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By The Time We Got To Woodstock. . .

post #1 of 13
7/11/09 at 11:18am
Thread Starter 
Due to a continual obsession with 60's rock icons and culture went to see Woodstock at the fabulous Fox.

Wow! Even with a subdued crowd it was a powerful, and at times nearly overwhelming experience. A great film. Not just a groovy soundtrack!

The early scenes are great example of visual story-telling. Witness an empty field transforming into a mass of people beyond the wildest imagination. Everyone is in awe. Film captures not just a concert, but the zeitgeist burning at its hottest.

A quick shot of three straight laced nuns walking amongst the crowd of young hippies and freaks, one of them smiling into the camera, and throwing up a peace sign is a touching moment.

The sequences showing the show-stopping rain storm are a favorite. (If you think really hard...maybe we can stop this rain! No rain! No rain!) If anything was going to go bad/get ugly, it would happen here. Instead of rioting the people played in the mud! The looks of relief and more than a little disbelief on the promoters and backstage staff is another of the endearing little moments.

(While nervous sure, nobody was ever scared. Good vibrations)

Depictions of wild abandon, innocent enthusiasm, and dopey ideology, as well as the surrounding culture war are--thanks to deft editing of Scorsese-nice touches. Adds sly humor as well.

Now the music!
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post #2 of 13
7/11/09 at 11:34am
Thread Starter 
The music is obviously the main highlight. All down the line, pretty fantastic.

I was impressed with Canned Heat's intense, smoking "A Change Is Gonna Come". A cool moment when a stoned fan wanders up and the band keeps going. They never flinch even when the kid steals the singer's cigarettes!

Richie Havens is a highlight for many, but to me, he was just alright.

Crosby, Stills, & Nash (and Young) aren't my bag, but they were pretty good. A fave moment is Stephen Stills turning to unseen Neil Young, and with a smile snarls "A little less power on the guitar". I thought that was funny.

Joe Cocker-A pretty stirring and legendary take on "A little Help From My Friends" (Almost didn't see the Belushi impression for once. ha)

Joan Baez & John Sebastian-likable enough, but painfully earnest and whitebread

Sha Na Na-a head-scratching WTF!

The Who-kicked ass. (Shame on killjoy uncle who always claimed they were out of tune! Who gives a shit. It was magical)

Ten Years After-"I'm Going Home" was a concert gem; surprised this wasn't a star-making performance

Country Joe & the Fish-somebody called them a shitty Doors, but "Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag" goes over like gangbusters, and i suppose still resonates
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post #3 of 13
7/11/09 at 11:45am
You know, we've had our Live Aids and our Live 8s and our Live Earths, but I wish I'd been around for those multi-day pop festivals of the late 60s and early 70s. I think the second US Festival was probably the closest my generation came to one, and even that was a pale shadow of shows like Woodstock and Monterey and Isle of Wight. And the disasters that were the two 90s Woodstocks show that the spirit of those earlier festivals is probably never to be recaptured.
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post #4 of 13
7/11/09 at 11:46am
Thread Starter 
After intermission, the show picks up and starts to full on rock.

The Airplane were slightly arrogant, dazed and dull. But Santana-Whoa! What a stunning surprise! "Soul Sacrifice" blazed! Group had this impossibly young drummer who was like Keith Moon by way of Charlie Watts! He was crazy fantastic! How come I've never heard of him?!!

After that it's a murderer's row of doomed geniuses. Sly Stone, Janis, and Jimi.
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post #5 of 13
7/11/09 at 12:02pm
Thread Starter 
Sly & the Family Stone brought it. Nighttime sing-a-long funky & spiritual. Mesmerizing.

Janis made me fall in love a little bit. Barefoot and smiling, she rips into a song that tears right into your soul. Unconventional looks make the raw emotion feel real come alive. Way she's filmed accent sense of doomed aura. Makes her performance fell poignant and final.

Then Jimi. What else can you say about the "Voodoo Chile(Slight Return)/Star-Spangled Banner/Purple Haze" medley? Rock N Roll at its most transcendent. Filmed rather pedestrian, comparatively (perhaps to disguise the fact the place was almost empty)-there is one cool moment, when as the brilliant bombast of the Star-Spangled Banner builds to a climax, Jimi looks down for a brief second into the camera as if to say "Fucking amazing, huh? You won't ever see anything like this again, you know"

And he was right.
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post #6 of 13
7/11/09 at 12:07pm
As impressive as the lineup was for Woodstock, the list of bands that were invited and didn't go makes for one hell of a what if: The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Tommy James and the Shondells, the Moody Blues and Bob Dylan.
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post #7 of 13
7/11/09 at 12:14pm
Thread Starter 
Bob Dylan & The Band probably thought the concert was ripping off their thing. Woulda been cool if they'd shown though, no doubt.

