Woodstock: Directors cut on Max

[Outkaster]

This might be old news, but I am watching the 3-hour directors cut of Woodstock on Max.  The first thing about it that I notice is everyone is thin. It speaks to the diet everyone had back then when there weren’t convenience stores all over the place, I guess.  Too me the music is almost secondary.  The whole social thing and how people got along are amazing. I live in NYS so I have talked to people that were there.  The soundman I use here locally was on one of the helicopters bringing things in.  He said at the time he didn’t realize the impact of what was happening.  He did say later that as much happened wrong,  it all worked in a strange way.  The music is amazing considered a sub-standard PA.  I always wondered how it was recorded?

 

When the rain came in it show the stagehands moving the Hammond and the Leslie.  That must have been a chore as it seems like it came on so fast.  Seeing all the aerial shots of traffic was amazing as at the time it shut down the NYS Thruway.  One thing that is apparent is that nothing will ever happen that way again.  Our world is much more confrontational now.  If you guys get a chance to watch this documentary, it’s well worth it.

[JamPro]

Cool.  I want to have a look. 

 

Have you seen "Trainwreck: Woodstock 99" (on Netflix)?  All about the three days of anger and rioting during the Woodstock 99 event.  It includes musical footage but is not strictly a musical documentary.  Includes a very self-serving interview with Micheal Lang, who of course could not accept that he or his staff did anything wrong. 

[Outkaster]

I have heard about that one and how bad it was.  Our local DJ here was the MC at that event and had been to the original.  He said it was scary at times.

[ProfD]

6 hours ago, Outkaster said:

The first thing about it that I notice is everyone is thin. It speaks to the diet everyone had back then...

A diet consisting of drugs and alcohol and free love would have been non-fattening no matter how much it was super-sized.🤣😎

[JohnH]

1 hour ago, JamPro said:

Cool.  I want to have a look. 

 

Have you seen "Trainwreck: Woodstock 99" (on Netflix)?  All about the three days of anger and rioting during the Woodstock 99 event.  It includes musical footage but is not strictly a musical documentary.  Includes a very self-serving interview with Micheal Lang, who of course could not accept that he or his staff did anything wrong. 

I've watched both of those, terrific documentaries. One thing I noticed is most of the music on just about every clip was absolute horrible! That nu metal Limp Bizkit rap shouting metal stuff was just bloody awful! It makes me glad I completely missed all that period, locked away during 93-2001 on cruise ship gigs, I wasn't subjected to hearing one note of any of it on the radio or seeing these bands in rotation on MTV .

[Outkaster]

I was the age of those kids in 99 for the most part but no one in my circle really listened to that stuff.  It was mostly older music and some 90's bands at the time.  Even musicians I knew were not that knowledgeable about Woodstock.

[JamPro]

There is a sort of funny moment in the Woodstock 99 moive: the production team has settled on the festival line-up which includes lots of heavy-metal-rap groups like Limp Bizkit, and there is one young intern who tells the production team "uh....you know those groups are all followed by a sort of nasty/angry kind of music fan and maybe you want to rethink the line-up for this large festival", and everyone in the room tells the intern that it is going to be great and just shut up.

[Baldwin Funster]

I wonder why there wasn't an Altamont '99?

The Stones coulda headlined again.

[Outkaster]

Mick Jagger said Altamont was the end of the 60s

[analogika]

9 hours ago, Outkaster said:

Mick Jagger said Altamont was the end of the 60s

Keith Richards wouldn’t remember. 

[Joe Muscara]

2 hours ago, analogika said:

Keith Richards wouldn’t remember. 

Ha ha. but yes he would. Did you read his book, Life? It's actually amazing how much he remembers.

[Outkaster]

Well to get back on topic I was wondering if we had any forum members that were there.

[analogika]

19 hours ago, Joe Muscara said:

Ha ha. but yes he would. Did you read his book, Life? It's actually amazing how much he remembers.

i haven’t, but I’ll put it on the list! Thanks!

[o0Ampy0o]

In the process of writing a book Mick Jagger revisited places to try to recall things did not remember.

 

That Woodstock 99 event served the attendees a plate of turd with a glass of urine, and they overcharged them for that too.

[Bill H.]

On 7/21/2023 at 5:16 PM, Outkaster said:

Mick Jagger said Altamont was the end of the 60s

 

Coupled with the Manson murders a few months before and the breakup of the Beatles not long thereafter, it sure felt like it. 

[Outkaster]

Yeah so  much happened in a short span of time.

[Al Quinn]

The original Woodstock was an incredible display of humanity and I think a reflection of that generation's values. I was only 11 at the time and not even allowed to see the movie when it first came out. I did a gig a couple of week's ago with a friend who attended Woodstock. Of course, he said it was amazing but three week's later he was drafted to fight in Vietnam. 

 

Woodstock '99 was the exact opposite -- absolutely horrible behavior by so so many. Makes me wonder what's wrong with those people.

