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20,000 vinyl LPs 194: Woodstock ~ Looking back after 50 years

Woodstock vinyl LP gatefold cover open
left photo photographer unknown, right photo by Burk Uzzle
photo of album cover by Styrous®

Fifty years ago this month, in 1969, a miracle called Woodstock was staged on a remote 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York and music as well as the world was never the same.

My favorite film dealing with the event is Taking Woodstock directed by Ang Lee and based on the memoir Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life by Elliot Tiber and Tom Monte.

I was going full speed ahead with my corporate ambitions (I would "drop out" a few months later) so did not go to the event, unfortunately, but my friend Genie was there and here's what she had to say about it.

Genie:

"I haven’t really thought about it much in the years since. My memory is that it was an extremely peaceful event given the incredibly stressful situation with rain, mud, lack of water and other things . . . toilets. I don’t remember ever seeing any fights break out, I don’t even remember drunken things, people being drunk and obnoxious. Now, we know there were other mind altering drugs but I think that was very amazing.

Yes, everyone was using mood altering stuff to enjoy this incredible party but even when it was raining and mud still, there was an amazing magic kind of thing because it was just really peaceful, helpful and joyful people.

I remember trying to get to a potty and walking through crowds and crowds of people and wondering if I would find my way back to my people. But we did and it was some magical thing going.

The music was obviously out of this world and never to be experienced again. I think most people at the moment, including myself, weren’t thinking much of the history, only of the moment, but then we all kind of went back to the “Summer of Love” thing. It was just very much all about finding a new way, you know.

It was very hard because there was no food. Mr. Yazgur had cows and some of the more daring young men went out and got corn, we ate what I called “cow corn”; we would roast it and eat it. It was just terrible food but it was better than nothing.

Max Yazgur farm - 1968

photographer unknown

It was such an enormous group of people, so things could have been happening that we would never have known about where we were in that massive group of people. So, I have a recollection of that [the sandwich distribution] but my people didn’t go running for the sandwiches because there was no way they could have fed all those people.

Woodstock Opening Ceremony

photographer unknown

Anyway, by the time the sun came out, it was still a mess, I mean the mud and the steam and all that happens in that kind of weather. It’s something you really DO want to forget because it is really awful.

Woodstock rain

photographer unknown

Over arching was the art, the music, the joy, the people getting along no matter what and no matter how much drugs or alcohol people had it was all about the fun and the wonderment of it all coming together.

I think that what happened in the media was all true. The superstars were truly superstars. Everybody wanted to see Jimi Hendrix and he, of course, was a show stopper. So, I think that the truth is everything that was recorded by all others, every band that was given stardom really did take the show away.

And people played all night long, all day long. I can’t remember specifically anymore, many of the stars, let’s say, Grateful Dead and Big Brother, would play together when there was nothing going on. I remember to some degree, people in the crowd getting up on stage being able to sing or play instruments with these stars. It was everybody just getting along."

Woodstock vinyl LP gatefold interior open
left photo photographer unknown, right photo by Burk Uzzle
photo of album cover by Styrous®

Side one

"I Had a Dream" (John Sebastian) – 2:38 (2:53)
- Performed by John Sebastian.
"Going Up the Country" (Alan Wilson) – 3:19 (5:53)
- Performed by Canned Heat
"Freedom (Motherless Child)" (Richie Havens) – 5:13 (5:26)
- Performed by Richie Havens.
"Rock and Soul Music" (McDonald, Melton, David Cohen, Barthol, Hirsh) – 2:09 (2:09)
- Performed by Country Joe & the Fish.
"Coming into Los Angeles" (Arlo Guthrie) – 2:05 (2:50)
- Performed by Arlo Guthrie.
"At the Hop" (Artie Singer, David White, John Medora) – 2:13 (2:33)
- Performed by Sha-Na-Na.

