Reminiscing Woodstock

I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him where are you going
And this he told me
I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm
I’m going to join in a rock ‘n’ roll band
I’m going to camp out on the land
I’m going to try an’ get my soul free 
By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration…
— Singer/songwriter-Joni Mitchell

THIS IS for all those who never knew and for those who were not there.

Today marks 52 years when the “Woodstock Music and Arts Festival” opened and took the world by surprise, specifically from Aug. 15 to 18, 1969. And it came to be known as “3 Days of Peace, Love and Music”.

A year later, 1970 also on the same week in August, the Academy award-winning documentary “Woodstock” was shown for the first time in Iloilo City. The four-hour film documentary was shown in what was then “The Prince Theatre” to a packed audience of young people, mostly long-haired “hippies” in faded jeans and tie-dyed shirts.

The movie house was not air-conditioned and “no smoking ordinances” were still non-existent at that time, and best of all, marijuana was not yet illegal; it was only criminalized in 1982.

The entire movie house was enveloped in a hazy bluish almost purple smoke as everyone was either smoking a joint or sharing one. You don’t need to bring one or light up as you could just literally inhale the “purple haze” and you’ll get “stoned” or “high” whichever way you want to describe it.

Moi was a high school senior when “Woodstock” was shown in Iloilo City and already a “turned on” hippie before watching the film. My girlfriend at that time wanted to smoke a couple of joints which we did. So by the time we watched the film we were already “high”.

We watched the entire four hours then watched it again. By that time Moi was so “stoned” we couldn’t find our way home. Moi woke up lying on my girlfriend’s lap on a beach somewhere in Oton. Whether we still have our clothes on or not is for you to wonder and for Moi to smile about.

Before the uninitiated gets horny and lost in translation, excerpts from that free online encyclopedia a.k.a. the internet:

The Woodstock Music & Art Fair — informally, the Woodstock Festival or simply Woodstock — was a music festival attracting an audience of over 400,000 people, scheduled over three days on a dairy farm in New York from Aug. 15 to 17, 1969, but ultimately ran four days long, ending on Aug. 18, 1969.

Billed as “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music”, it was held at Max Yasgur‘s 600-acre dairy farm in the town of Bethel, 43 miles southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York.

During the sometimes rainy weekend, 32 acts performed outdoors before an audience of more than 400,000 people. It was widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history, as well as the definitive nexus for the larger counterculture generation.

Rolling Stone listed it as one of the 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll.

The event was captured in the Academy award–winning 1970 documentary movie Woodstock, an accompanying soundtrack album, and Joni Mitchell‘s song “Woodstock”, which commemorated the event and became a major hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. In 2017 the festival site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Woodstock is known as one of the greatest happenings of all time and – perhaps the most pivotal moment in music history.

It was said that Woodstock was held at the tail end of a flu pandemic yet no report of any infection amongst the almost half a million hippies high either on marijuana or LSD who attended the festival. The combination of “sex, drugs and rock and roll” must have worked but of course these are stuff that legends are made of.  

Joni Mitchell said, “Woodstock was a spark of beauty” where half-a-million kids saw that they were part of a greater organism.” According to Michael Lang, one of four young men who formed Woodstock Ventures to produce the festival, “That’s what means the most to me – the connection to one another felt by all of us who worked on the festival, all those who came to it, and the millions who couldn’t be there but were touched by it.”

As one of the biggest rock festivals of all time and a cultural touchstone for the late ‘60s, Woodstock has been referenced in many different ways in popular culture. The phrase “the Woodstock generation” became part of the common lexicon.

The “Woodstock generation” is my generation. I was a “hippie” and still is albeit an ageing one. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com)/PN