The Grateful Dead played right? But they didn't allow the footage.

Agree Dickson, those festivals were awesome. Monterey was amazing.
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post #8 of 13
7/11/09 at 12:45pm
I'm glad this thread is about the music, because it really is phenomenal. However, I can't help but be a little cynical about the boomer nostalgia for things like Woodstock, the hippie era, and the summer of love. Between "Taking Woodstock," the anniversary (I actually live about 20 minutes from Bethel Woods/the site and an hour from the town of Woodstock), and the "Hair" revival, it's pretty omniprecent these days.

Michael Ian Black actually says it better than I can in his "review" of Hair:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Ian Black
a show that is supposed to be about the hopefulness of youth and the possibility of change, ultimately ends up being about wasted youth and the status quo. Why? Because it is impossible to separate the show from its context: we know who all those hopeful young people grow up to be – assholes.

What should be a relevant musical about war, change, and optimism is instead a nearly total indictment of the Baby Boomer generation. These people who marched to stop The Vietnam War grew up to give us The Iraq War. The people who decried materialism grew up to give us hedge funds and sub-prime mortgages. These people who sought to change the world, did. For the worse. I left the show last night feeling so angry at all those self-indulgent long-haired hippies who tried to levitate the Pentagon, but instead sank the whole country.

...I don’t want to be reminded of their sunny naivete, I don’t want to hear about the fucking Age of Aquarius. There was no Age of Aquarius. It didn’t happen. Ultimately “Hair” doesn’t work because we know the ending before it begins: everybody sells out. In fact the truest line in the show is when the doomed Claude says something to the effect of "I don't want to change the world. I just want a lot of money."

Unfortunately, "Hair" teaches us that, despite all of their pretensions, Free Love was just about getting laid, that Dropping Out was just about getting high. That there never was a real counter-culture. It was just a bunch of spoiled kids who didn’t want to go to war. I don’t blame them; I wouldn’t want to go to war either. So what did they do about it? Ask the current crop of kids in Baghdad and Kabul.
But yes, the music is great.
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post #9 of 13
7/11/09 at 1:00pm
Thread Starter 
Dunno, Rath.

The effectiveness of the film is that for the course of the running time you feel like these crazy kids are really gonna change the world (All you need is love, and a little help from your friends) You're watching something truly special; people living out what the word freedom is all about.

Obviously, the bittersweet is that nothing came of it, the generation flamed out shortly afterwards, come a year's time, some of the best and brightest would be dead.

But they had this bright, shining moment.

Can't take that away.

*EDIT* See Black's point, but cynical to the extreme, dontcha think?
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post #10 of 13
7/11/09 at 2:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fat Elvis View Post
Santana-Whoa! What a stunning surprise! "Soul Sacrifice" blazed! Group had this impossibly young drummer who was like Keith Moon by way of Charlie Watts! He was crazy fantastic! How come I've never heard of him?!!
Micheal Shrieve was kind of a hired gun for Bay Area music projects. I think he went into the RnR Hall as Santana's drummer, fwiw.
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post #11 of 13
7/13/09 at 12:20pm
I'm hoping Netflix will add the new version, because I'd enjoy seeing the Creedence performance that Fogerty was so unhappy with. They were the first "real" rock band I ever saw live, and as a kid I loved them because every time I saw them (at least till Tom Fogerty left), they sounded just like the record!
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post #12 of 13
7/13/09 at 4:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson View Post
And the disasters that were the two 90s Woodstocks show that the spirit of those earlier festivals is probably never to be recaptured.
A little OT, but, comparing '99 to '94 is equivalent to comparing '94 to the original. Having attended '94 might make be a little biased, but the horror stories I heard about the '99 incarnation sound nothing like what occurred 5 years prior. Sure, '94 was a hell of a lot more commercial than the original, and the whole "woodstock money" concept was a disaster (for those who forgot or never knew, you had to trade in you regular money for festival currency, which was an insane idea), but the vibe there was pretty laid back and there was none of the aggression or violence that sprang up in '99.
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post #13 of 13
8/16/09 at 1:51pm
Thread Starter 
XM Deep Cuts has become the Woodstock channel this weekend. They're playing some cool, rare stuff you didn't get to hear in the movie. A lot of groovy interviews.

That's interesting about 94, BadlyDrawn. Always wish I'd made it out for that. Looked like fun on MTV.
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