40 Years After Woodstock - The Woodstock Festival and Its Devastating Wake

The Ignorant Fishermen Blog ^ | 8/09 | DJP I.F.

[The Ignorant Fisherman]

The majority of Baby Boomers and those of the post sixties generation are joyfully celebrating the 40-year anniversary of the Woodstock Music Festival which took place in 1969. Since then, the event has been glorified, glamorized, sensationalized and etched into the very fabric of our American consciousness and youth culture. This festival was the defining point against “the Establishment” and America’s core Judean/ Christian values. This festival was the brown acid of the radical Left’s agenda, whose goons in the reprobate (godless) music industry have steadily pushed the boundaries of morality over the past 40 years. In the wake of Woodstock and the Moral and Political philosophies of Crowley and Nietzsche, the destructive shock waves from this era have been felt in every facet of American society and culture.

Woodstock was basically a huge protest against America’s Judean/ Christian heritage and society/ government (i.e., “the Establishment”). This movement sought to establish an alternative reality of “secular peace, love and joy” through the use of cultural relativism (non-absolutes), sexual immorality, hard-core drugs and music.

[The Ignorant Fisherman]

Woodstock was basically a huge protest against America’s Judean/ Christian heritage and society/ government (i.e., “the Establishment”).

[TruthHound]

Look, I too loathe the spiraling morality.

But didn’t they say the same thing about the Beatles’ moptops, Elvis’ hips, Pat Boone’s loafers, shameless ragtime, Gershwin, ... how far back ya’ wanna go?

[Norman Greenbaum]

[Woodstock] has been glorified, glamorized, sensationalized and etched into the very fabric of our American consciousness and youth culture. This festival was the defining point against “the Establishment” and America’s core Judean/ Christian values. This festival was the brown acid of the radical Left’s agenda...

Spot on assessment and nice dagger-thrust into the heart of this grossly overrated dung-fest.

[the invisib1e hand]

Woodstock was basically a huge protest against America’s Judean/ Christian heritage and society/ government (i.e., “the Establishment”).

Woodstock was a commercial venture (read: capitalist) that went off remarkably smoothly, attended by a half-million remarkably civil kids, the likes of whom probably don't exist today.

And I doubt that anyone has ever been able to approach, much less duplicate, what Jimi Hendrix played up there. Or Alvin Lee, for that matter.

Incidentally, have you ever heard the song "I'd Love to Change the World" by Alvin Lee? Couldn't be further from your characterisation.

[Samurai_Jack]

HIPPIE!

[tflabo]

Woodstock was vastly overrated and overhyped! Let’s keep that slopfest back there in 1969 memories to forget.

[the invisib1e hand]

welcome to FR,"Norman."

Still bitter that you weren't invited to play there?

[Norman Greenbaum]

But didn’t they say the same thing about the Beatles’ moptops, Elvis’ hips, Pat Boone’s loafers, shameless ragtime, Gershwin, ... how far back ya’ wanna go?

I believe the Fisherman is assessing the essence of what "Woodstock" represented, as well as the worship of an event that was a celebration of the collective rejection of America's traditional cultural values.

FWIW I wouldn't characterize the Beatles or Elvis as spitting in the eye of Western/American civilization or tradition

[Frantzie]

The majority of groups that played at Woodstock were utter shite.

The only good band was The Who and the dirty hippies spiked their water or refreshments with drugs.

[sueuprising]

“Look, I too loathe the spiraling morality.
But didn’t they say the same thing about the Beatles’ moptops, Elvis’ hips, Pat Boone’s loafers, shameless ragtime, Gershwin, ... how far back ya’ wanna go?”
Actually most of the music that accompanies a “youth culture” adds to the degeneration of that culture. There has always been questionable music, but when it is the identifying factor of young people then you have a problem. Rock n Roll music did create mayhem in this country because it isolated teenagers from the world of their parents and the heritage of the past. It was the music of suburbia which further divorced the young generation from the traditions that once gave an individual purpose. Contrary to what most people think ( they always post that Plato quote) young people of the past did not rebel against their parents. In fact they emulated them. Life for generations was defined by doing exactly what your parents and grandparents and great grandparents did: work, marry, have children, grow old and go home to the Lord. It sustained mankind for centuries.