[HammondDave]

On 7/21/2023 at 5:51 AM, Outkaster said:

 

When the rain came in it show the stagehands moving the Hammond and the Leslie.  That must have been a chore as it seems like it came on so fast.  Seeing all the aerial shots of traffic was amazing as at the time it shut down the NYS Thruway.  One thing that is apparent is that nothing will ever happen that way again.  Our world is much more confrontational now.  If you guys get a chance to watch this documentary, it’s well worth it.

Funny story about the rain storm and the stagehands moving and wrapping the B3 to keep it dry.  A colleague of mine (Joshua White of the Joshua Light Show) was going to do the projected light show for the festival. He showed up after the storm to find his huge projection screen missing. He was told that the wind blew it away and no one could find it. A year later he was watching the documentary and saw the stagehands wrapping the B3 with it. 

[o0Ampy0o]

12 hours ago, Al Quinn said:

The original Woodstock was an incredible display of humanity and I think a reflection of that generation's values....

 

 

The majority of events taking place leading up to and after Woodstock would be more representative of what was going on with that generation than the one miraculous concert which was peaceful. There certainly were many of that generation partaking in violent activity. I have read and heard many stories about it from the bands and audience attendees. Woodstock has become legendary but it was not something comprehended until days, weeks, months or years after the event. They did not recognize what was happening as it happened. They just enjoyed the event peacefully. Perhaps they had gotten the anger and violence out of their system. Instead of being overshadowed by conflict it was an atypically peaceful gathering..........an exception rather than a reflection of the generation's values. If anything it might have been a sign that they were ready to move on from what they had been. The event proved it could be done and not just talked about.

 

It is worth noting to me that it wasn't a violent generation, meaning the violence was not for its own sake. It does appear to have been a means to get attention redirected to force a reevaluation and adjustment in the direction the USA had been heading during that period. But the hippy peaceful mentality is a myth as much as John Lennon (the first hippy) being a peaceful man is a myth.

[Outkaster]

Yeah my sound man said sometimes when you are going through changes you don't realize it.  I agree about the hippy peaceful mentality.  Half my dads students that were there ended up working for airlines or the dept of defense which was a far cry from the hippy/peace thing. John Lennon was complicated, and from an Beatles author that I know, said he was tough to deal with.

12 hours ago, HammondDave said:

Funny story about the rain storm and the stagehands moving and wrapping the B3 to keep it dry.  A colleague of mine (Joshua White of the Joshua Light Show) was going to do the projected light show for the festival. He showed up after the storm to find his huge projection screen missing. He was told that the wind blew it away and no one could find it. A year later he was watching the documentary and saw the stagehands wrapping the B3 with it. 

 I will have to watch that again.

[Bill H.]

15 hours ago, o0Ampy0o said:

The majority of events taking place leading up to and after Woodstock would be more representative of what was going on with that generation than the one miraculous concert which was peaceful.

There were a number off outdoor festivals in Western Washington and Oregon back then, and I don't recall any of them being violent. I attended one (which culminated with the dropping of a piano out of a helicopter) and it was entirely peaceful. Not Woodstock size, but there were still several thousand people in a field. 

 

It was about the time of Woodstock when the introduction of hard drugs really changed the scene. When my Fender Bassman amp was stolen, I realized that my personal belongings were no longer safe just laying around anymore. It was a big wake-up call. 

 

And things just got worse from there. By Altamont the dream was over. 

[o0Ampy0o]

1 hour ago, Bill H. said:

There were a number off outdoor festivals in Western Washington and Oregon back then, and I don't recall any of them being violent. I attended one (which culminated with the dropping of a piano out of a helicopter) and it was entirely peaceful. Not Woodstock size, but there were still several thousand people in a field. 

 

It was about the time of Woodstock when the introduction of hard drugs really changed the scene. When my Fender Bassman amp was stolen, I realized that my personal belongings were no longer safe just laying around anymore. It was a big wake-up call. 

 

And things just got worse from there. By Altamont the dream was over. 

 

The USA is a big place. Of course there were exceptions. But Woodstock is and, in the context of my response, was being held up as a reflection of a generation's values. It has received far more credit than it warrants. The larger picture evinces otherwise.

[Polychrest]

Woodstock wasn't the only North American outdoor music festival scheduled for that August 15 weekend in 1969.  Doomed promoters hoping to capitalize on the big Michigan/Southern Ontario rock market had chosen a small lakeside town near Sarnia at the south end of Lake Huron for an event they called The Bright's Grove Pop Festival.  The headline acts were from the nearby Detroit area--which is where the organizers did the bulk of their advertising.  With a couple of exceptions, the Canadian content was a gaggle of minor gigging bands from the Toronto area to serve as cheap opening-act cannon fodder.   

 

Here's the lineup.

