Posted on 01/09/2022 1:22:03 AM PST by nickcarraway
Woodstock was organized???
A Chinese fire drill is organized.
Hmmm... the organizer was 26 years old at the time.
Well, at 26 I was married and had been a small unit commander in the Army for three years. (unusual, small, specialized scientific unit).
And if you were in the New York National Guard at the time you could have been supplying those at the concert food. Hippie history ignores that part.
The most notable thing about it was the size of the crowd. I guess somewhat of a record for the time. It was later broken by other festivals. I was too young to ever contemplate attending. I did attend some festivals about a decade later. All day long music while great in some ways becomes an endurance contest at some point.
Yes, and Wavy Gravy ran security. Seriously.
Wavy Gravy is what happens when you drop the ladle in the gravy boat.
I had been out of the Marines for two weeks on August 15, 1969. We were celebrating our daughter’s first birthday.
Woodstock was a media creation, same as the Kerfuffle at the Capitol last year.
Alvin Lee Going home.
It was organized. Then people started sneaking in by the 10s of thousands. No level of organization can deal with that. It was just supposed to be a regular music and arts festival, they were happening all the time then. And then all the hippies in 2 time zones showed up. No one’s really sure why. It just caught the crowd.
One thing is for sure...those hippies had no idea what a weather forecast was.
Or didn’t care. So you get rained on. Happens.
The guy was pretty arrogant and impatient in the film. The reporters were pretty annoying with their questions so one can’t blame him.
Yeah the whole situation was blowing up out of control. I do some event planning. If 10 times (and I think Woodstock was more like 100 times) as many people as I’d planned for showed up and busted past our gatekeepers I’d be psycho.
There was a lot of stuff going on at the time.
People forget that the first Moon landing, Woodstock, Kennedy leaving Mary Jo to drown in a river, and the Manson Family murders in LA happened in the course of a few weeks. Among other things.
I seem to recall the music rights to the concert were tied up for decades. Probably still fighting over it. Same with “Concert for Bangladesh”.
Anytime something is “Free” it gets all kinds of f@&!ed Up. Hippies never really learned that.
The music was pretty spotty, performance wise. It looks to me, or listens to me, that Santana, Joe Cocker and a very few others did well, sonically speaking.
There was an estimated million people on the road heading to Woodstock who never made it because the police and National Guard shut down all the road leading there miles away.
For years after Woodstock when the field of Max Yasgur dairy farm was plowed up they would find thousands of old blankets and trash and clothes
I was there as a 17yo. New to the “culture”. Travelled with 2 friends from R.I. ‘cuz we heard Hendrix and others were playing (as I believe the main reason most people were there). Saw some great music. “Give me an F.” More appropriate for today’s regime. (left before Hendrix played). Had a great time.
ff
and on the last day of Woodstock...that night, Hurricane Camille destroyed the Mississippi Coast and changed forever the way the U.S. looked at hurricanes....
a generation-defining touchstone,
More than one person has put a reference to their presence at Woodstock on their tombstone, which, when I see it always makes me a little sad. Was it really THAT much of a big deal?
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