[Frantzie]

Agreed. The Who were the only good band. Alvin Lee played and was a good guitarist but pretty much an unknown. Hendrix was overrated.

[Ophiucus]

and Big Band and the radicalism of Mozart and Beethoven (and their ilk!!)

[Eccl 10:2]

Way too overanalyzed.

Woodstock was driven in large part as a protest to the war in Viet Nam - a war started by Democrats for the benefit of Democrats. We had a Democrat president, and large Democrat majorities in the House and Senate.

And 58,000 of our boys died in vain fighting a Democrat’s war.

Hendrix’s (a VietNam veteran who served honorably and loved his his country) version of the Star Spangled Banner, which I thought was beautiful, stands as the defining moment of the 60’s and that whole era.

To dismiss Woodstock as simply a bunch of dirty, smelly, American-hating lefties getting stoned to hippie music is superficially ignorant.

Don’t cede Woodstock to the Left - you will end up on the wrong side of History.

[Fiji Hill]

The majority of Baby Boomers and those of the post sixties generation are joyfully celebrating the 40-year anniversary of the Woodstock

Not me. In 1969, I was listening to big band music from the 1930's and 1940's and R & B recordings from the 1950's, so I had no use for Woodstock.

[stormer]

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. “
- Socrates

[Norman Greenbaum]

welcome to FR,"Norman." Still bitter that you weren't invited to play there?

Firstly, thanks for the reminder that you're MUCH higher in the FR pecking order than I due to your sign on date (Ooooohhh, woooow!) Is that a sport here?

Secondly...wait....Woodstock....mud....mired in human waste...getting stoned....sex with strangers....dirty strangers...and the din of mediocre music from a 1/4 mile away...(yawn)...

[AlexW]

Somehow, I avoided the hippie movement.
It came a few years too late for me.
I was always the preppy guy in button down collars and Weejuns.

I do, however, remember a coffee house at school (1963)
that was inhabited by overweight girls, dressed in black,
reading “ban the bomb” books.
I guess they were the forerunners of the hippies.

Come to think of it, however, there were also the beatniks
of the 50s and early 60s.
They probably had more class then the hippies.
Wasn’t Obammie’s mother a hippie?

[Norman Greenbaum]

Let’s keep that slopfest back there in 1969 memories to forget.

Apparently some of the back, old, and ugly 60 year old hippies still live in a time warp where Woodstock was the delusional Sermon on the Mount of it's time.

[Eccl 10:2]

“Agreed. The Who were the only good band. Alvin Lee played and was a good guitarist but pretty much an unknown. Hendrix was overrated.”

No, no, and an emphatic NO.

The Who have always sucked live, period, with the possible exception of the Concert for NYC after 9/11.

Alvin Lee was well known to fans at the time as the “Worlds Fastest Guitarist”

“Hendrix was overrated” - man you don’t know NOTHIN’ about no guitars. Holy crap, an incredibly ignorant statement.

[TruthHound]

FWIW I wouldn't characterize the Beatles or Elvis as spitting in the eye of Western/American civilization or tradition

Then you must not have been around during that time, because that's exactly what many thought they did represent.

This happened over two years before Woodstock:

Ten years earlier, the Catholic Church practically declared war on Elvis Presley, calling him vulgar and animalistic.

More recently, I myself believe that Gangsta Rap going mainstream was yet another moral turning point. Then that was one-upped by former Disney Mouseketeers turning slut-for-fame by the bushel.

Makes you wonder what will shock our grandkids, but it has indeed been happening a LONG time before Woodstock.