name put on it. There had been a lot of smaller "festivals" that patterned themselves after the Monterey Pop but in typical American thinking they tried to be bigger than the previous one. Woodstock, because of its size, gave the business mind the idea that a huge amount of money could be made "from the kids" if the big crowd could be more controlled and we ended up with these horrible "stadium" rock shows which tried to cram as many people as possible into a venue. This in effect separated the audience from the performers thus stopping that communal feeling celebrated at Woodstock. Everything became loud and ugly. Even the music suffered because it had to be loud and ugly and over the top to fill the stadium. It truly became a case of the music being controlled by the corporate business concerns. I think Woodstock brought that about.

It was historic but not but not the ultimate celebration of the "Woodstock Generation". It was more the demise of it.

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I remember that time to this day. I was working in a local NJ steel mill and when I heard about the concert, I absolutely wanted to go, especially, since I was knocking around with my guitar buds with my Rickenbacher 6 string (wish I still had that one). However, being a basic po-boy and needing the $$$ for college, I elected to stay and work. I remember that I worked a couple of double shifts that week as a member of the United Steelworkers Union, was making time and a half and double time, which was serious change for a young guy. Also, the weather sucked all that week and was predicted to be raining all weekend, up and down the East Coast. Add the $$$ + bad weather + my 1959 Austin Healey Sprite probably never being able to make the 12 hour drive = I stayed home. Do I regret it? Nah! I was in college from 1966 - 1970 ... and one party missed was just followed with another one. I am amazed to this day that I survived it all. Caught a lot of great groups in Atlantic City (believe it or not) and Philadelphia during that time frame. Not about the concert really, my apologies, but it's my reality from Woodstock.

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I suspect those of us who only saw news reports and watched the movie have fonder memories of the event than those who were there. For example, according to Grace Slick, the only large festival that didn't s*ck of the three JA played -- Monterey, Woodstock, and Altamont -- was Monterey.

 

Plus, I'm pretty much sure that hearing Hugh Romney announce "The brown acid is not poison, it's just bad acid" is funnier if you haven't taken the brown acid. :)

 

-- Bob R

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Not about the concert really, my apologies, but it's my reality from Woodstock.

 

I think that's just as important. Most of us our age (64 here) realized it was going on, but didn't really recognize it was going to become a great cultural watershed--for better or worse. It was important, however, in that most of the groups performing at Woodstock were suddenly high on our radar, even if they hadn't been before. (maybe "high" was the wrong term here. [smile])

 

The late 60s and early 70s were a great time to see and hear music. I was fortunate in that my college and city both had unbelievable concert schedules, and we were only an hour's drive from Boston. I spent most of my spare time and money on concerts and clubs, large and small--and a few other things, of course. Needless to say, school suffered a bit.

 

When I look back at it, I shake my head in disbelief: first, that we survived, and second, at what unbelievable music we experienced first-hand. During the summer of 1970, my girlfriend (later wife #1) and I lived and worked in Boston. It seemed like an endless series of great music experiences, much of it free or very cheap. Most performers were still making peanuts off live appearances, and depended on record sales for their real money. Concerts were a way to stimulate record sales, not the other way around.

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The movie premiered here a year or something after the event. I remember driving by the cinema with my grandparents several times. It seemed as if something very intense was goin' on in there. I didn't know about the festival, but knew about rock music and hippies – we had seen the Hyde Park Stones show on telly. The whole movie-theater had the poster/album cover in kingsize over the facade and freaks were like camping and standing in line in front on the pavement. I just thought there was some kind of concert happening – it was definitely a power-zone.

 

Talking about the movie, I sincerely believe it contains a lot of good music. Don't know to which degree the bands came in and edited/dubbed their performances afterwards – no that much I think – Carlos Santana for sure didn't. And his/their gig still is fantastic ! Then there's Joe Cocker with a little help from his friends, opening act Richie Havens with his Guild D-40 on fire. Ten Years After up under the moon during I'm Goin' Home and The Family Stone to name a few. There also exists a tremendously strong Mountain clip. I saw the director cut some years ago and enjoyed every minute.

 

Now there is a version with never seen songs by acts like Joan Baez, Country Joe McDonald, Santana, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Canned Heat, Joe Cocker, , , and five who never made it to the film : Paul Butterfield, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, Johnny Winter and Mountain. A 40th anniversary DVD – have to check it out.

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.

