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I've never heard about Woodstock festival until I saw a documentary of it being played during my Media Studies lecture. Hippie era, what a sensation. In my efforts to research for my MUS1040 essay about protest music, I came across a website that held an article about how Woodstock came about. A very very long article, but it gives a new insight into the revolutionary festival about peace and music. Although I do not condone the drug, free 'love' acts that became quite primary in the festival, the music and the whole idealisitic notion of this pumps me up.

Came across a couple of quotes/paragraphs in the article that cracked me up. Reminder: None are in order. It's all random.

"Every time Richie Havens tried to quit playing, he had to keep on. The other acts hadn't arrived. Finally, after Havens had played for nearly three hours - improvising his last song "Freedom" - a large U.S. Army helicopter landed with musical reinforcements. An Army helicopter? "Yes," said Havens. "It was the only helicopter available. If it wasn't for the U.S. Army, Woodstock might not have happened." The U.S. Army saved the day for a crowd that was, for the most part, anti-war? "We were never anti-soldier," said Havens. "We were just against the war." "

"Bert Feldman, the town historian, was suddenly Woodstock's censor. His job was to keep frontal nudity from appearing on national television. He stood between the swimming hole and the television cameras, reminding folks to cover up. Afternoon temperatures were in the mid-80s. "They had to have one or two garments on, depending on sex," Feldman said. "Lemme tell you, after five minutes, it was work. You never saw a fight in there. You could argue, of course, that it was because everyone was stoned." "

"After Country Joe, Monck spotted John Sebastian, the former lead singer and guitarist for the Lovin' Spoonful. Sebastian, clad in wild tie-dye, was tripping on some unidentified substance. He hadn't even been invited to perform at the festival. He recalls he was "too whacked to say no." Sebastian's stage rap was nearly a parody of hippie conversation, mostly because of his psychedelic state. But the crowd roared with approval. "Just love everybody around ya' and clean up a little garbage on your way out," Sebastian told the crowd."

"The third area was for people with a malady peculiar to Woodstock. "They had burned their eyes staring at the sun," Mrs. Sanderson said. "If they were tripping, they'd lie down on their backs and just stare. There were five or six or seven at a time. That was something.""

"The motorcycle roared up to the El Monaco Hotel on Sunday afternoon. Behind the handlebars was a bearded hippie. On the back was a woman screaming that she was having a baby. Resort owner Elliott Tiber raced in. He said he was the only one on the lot who wasn't stoned, and he relied on his instincts to help deliver the baby. Then he watched as Army medica flew mother and child away in a helicopter. "She must have been stoned," Tiber said. " Either that, or Janis Joplin was quite a draw. The mother ‘had olive skin and big black eyes. Her English was kind of broken. A French accent, I think.'"

Ralph Corwin pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one and started trucking down Hurd Road. The 26-year-old biker from Winterton met up Sunday afternoon with a young couple. The girl wore an Army fatigue shirt and a pair of black jeans. The guy begged a smoke; Corwin flipped him three or four. The couple walked away. Corwin looked over his shoulder. The girl's black jeans were missing on the back side. "Only the strip down the center," Corwin said. "No undies, and her cheeks were hanging out." "

It was about 9am, time for Hendrix, the headliner. He had launched into the national anthem, a moment that would go down in the annals of rock'n'roll. "I remember trying to fall asleep during the ‘Star-Spangled Banner'," said Ciganer, Jerry Garcia's buddy. "I just wished he would stop." The party was over.

Ventures spent $100,000 to clean the decimated festival site. Goldstein dug a huge hole and bulldozed tons of shoes, bottles, papers, clothes, tents and plastic sheets into the ground. He set the pile afire. The vast, smoky smolder that burned for days brought Ventures a charge of illegal burning from Bethel officials.

Twice, the town put up a sign identifying Nicky's land as the site of the concert. Twice, the sign was stolen.


Here's the full article. http://www.woodstock69.com/wsrprnt1.htm
Spans over a couple of pages, so gotta click NEXT till the end.

Sweets! Chaos.

~10:06 pm