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Sunday, August 16. 2009
Breakfast at Yasgur’s
Forty years ago the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair was in high gear. It started, precariously, on August 15, with Richie Havens who had to play several encores because there wasn’t another act ready to take the stage. The three-album set features only one song by Havens, the epochal “Freedom/Motherless Child,” which happened to be an improvisation — Havens had nothing else in his repertoire.And so started the three days of peace and love … that was more like three and a half days due to rain delays. Jimi Hendrix and his Gypsy Son and Rainbows were the last performers, slated to close out Sunday Evening (August 17). As it turned out, they took the stage early Monday Morning (after most people had left) and played probably the best set in Hendrix’s career.
Well, his Isle of Wight and Monterey Pop performances were pretty legendary too.
Immediately preceding the Gypsy Son and Rainbows was Sha Na Na, a group of college boys who actually were going back to school, Columbia University, about a week after the festival. Had they not played Woodstock, it’s not likely anyone outside of New York City would have heard of Sha Na Na. They had no record contract, only played covers — from the 50’s and early 60’s no less — and only had their college educations in their future plans.
A year later the band had a contract with Kama Sutra Records and were playing gigs around the country, but only on weekends and holidays so they could complete their studies. Since then they’ve released over two dozen albums. The original keyboardist, Joseph Witkin, left the band to pursue his medical degree, not thinking the band would become the hit it did. Eh … C’est la vie. Now he’s an emergency room doctor here in San Diego, but he and wife do shows now and then with their band. Just for the record: I gleaned this from today’s San Diego Union-Tribune. As it turns out John “Jocko” Marcellino, a drummer and singer with Sha Na Na, also lives in the area, La Jolla to be exact, living off the fruits earned from being a member of the band all these years.
Earlier I was reading an editorial from a guy in Canada slagging the festival and the Woodstock Nation. Obviously too young to remember it, the writer, Grieg Dymond, is miffed that the Baby Boomers who experienced it, either in person or vicariously through the album and movie, recall Woodstock with a nostalgic glow, a smugness as he calls it, because our moment of beauty far surpasses any other cultural phenomenon in the following years. Whine on young’un. As long as there are Baby Boomers who loved the hippie culture walking among us, Woodstock will continue to be the subject of conversation every third week in August.
Perry Farrell, lead man for one of the great bands to emerge in the 1980’s, Jane’s Addiction, did something pretty amazing when he created the Lollapalooza Festival. It’s still going to this day, but it doesn’t rise to the level of Woodstock although I’d be lying if I said it isn’t impressive.
Outdoor festivals became commonplace after Woodstock, one thing Mr. Dymond got right in his whiney piece about 40th Anniversary. Lollapalooza, and all the traveling festival shows that followed, owe their popularity to Woodstock. For years I went to concerts at Alpine Music Theater in New Berlin, WI and the similarities to Woodstock were always apparent, especially when the Grateful Dead played.In ten years I want to celebrate Woodstock’s 50th Anniversary, when I can tell the grandkids of my brothers and sisters the truth of Woodstock — from one who lived it vicariously — sprinkled with a little mythological enhancement. What the Hell, we were all high on pot and LSD at the time so the memories are a little hazy anyway.
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