It was the summer before my junior year in HS. We all knew what was going on, but no one was gonna tackle all those miles to White Lake, NY. Most of us took in the movie when it came out. What I remember about that time here in Michigan is the summers from 67 though 73 had a lot of outdoor performances/concerts. I remember seeing a lot of local Michigan bands, sometimes playing outdoors no tickets - Seger, Nugent and the Dukes, Grand Funk Railroad, MC5, Iggy and the Stooges, Tommy James, Mitch Ryder, The Frost (D!ck Wagner), SRC, among a lot of lesser known local bands. I remember more than a couple times walking around East Lansing and MSU, coming up on an outdoor performance I didn't know was going on until I stumbled across them. It didn't take too long into the 70s when the whole music scene went very commercial/business.

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Wrote this thread some weeks ago, but determined it should be delayed till August where the big gathering took place 52 years back. Now on the Speaking of Time machines thread j45nick commented on larry58's avatar and that got me goin' a month too soon :

 

Once in a while some of the veteran Forumites reveal they have pretty hip trails behind them – and I'm talking back in the Golden Age of rock'n'roll'n'folk'n'soul'n'blues here. Some were close to warning up for The Fab-4, some did hitch hike across the nation, others attended Dylan or even Joni Mitchell shows back when those were utterly groundbreaking and etc. Often there were guitars and songs around – people obviously started playing as youngsters.

 

Here's my European Q.: Did any of you pioneers take part in Woodstock ? At close range or maybe from a distance – had friends who went and so on. . .

 

Let's hear some stories, , , and if you remember John B. Sebastians acoustic guitar ~

 

******************************************************************

 

Are you sure you were not there E-minor7? They say your memory plays tricks and all that...because I am really, really hoping that it was 42 years ago, not 52.

 

BluesKing777

 

P.S. I was not there, too young, but imitation festivals kept popping up all over the place for a few years, and I managed to go to an 'event' in a park in my weird little hometown (remaining nameless and shameless) with bands and petuli oil smells and other strange smells and girls in kaftans dancing near the stage, and wholemeal foods and bright colours and culminating in a march en-masse to police headquarters to protest something to find the police chief was not impressed and about to shoot the lot of us.

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Are you sure you were not there E-minor7? They say your memory plays tricks and all that...because I am really, really hoping that it was 42 years ago, not 52.

 

BluesKing777

 

 

Yikes! Fuzzy math from all of us. Told you we were lucky to survive the 60's. Clearly lost a few brain cells along the way, but I'm not alone. It only seems like 52 years. Actually, it seems like a previous lifetime when I look at the pictures from back then.

 

Who thought Stephen Stills would get fat, James Taylor would go bald, Grace Slick would sort of "flesh out", Judy Collins would still be beautiful, and Mick Jagger would still be singing "Satisfaction" 40+ years later?

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I was old enough to know it was going on and wanted to go but...too young to bust loose and get there. Despite Grace Slicks evaluation of it I think it had to be fabulous to be there. I would have loved to just see Richie Havens start the whole thing out. I was a HUGE Arlo fan so that woulda been cool, too.

 

 

That said, Monterrey would have been amazing to be at!!

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Hey what a mistake (will be fixed) - I was always bad with numbers. 10 years are important, especially these 10.

No unfortunately I wasn't at the Stock, but attented many free festivals in the wake of 69 into the early 70's. Guess they took their toll (that Buddhist monk who walked the fire barefoot totally blew little E-minor7's mind), , , , but my memory/memories serves me like Sir Ivanhoe's sword. That means WELL !

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I'm like the others. Just news and magazine stories. Man, I wish I could have been there. The music from that era is what sparked that fire in me to pick up a guitar in the first place. When I did, I found that I was pretty good at it. Not professional, but decent I guess! That music still inspires me to this day. Such great and influential artists from that era. Those times and artists will never again be repeated. Peace, man!

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I think someone once said that if all the people who claimed to be at Woodstock were really there - there would have been like 5 million folks there or something

 

But Yup - I was there. I was living maybe two or so hours away and figured it might be the last party with the draft board lurking arouund. The guy I went with can be seen in the early part of the movie. Where the heck I was is anybody's guess.

 

Not liking being in the middle of crowds for any length of time, I tended to wander around the outskirts. I did not pay attention to Sebastion cuz while I liked the Spoonful I was not a big fan of his solo stuff. Other things I recall thinking were the Who seemed incapable of putting on a bad show and Alvin Lee was even sloppier than usual. I left late Sunday afternoon - I had had enough.

 

Being a glutton for punishment and wanting to keep on the move I actually hitched out to California afterwards intending of all things to go to Stones Altamont fest. I did not make it in time but hung around a bit. I did catch Albert King at the Fillmore West which was a treat.

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