The music of Woodstock http://www.austin360.com/music/content/music/stories/2009/08/0809woodside.html
CD sets highlight the weekend's best sounds By Joe Gross AMERICAN-STATESMAN MUSIC WRITER Saturday, August 08, 2009 Forty years ago come Aug. 15, Richie Havens took the stage at 5:07 p.m. to kick off the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, and music and art were never the same. The festival spawned a movie, a couple of albums, dozens of imitators, two anniversary festivals and decades of mythmaking and seemingly endless discussion about what it all meant. Intermittently lost in the aftermath was the music that was produced at Max Yasgur's farm in Upstate New York, more of which is now officially available. Consider the six-CD box set "Woodstock - 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur's Farm," which contains 95 tracks in all, including almost all of the "Woodstock" and "Woodstock Two" tracks from a 1994 box and 38 previously unreleased songs and bits of speeches. Missing: Music from the Band, Ten Years After and the Keef Hartley Band; those bands would not allow their music to appear. (Ten Years After's blazing "I'm Goin' Home" is still on the first Woodstock soundtrack album, and music from the Band is on the 1994 Woodstock box set.) But for the first time, there's music from Tim Hardin, Blood Sweat & Tears, Bert Sommers, Sweetwater, Ravi Shankar and Quill. Did we need the music from Sweetwater? Probably not, but the bigger picture of the festival's sounds is fascinating. The Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" gets a vibrant 19-minute workout but is totally lapped by Canned Heat's excessive 28-minute "Woodstock Boogie." (The latter's "Going Up the Country" has rarely sounded better.) The Who rages, Creedence Clearwater Revival is tightly wound and, oh, yeah, the Incredible String Band played a set. And Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner" remains one of rock culture's most riveting moments, hippie America's sound and fury and electric beauty made manifest. Even more revelatory are the five double-CD sets Epic has assembled for five artists. Each volume teams the full set from Woodstock with the band's 1969 album. The best is Sly and the Family Stone's machine-gun funk, a fusion of rock's power and R&B's swing that nobody has touched since. The "Music Lover/Higher/I Want to Take You Higher" medley still dazzles, while "Stand" and "Everyday People" feel like brilliant everyday anthems. Jefferson Airplane's "Wooden Ships" is the famous track from their set, but "The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil" is the revelation, a noisy, bassy jam that morphs into a full-tilt boogie and back. Speaking of full-tilt boogies, Janis Joplin's band is more R&B than Big Brother's meaty psychedelia. Joplin's take on George Gershwin's "Summertime" has an epic feel, "Work Me, Lord" is a mind-blower and "Piece of My Heart" casts a Staxy vibe. But she sounds tired - the 2 a.m. start time couldn't have helped. Johnny Winter's blues rock has aged oddly, but only "Mean Town Blues" is previously released and the full set will thrill hardcore fans. But with bands such as the Mars Volta extrapolating from their work, Santana's 45 minutes of Latin rock sounds utterly contemporary. And yes, the Woodstock instrumental MVP should probably still go to Santana drummer Michael Shrieve, not just for his jaw-dropping solo on the legendary "Soul Sacrifice" but for powering the whole set with verve and subtlety. You hear moments like that and you think, why, yes, this concert is legendary for a reason. -- [email protected]; 912-5926 -- Grading Woodstock Various Artists 'Woodstock - 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur's Farm' Grade: B+ Santana 'Santana: The Woodstock Experience' Grade: A Sly and the Family Stone 'Sly and the Family Stone: The Woodstock Experience' Grade: A Jefferson Airplane 'Jefferson Airplane: The Woodstock Experience' Grade: B+ Janis Joplin 'Janis Joplin: The Woodstock Experience' Grade: B Johnny Winter 'Johnny Winter: The Woodstock Experience' Grade: B (all Epic/Legacy) . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
