Return to Woodstock
August 15, 2009

What a weird trip. Bethel Woods, the site of the Woodstock festival, is Woodstock as re-envisioned and made perverse by Disney. It is a fascist state where everyone is searched, there are thousands of security guards, every inch is fenced off (especially the ancestral hillside where we lay in the mud), and no smoking. I can see banning tobacco but banning all smoking is anti-Woodstock Nation.
The crowd was some aged hippies but mainly suburban parents and grandparents donning peace symbols and tie-died shirts made by slave labor in state owned factories in China. Virtually no pot was detectable but there was more than ample wine and beer.... The concert itself was great: Country Joe McDonald (who led the Fish cheer and a rousing sing-along of the I Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag),
Big Brother and the Holding Company with an excellent Janis Joplin substitute, Jefferson Starship with an equally good Grace Slick, Ten Years After (who really got cooking), Canned Heat, Mountain (Les got married on stage) and Levon Helm Band, which did a traditional performance, not a nostalgia show. Paul Kanter looked and sounded uglier than before. Leslie West looked like my crazy relative from Brooklyn.
Levon Helm looked frail and could not use his voice. I had few distinct memories of Woodstock before I arrived. But seeing the ground, I remember distinctly where I lay in the mud, where we camped, working on building the stage, the horrible bathroom and food situation.
What was depressing to recall was how we thought that we could change things, how 400,000 kids could say no to an immoral war and a repressive government, how, we thought, the man's technology could not fuck with the power of the people. The two finger peace signs, the tie-die, and group sing of Volunteers was all there. But Woodstock Nation proved the Comet Kohoutek of social/political movements. But, as a friend pointed out, forget the politics; the music prevailed.
I was in the car recently with my 22 year old daughter who was loudly singing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. I pointed out that the song was 37 years old. If I listened to 37 year old songs at her age, I would have been listening to the Hits of 1935 (“I’m in the Mood for Love”, “Isle of Capri”, “Lullaby of Browadway”.)