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Woodstock 40th Anniversary Show

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Levon Helm Band, Jefferson Starship and Country Joe McDonald are among the acts that will descend on Bethel, New York, on August 15th to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival, Billboard.biz reports. Mountain, Ten Years After, Canned Heat and Big Brother and the Holding Co. will also play the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, a venue built on the site of the original Woodstock, which ran from August 15th-17th, 1969.

Helm appeared at the 1969 fest with the Band, while Jefferson Starship took the Woodstock stage as Jefferson Airplane. With the exception of Big Brother & the Holding Co. — Janis Joplin performed at the ‘69 concert with the Kozmic Blues Band — the rest of the acts performing on August 15th all had a set at the original Woodstock festival. As Rock Daily previously reported, Richie Havens will also play a Woodstock-related event on August 14th, returning to Bethel to perform “Freedom,” the song that opened up the ‘69 festival, at a media-only event.

Comments

  1. James FergusonAugust 14, 2009 at 3:05 PM

    My oldest kids (15 and 21) are having a "Woodstock" party at the garden house this weekend. It is amazing how Woodstock still has such a huge hold on the public imagination and has influenced whole new generations.

    ReplyDelete
  2. avrdsAugust 14, 2009 at 4:02 PM

    My daughter, 23, isn't celebrating this weekend, but did pick up some of the "three days of peace and music" paraphernalia to take with us when we went to a reunion of my music friends earlier this summer.

    It was interesting reading the "evaluation" of the event in the Times earlier. It would make an interesting study of "memory" in history since so many of us were either there or remember it as an event.

    I think of it in terms of the music but it appears to have been remembered more as a social movement by those who write history. (I think of the west coast events more in those terms, but then that's where I was, and not at Woodstock.)

    ReplyDelete
  3. avrdsAugust 14, 2009 at 4:03 PM

    But I have to always complain when history creeps into my lifespan.

    This isn't history... It's current events!

    ReplyDelete
  4. James FergusonAugust 14, 2009 at 8:21 PM

    Just love these lyrics,

    By the time we got to Woodstock,
    We were half a million strong
    And everywhere was a song and a celebration.
    And I dreamed I saw the bomber death planes
    Riding shotgun in the sky,
    Turning into butterflies
    Above our nation.

    Joni Mitchell

    ReplyDelete
  5. JAbelAugust 15, 2009 at 8:28 AM

    Well I wasn't at Woodstock but I was at the pre Watkins Glenn show.A friend in Rochester worked for one of the folks hired to do food and we went down to set up tents a few nights before.I don't recall if it was two nights or the night before that the Dead and the Band came in by helicopter for a sound check and played a long time before the hundreds or thousand of us who were there at the time.We left the next day having no idea how many many many folks were about to descend but I'm glad I did.

    ReplyDelete
  6. JAbelAugust 15, 2009 at 8:30 AM

    Well that's Watkins Glen.I've got a sticky keyboard.

    ReplyDelete
  7. James FergusonAugust 15, 2009 at 11:12 AM

    Nice little trip down memory lane with the Ercolines,

    http://www.coloradoconnection.com/news/news_story.aspx?id=336782

    ReplyDelete
  8. James FergusonAugust 15, 2009 at 11:23 AM

    Here's a page from abebooks on "Remembering Woodstock,"

    http://www.abebooks.co.uk/books/havens-crosby-garcia-lesh-young/woodstock.shtml?cm_mmc=nl-_-nl-_-h00-wdstck-_-link02

    ReplyDelete
  9. James FergusonAugust 15, 2009 at 11:25 AM

    My son has become a big fan of Canned Heat, and loves Going Up Country,

    http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1s0vr_canned-heat-going-up-country-woodst_events

    ReplyDelete
  10. RickAugust 15, 2009 at 3:47 PM

    I was at Watkins Glen from beginning to end. My sister was at Woodstock. We've had fun over the years remembering those forays into the mind-boggling and surreal.

    ReplyDelete
  11. avrdsAugust 15, 2009 at 5:24 PM

    Fellow travelers! YES!

    (Being a west coaster, I was a Monterey Pop Festival person myself, but almost the same thing. I had a backstage pass so had lots of adventures above and beyond the music, including having Tiny Tim serenade me.... what a life!)

    Gintaras, I still love Canned Heat.

    ReplyDelete
  12. James FergusonAugust 15, 2009 at 7:53 PM

    I feel like a young tike among all these reminiscences. I was only 8 at the time of Woodstock, so can only enjoy it in retrospect.

    ReplyDelete

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