[2 articles] Woodstock truly was something special
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/music/woodstock-truly-was-something-special-1.1350126 August 6, 2009 By GLENN GAMBOA [email protected] The mythology of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair overtook its reality years ago. Mountain's Leslie West jokes, "If you count all the people now that say they were there, there had to be 10 million people there, not just 400,000." The magic of those three days of peace, love and music from the biggest and brightest stars of the time can never be recaptured because it was something unique. All the massive festivals that have followed, all the attempts to link music with politics, all the plans to create "the next Woodstock" fall a little short because they lack the element of surprise. "We didn't know what was going to happen," says Martin Perry, a business consultant from Massapequa who went to Woodstock more for the experience than the music. "Who could have expected all of that ahead of time?" Perry says he attended other festivals shortly after Woodstock hoping for a repeat performance and was disappointed. "People were not as friendly," he says. "The experience was much more brutal. Woodstock was really a singular moment." That may be why people get nervous about anything that might tarnish the Woodstock legacy. Woodstock promoter Michael Lang recently dropped plans to celebrate the original festival's 40th anniversary this year with a free concert in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, after he wasn't able to find enough sponsors. (Considering the problems of Woodstock '99 in Rome, N.Y., which reportedly lost more than $10 million and ended in riots, fires and looting after four days of blistering heat and $4-a-bottle waters, the Woodstock plan of regular anniversary festivals every five years have been put on hold since 1999.) It is a testament, actually, to how cherished the Woodstock Experience still is that so many are still eager to tap into that "singular moment." A walk through any bookstore this summer will find more than a dozen new books about the event. There will be a new Ang Lee movie, "Taking Woodstock," about preparations for the festival, as well as a new VH1 documentary "Woodstock: Now and Then" from Barbara Kopple. And, of course, there's the music. Sony Legacy has a new 10-CD boxed set called "The Woodstock Experience," while Rhino Records is offering the six-CD "Woodstock - 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur's Farm," which will include 38 previously unreleased tracks and the entire festival set list. But it doesn't stop there. You could put your Woodstock coffee mug on some Woodstock coasters made from the vinyl albums of Woodstock artists, while you fold some Woodstock psychedelic origami and put together a thousand-piece Woodstock puzzle, while wearing some Woodstock T-shirts, naturally. A single idyllic moment Cocooning in that moment becomes important, since it didn't last very long. What Woodstock succeeded in creating was idyllic, but it was also short-lived. "It was a high point," says Jim Henke, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's vice president of exhibitions and curatorial affairs. "For a moment, it was the center of pop culture. It showed a huge number of young people rebelling against the social norms of the time, and it showed the hippie movement to be as big as it was. And it all went off pretty smoothly. Then came Altamont, and that sent almost the opposite message." The violence at the Altamont concert, along with the substance-abuse deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison shortly after that, quickly overturned the "sex and drugs and rock and roll" idealism that Woodstock had built. Reality had overtaken the myth. Slowly but surely, the balance began to shift again. Henke says all the attention that the anniversaries bring to the original Woodstock add to its importance, as does the recently rereleased "Woodstock" documentary. "For many people, when that movie came out, that was the introduction for many people to that ethos, that lifestyle," he says. "It all helps spread the word." West's wedding plans And for artists like Mountain's West, who became a star after performing at the festival and plans to return this week to play the 40th anniversary show at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, Woodstock's positive aspects will always outweigh whatever negatives that followed it. "I'm really looking forward to the show," says West, who plans to wed his fiancee, Jenni Maurer, onstage at the end of the band's Woodstock set. "It's such a beautiful place." West, like a lot of people whose lives were changed by the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, see the potential. For three days, 40 years ago, 400,000 people joined together to show that the hippie ideals of peace and love and mutual respect could not only work, but could lead to an unforgettably good time. Since then, we have seen numerous examples of how this could break down. But it happened once. Maybe it could happen again. Maybe that is the true legacy of Woodstock. -- Hippiefest and Heroes of Woodstock WHAT Hippiefest with Mountain's Leslie West and Corky Laing, Vanilla Fudge's Mark Stein and Vince Martel, Three Dog Night's Chuck Negron, The Turtles and more WHEN | WHERE 6 p.m. Sunday INFO $25-$37.50; 631-451-8010; brookhavenamphitheater.com -- WHAT Heroes of Woodstock with Jefferson Starship, Canned Heat, Country Joe McDonald, Ten Years After and others WHEN | WHERE 8 p.m. Thursday, The Capital One Bank Theatre at Westbury, 960 Brush Hollow Road, Westbury INFO $51.50-$61.50; 516-334-0800; livenation.com -------- Generational divide an unexpected legacy of Woodstock http://www.newsday.com/long-island/li-life/generational-divide-an-unexpected-legacy-of-woodstock-1.1348886 August 6, 2009 When Chris Zhune hears about Woodstock, he thinks first of wild partying. "There were a lot of crazy drugs going on," said Zhune, 21, of Deer Park, a student at Suffolk County Community College. Those old enough to remember Woodstock often talk about it as a social movement and musical milestone. But some younger people aren't as convinced. "Historical significance?" he said. "I don't really know if it was all that significant." Marie Mayes of Lindenhurst, also 21, figures that's what older people do - reminisce about the events of their youth. "I think maybe some people over 40 glorify it," said Mayes, a singer who is entering her senior year as a music education major at New York University. "But that's part of the allure of Woodstock. There's so much legend and myth around it." Mayes identifies Woodstock with "peace and love - but I don't know much about it." Woodstock left its share of legacies, but one unexpected one might be a generational divide. At Five Towns College, professor Peter Rogine often senses that in his music history class. He can predict the students' reactions to the word Woodstock: They will talk about love and peace. They'll mention Jimi Hendrix. And they'll bring up drugs. To Rogine, 62, this generation of students does not have a sense of Woodstock's musical and cultural importance. "Woodstock," he says, "really was the end of an era - the '60s - which brought about the sexual revolution, civil rights, Native American rights, birth control, divorce, women's rights, the idea of living off the land and rejecting consumerism." Rogine's theory about the different perspectives on Woodstock held up during recent interviews of recent high school and college graduates, along with those old enough to be their parents. Some of the older Long Islanders described Woodstock as a landmark event - even if they disliked the music and the politics. Younger ones often said they were dubious of all the attention to a music festival that took place on a farm 40 years ago. Old and young did agree on one point: Since the 1960s, music has become too commercial. "Woodstock wasn't a product, it was very much the creation of musicians," said Ryan Pratt, 23, of Oceanside, who is studying law at St. John's University. He plays guitar and used to play the saxophone and piano. Like George Harrison, he notes, he owns a sitar. "There might be a grain of truth in all the boasting about Woodstock," he said. "What we have now is the commodification of music." Adelphi University history professor Dominick Cavallo teaches a course on the 1960s, and says any mention of Woodstock sparks conversations among students. "Almost universally they are enchanted by the music . . . how entwined it became with rebellion and activism," said Cavallo, who also is the author of a book about the era, "A Fiction of the Past: The Sixties in American History." Students debate whether something like Woodstock could take place today. "Some of them are rueful that nothing like the '60s youth rebellion is happening," he said. Of course, not everyone looks back fondly at the Woodstock era. Cavallo notes that other students dismiss the three-day festival as "unbridled hedonism." . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
