It’s been forty years.
Woodstock.
Saying the word Woodstock only means one thing to most people. Three days in August that came to be a symbol of an era.
I can only imagine what an 18 year old kid today thinks when he hears the word Woodstock. For today’s youth hearing someone talk about being at Woodstock would be like a kid in 1969 hearing their grandparents talk about something that happened in 1929. It would seem like ancient history.
But Woodstock still has mythic appeal. The musicians and performances were legendary, many like Jimi Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner becoming cultural touchstones. The sensation it caused in the media and throughout the country was huge and subsequent festivals to this day aspire for the effect that Woodstock produced, always coming up short.
I was too young for Woodstock, being only ten at the time. But I remember the weekend and the news reports of the thruway being closed. It really struck later when the film came out and for Christmas my brother got a new 8-track player (cutting edge at the time!) with the Woodstock soundtrack. Christmas day was filled with Country Joe screaming Give me an F! and my mother yelling at my brother to turn it off. I must’ve listened to those big, clunky tapes a thousand times.
I don’t think they’ll ever replicate the way everything seemed to come together at Woodstock. It’s almost like a piece of art in its entirety. It could only be produced by that perfect blend of participants and the perfect moment. A synchronicity of time and events.
It’s easy to make too much of something like Woodstock but for today I’ll just think about how the music from those three days still reverberate today.
It was hard to pick out something, one performance, that could singularly define this event . There were so many. So I went with this because every time I hear it vivid memories of those times pop up for me. Here the aforementioned Country Joe McDonald singing his I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag.
Redtree Times 