It Was 40 Years Ago Today
It's the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. Even with all the rain and mud and crowds, it must have been a lot of fun. But it's the event--so much bigger than anyone expected--that people remember. Musically, it was only fair.
The lineup was amazing--CCR, Janis Joplin, Sly & The Family Stone, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, The Band, CSNY and Jimi Hendrix, to mention only a few. (And let's not forget Sha-Na-Na.)
However, the sound system sucked, half the bands were high, and few of the artists were at their best. There were also a bunch of excruciatingly long solos--perfect for going to the facilities, if they only had them.
At the time, it seemed like the harbinger of a new age. Looking back, it seems closer to a sign of the end. Musically speaking, Monterey, in 1967, had it all over Woodstock.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:34 AM
3 Comments:
An interesting note on the times- the Wall Street Journal takes Woodstock to task for being musically poor (they would probably castigate LA Guy for calling it "fair") and apparently redubbing a lot of the album cuts that came later.
Have to say- I read about Woodstock acouple years after the fact (I was just about to enter 2d grade when it occurred) when I was doing a lot of camping with the Scouts- and the whole thing and the movie with dumb triple overused triple screen effect made it all look pretty horrid to me. A sheltered suburban LMC upbringing
made me uptight probably, but the notion of barefoot hippies stepping in piles if human feces (heard the story somewhere- might have been someone ranting about the longhairs) stayed with me.
NEG
Hey, it could have been worse. It could have been Altamont.
As the resident prog rock fan, I'll take Cal Jam over Monterey, Woodstock, and Altamont put together.
I like CSN, but their set on the Woodstock soundtrack is almost unlistenable.
On the other hand, in 1969 the folk music scene still overlapped with the rock scene. The highlights of the Woodstock soundtrack are the folk tracks -- Joan Baez doing "Joe Hill" and "Drug Store Truck-Drivin' Man", and Arlo Guthrie doing "Coming Into Los Angeles". Since folk music is low-fi, the poor sound system isn't a problem on these tracks. After the sixties ended, folk faded from popular consciousness very quickly, and I don't know of any folk singers on the Altamont (or Cal Jam) lineup.
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