Side two

"The "Fish" Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" (McDonald) – 3:02 (3:48)
- Performed by Country Joe McDonald.
"Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man" (Roger McGuinn, Gram Parsons) – 2:08 (2:38)
- Performed by Joan Baez & Jeffrey Shurtleff.
"Joe Hill" (Alfred Hayes, Earl Robinson) – 2:40 (5:34)
- Performed by Joan Baez.
"Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" (Stephen Stills) – 8:04 (9:02)
- Performed by Crosby, Stills & Nash.
"Sea of Madness" (Neil Young) – 3:22 (4:20)
- Performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Recorded in September 1969 at the Fillmore East auditorium, New York City, New York.

Side three

"Wooden Ships" (Stills, David Crosby, Paul Kantner—Kantner not credited on original release) – 5:26 (5:26)
- Performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
"We're Not Gonna Take It" (Pete Townshend) – 4:39 (6:54)
- Performed by The Who. (The performance on the album picks up mid-song at the very end of the "We're Not Gonna Take It" portion and then finishes with the "See Me, Feel Me" and "Listening to You" sections.) The final 1:50 of the track is an emergency announcement and the statement that declared "It's a free concert from now on".
"With a Little Help from My Friends" (John Lennon, Paul McCartney) – 7:50 (10:06)
- Performed by Joe Cocker. In the CD version, the first disc would close with this track, with a 1:30 long recording of the rainstorm.

Side four

"Soul Sacrifice" (Santana, Rolie, Brown, Carabello, Shrieve, Areas) – 8:05 (13:52)
- Performed by Santana. The first 3 minutes of the track is the "Crowd Rain Chant," a chant started by the crowd as an attempt to stop the rainstorm.
"I'm Going Home" (Alvin Lee) – 9:20 (9:57)
- Performed by Ten Years After.

Side five

"Volunteers" (Marty Balin, Kantner) – 2:45 (3:31)
- Performed by Jefferson Airplane. The final 34 seconds or so of the track is a speech by Max Yasgur, praising the crowd for coming to the festival.
"Medley" (Performed by Sly & the Family Stone) – 13:47 (15:29)
- "Dance to the Music" (Sylvester Stewart) – 2:11
- "Music Lover" (Stewart) – 4:50
- "I Want to Take You Higher" (Stewart) – 6:46
"Rainbows All Over Your Blues" (Sebastian) – 2:05 (3:54)
- Performed by John Sebastian.

Side six

"Love March" (Gene Dinwiddie, Phillip Wilson) – 8:43 (8:59)
- Performed by Butterfield Blues Band.
"Medley" (Performed by Jimi Hendrix.) – 12:51 (13:42)
- "Star Spangled Banner" (Traditional, arrangement, Jimi Hendrix)– 5:40
- "Purple Haze" (Hendrix) – 3:28
- "Instrumental Solo" (Hendrix) – 3:43 (retitled and re-edited when Hendrix's Woodstock show was released more fully in the 1990s. The improvised, fast solo section immediately following "Purple Haze" was heavily cut in the original Woodstock film and soundtrack, and most of the track here is what would later be titled "Villanova Junction", a slow bluesy ballad with the band joining in the background. The uncut version of the solo was restored in the director's cut of Woodstock and on the video of Jimi Hendrix: Live at Woodstock and titled "Woodstock Improvisation")

Viewfinder links:

Joan Baez
Canned Heat
Joe Cocker
Jerry Garcia
Grateful Dead
Jimi Hendrix
The Who

Net links:

Woodstock website
Rolling Stone ~ Woodstock: ‘It Was Like Balling for the First Time’
Consequenceofsound ~ How much each artist earned from playing Woodstock
Rockhall ~ Woodstock at 50 exhibition
CBS News ~ Woodstock at 50
Smithsonian ~ Woodstock—How to Feed 400,000 Hungry Hippies
NBC News ~ Woodstock 50: How the golden anniversary festival went off track
USA Today ~ Woodstock 50: What has gone wrong?
Vice.com ~ Canceled Woodstock 50

YouTube links

Genie - 2013
photo by Styrous®

"It was amazing!"

~ Genie - August 25, 2019

Styrous® ~ Wednesday, August 28, 2019

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