YOUR TIME MACHINE TO THE PAST!
Contact Us: Swapsale@aol.com
MUSIC
40 YEAR ANNIVERSARY
Woodstock Music & Art Fair (informally, Woodstock or The Woodstock Festival) was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition", held at Max Yasgur's 600 acre (2.4 km²; 240 ha, 0.94 mi²) dairy farm in the rural town of Bethel, New York from August 15 to August 18, 1969. Bethel, in Sullivan County, is 43 miles (69 km) southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, in adjoining Ulster County.
Thirty-two acts performed during the sometimes rainy weekend in front of nearly half a million concertgoers. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest moments in popular music history and was listed on Rolling Stone's 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll.[2]
The event was captured in a successful 1970 documentary movie, Woodstock; an accompanying soundtrack album; and Joni Mitchell's song "Woodstock", which commemorated the event and became a major hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
It is perhaps ironic that the artist who, for many, most defines the Woodstock Festival was not actually there. Like a lot of people who should have been performing, who one fancifully imagines were performing – a list that includes Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Love and the Doors – Joni Mitchell was otherwise engaged.
Sitting in a hotel room in New York, waiting to keep a prior appointment with The Dick Cavett Show, Mitchell watched what has since come to be regarded as the defining event of the Aquarian Age unfolding in a series of television news bulletins.
Woodstock, she would recount later, struck her "like a modern-day fishes and loaves story. For a herd of people that large to co-operate so well, it was pretty remarkable, and there was a tremendous optimism. So I wrote the song Woodstock out of these feelings."
The 1967 Monterey Pop Festival was arguably more influential and, like Woodstock, spawned a terrific film, D.A. Pennebaker's "Monterey Pop." The 1969 Isle of Wight Festival in England, two weeks after Woodstock, included the elusive Bob Dylan.
And there were several other gatherings during the late-'60s and early-'70s festival frenzy, including the ill-fated Altamont festival in 1969 and the record-setting Watkins Glen festival in 1973.
But nobody talked about a "Monterey Nation" or a "Wight Nation" or, God forbid, an "Altamont Nation." No other festival prompted Charles M. Schulz to name a "Peanuts" character after it. No other festival has maintained a viable name for four decades.
MORE: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/08/14/meaning.woodstock/
NEW YORK — Today's robust festival culture owes much to Woodstock — lessons from both its incredible success and its logistical nightmares.
"It stands out in everybody's mind as the originator," said Michele Scoleri, artistic director of Bumbershoot, the annual Seattle festival that will draw tens of thousands Labor Day weekend for its 39th annual fest.
Giant rock festivals fan out every summer with ambitions for just a fraction of Woodstock's impact. They are more efficiently run, more organized and don't need warnings to avoid the brown acid.
The promoters of Woodstock — Michael Lang, Joel Rosenman, John Roberts and Artie Kornfeld — hoped their frantic, last-minute efforts would be enough to pull off what today would take a year to prepare. The concert — which drew more than 400,000 to Bethel, N.Y., Aug. 15-18, 1969 — did come off, though its many problems (the miles-long traffic, the rain, the lack of food and water) only enhanced its mythology.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------