 

August 15, 1969: Kenwick-on-the-Lake, Brights Grove, ON, Canada. Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes, The MC5, The Pleasure Seekers, Mitch Ryder, Motherlode, Stooges, Rationals, Fruit of the Loom, Frigid Pink, The Tea, Whiskey Howl, Big Al’s Band, Scarborough Fair, Sound Spectrum, Jackie Graham Society

 

The whole thing was a fiasco.  Ticket sales were so bad the promoters began cancelling acts before the event even started.  By Friday night, the weather system that hit upstate New York later that weekend was dumping torrents of rain on the huddled clots of fans in front of the big open-air bandshell.  Most of them seemed to be bikers.  My band got there with our gear just before dawn on Saturday morning, only to be told the entire festival was cancelled.  There was an informal jam going on inside a nearby hall if we wanted join in.  The highlight of the trip was meeting Shep Gordon, Alice Cooper's manager, a really interesting guy.  There was no violence at the site, although some of the unpaid musicians wanted to inflict some on the promoters.  The easy availability of Owsley Stanley purple microdots may have contributed to the tranquility.

 

I was 20 at the time.  When people ask me if I went to Woodstock, I tell them I would have loved to go, but I was booked to play another festival with Ted Nugent, Mitch Ryder and Iggy Pop that same weekend.  It sounds way more impressive than it actually was.

[ProfD]

Emerging from the stuffy 1950s and blazing through the revolutions and party-time 1960s, those 50+ year old concerts were a sign of the times. 

 

As with the decades preceding the 1960s and post, times change. Memories and nostalgia remain among the living.  The rest is history.😎

[Outkaster]

Also there was a major Soul Festival in NYC.  Quest Love got produced and it's on Hulu. Check it out if you guys can there is performances that in some cases surpass those at Wooodstock.

[jerrythek]

Yes, it’s a great documentary - The Summer Of Soul. Highly recommended!

 

3 minutes ago, Outkaster said:

Also there was a major Soul Festival in NYC.  Quest Love got produced and it's on Hulu. Check it out if you guys can there is performances that in some cases surpass those at Wooodstock.

 

[HammondDave]

Nothing beats this lineup for the Palm Beach Festival in November of 1969….  Also: Vanilla Fudge, Edgar Winters, and King Crimson (Mark I) played twice! I blame my Mellotron obsession on this concert. And yes, I was there. 

 

 

[mate stubb]

4 hours ago, Polychrest said:

Woodstock wasn't the only North American outdoor music festival scheduled for that August 15 weekend in 1969.  Doomed promoters hoping to capitalize on the big Michigan/Southern Ontario rock market had chosen a small lakeside town near Sarnia at the south end of Lake Huron for an event they called The Bright's Grove Pop Festival.  The headline acts were from the nearby Detroit area--which is where the organizers did the bulk of their advertising.  With a couple of exceptions, the Canadian content was a gaggle of minor gigging bands from the Toronto area to serve as cheap opening-act cannon fodder.   

 

 

I had a similar experience being booked into the Ozark Music Festival in 1974.

 

 

350,000 fans descended on a small Missouri town and completely overwhelmed that whole area of the state. We chartered a plane to fly in but our equipment and roadies never got close due to the traffic jams. We managed to arrive on stage during our time slot but found Aerosmith set up instead.  

[JamPro]

"But Woodstock is and, in the context of my response, was being held up as a reflection of a generation's values. It has received far more credit than it warrants. The larger picture evinces otherwise."

"Also there was a major Soul Festival in NYC.  Quest Love got produced and it's on Hulu. Check it out if you guys can there is performances that in some cases surpass those at Wooodstock."

 

Hello!?!?!?  Woodstock is "legendary" in part because white American media did not put much value on all the legendary music made by black performers, including those performing in NY in Aug. 1969.  Two Thumps Up for Summer of Soul (on Hulu, Disney+, Prime, and a few others).  You get stand-out performances by a very young Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight and the Pips, 5th Dimension, Nina Simone, Staple Singers, Sly ATFS, BB King, Mahalia Jackson, and more. 

[Outkaster]

On 7/21/2023 at 1:51 PM, JamPro said:

Cool.  I want to have a look. 

 

Have you seen "Trainwreck: Woodstock 99" (on Netflix)?  All about the three days of anger and rioting during the Woodstock 99 event.  It includes musical footage but is not strictly a musical documentary.  Includes a very self-serving interview with Micheal Lang, who of course could not accept that he or his staff did anything wrong. 

I finished that documentary last night. I would have been 30 at the time of that festival in 1999. What a shit show and John Scher and Mike Lang seemed so indifferent about it.  Kid Rock, Mettalica and Limp Brisket didn't help.  Even the Chili Peppers played while the whole festival was burning down.  I had heard it was bad because it's only a couple of hours from here. I had no idea the 99 festival was that bad.  I think they shut down the idea of a 50th anniversary for Woodstock.