Woodstock ’69 — Still Feelin’ The Love

Woodstock On Vinyl, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

 
 
For last week’s 40th anniversary of Woodstock, I spent a few hours in the studio listening to a vintage copy of the original 3-set Woodstock album on vinyl. Then Liz and I met up with a fellow group of geocachers at the Lake Harriet Band Shell for a potluck and the live music of Woodstock Re-Rocked.

Providence conspired in our favor. Liz’s “parking angels” were in full swing when we drove into the only spot left in the jammed lot next to the band shell. The wind shifted and ferocious bundles of black storm clouds heading straight for us diverted west. We opened our portable lawn chairs, slipped a few flowers in our hair, and rocked out to Santana, Crosby Stills, Nash & Young, Canned Heat, and Jimi Hendrix.

Liz wore patchouli and a tie dye T-shirt. The air temperature was a cool 72 degrees and at dusk we wrapped up in blankets. The Music in the Parks concert event coordinator broke out in her version of Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz right before the outdoor screening of an expanded edition of Woodstock. Released on June 9, 2009 in Blu-Ray and DVD, the remastered 40th Anniversary Edition of the film features 19 new performances, adding two extra hours of rare footage.

 

The Woodstock concert was billed as An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music. The Woodstock “dove” symbol was originally drawn as a catbird.

Here are a few other fun facts that were read aloud at Lake Harriet before the film rolled. (I jotted them down in one of my new pocket notebooks):

 

• people who abandoned their cars walked an average of 15 miles to the stage
• 250,000 people never made it to Woodstock that day
• 17 miles of bumper to bumper traffic piled up
• $18 was the 3-day price of admission
• 18 doctors saw 6000 patients with 50 additional doctors flown in from NYC
• only 33 people were arrested for drug charges
• there were 15 cauldrons of rice-raisin combo made by Lisa Law and the Hog Farm
• 60 public telephones
• a lone 80 foot stage
• 150 volunteer cops, 346 NYC policemen who volunteered
• 450 unfenced cows
• 600 portable toilets
• 1300 lbs of food ferried in by emergency copters
• cost was $50,000 to use Yasgur’s farm
• 315,000 feet of film was shot, 120 hours straight through
• 1/2 million long distance calls made first day of festival
• 1/2 million franks eaten the first day

 

In 1996, the movie Woodstock was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” I was too young to attend the concert. But the year I entered high school, the movie Woodstock was released and 400,000 ripples from Max Yasgur’s 600 acre dairy farm could be heard echoing through the halls of Red Land. We are still celebrating the music 40 years later.

Yet I have to be honest — after almost 45 minutes of long, drawn out guitar riffs from the Grateful Dead, Canned Heat, and Creedence Clearwater Revival, we left before the screening ended. It was already 11:30 p.m. and Liz had to work early the next morning. Maybe I’m getting too old to make it through two extra hours of Woodstock. Still, when we drove by the shadow of the Lake Creature on our way home, we felt peaceful and full from the experience, a Summer night of music in the park with Woodstock fans, old and young.

 
 

 
 

I’m looking forward to Ang Lee’s new film Taking Woodstock scheduled to be released August 28th. The movie is based on the memoirs and memories of Elliot Tiber. In 1969, Tiber was an interior designer in Greenwich Village. That June he’d been at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in the Village, when patrons fought back against police brutality, touching off the modern Gay Rights movement.

Elliot Tiber felt empowered by Stonewall but still staked to the family business – a run-down Catskills motel called the El Monaco. He moved back to save the motel and became instrumental to Woodstock by offering a permit and connecting Michael Lang of Woodstock Ventures with Max Yasgur, gestures that would mark his place in Woodstock history.

I want to wrap up with my favorite piece of nostalgia about the concert. The iconic cover of Woodstock was shot by photographer Burk Uzzle, a Life magazine alumnus and a member of the elite Magnum photo agency (Uzzle also shot the funerals of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy). During a year of great violence, the 1969 photo exudes a sense of peace.

The couple in the famous photograph, Nick Ercoline and Bobbi Kelly, are still together (here’s what they look like now). They had dated for only 10 weeks when their photo was taken by Uzzle (unknown to them until the Woodstock album came out). Nick and Bobbi, now 60 years old, married two summers after Woodstock and are going strong.

To me, that’s what Woodstock was really about.

The love.

 

 

Woodstock At The Lake Harriet Band Shell, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

 
 

Resources:

• Burk Uzzle Biography at Laurence Miller Gallery
• Video of photographer Burk Uzzle – Woodstock Photographer: “I Had a Very Violent Decade” – Burk Uzzle discusses iconic Woodstock photograph on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams (original photo in background)
• A Woodstock Moment – 40 Years Later at the Smithsonian – the story of Nick & Bobbi Ercoline (with photos)
• Woodstock concert’s undercover lovers, Nick and Bobbi Ercoline, 40 years after summer of love at NY Daily News – Music (2009 photos of couple)
• History of Max Yasgur’s Farm
• Photographer Burk Uzzle — Woodstock: 40th Anniversary
• Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock at Film in Focus
• Woodstock 69 Festival & Concert Homepage
• Back to Woodstock on Dateline NBC – Story, photos, video of Lisa Law (of the Hog Farm who was there with her baby daughter and helped to feed Woodstock) and an interview with Elliot Tiber

 

-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

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PRACTICE – The 1st Time I Heard Beatles ’65 – 20min

The first time I heard Beatles ’65 I was 9 or 10. It was a big deal because it was my first LP, the FIRST vinyl 33 1/3 Long Playing record album I ever owned. Before that, I had a series of 45’s, neatly stacked in the small bedroom I shared with my younger sister. We lived in a suburb near North Augusta, South Carolina, off the north bank of the Savannah River.

Beatles ’65 was released in December of 1964. After 40 plus years, I don’t honestly remember if my parents gave it to me for Christmas in 1964, or later in 1965. I only know I wore the wax grooves right down to the base. The Beatles stormed the U.S. in ’64. I saved a few 45’s, originals from that period: A Hard Day’s Night on Side A, I Should Have Known Better on the B Side. I Love Her on Side A, If I Fell on the B Flip. I was nuts for McCartney back then. Later it would be Lennon (of course).

The original Beatles ’65 album, with the lads from Liverpool in (almost) collarless suits and ties clutching playful black, red, and beige umbrellas, is packed away with my other 9 or 10 boxes of vinyl. I should get the cover framed. Even though it’s over-worn and has “one” of my last names (yes, I decided to change my name for a while in the 60’s) splashed in 4th or 5th grade backslant cursive across the front corner in black magic maker.

Back then there weren’t 800 different kinds of markers. A pen was a pen. It was a big deal when the Finepoint BIC with the white barrel (instead of orange yellow) and navy cap came out. And most permanent markers were used to scribble initials on waist bands of cotton laundry before summer trips to Girl Scout camp. Sharpies didn’t come with fancy neon carabiner clips that hook around your neck like the set clipped to my pack today.

I don’t remember headphones when listening to Beatles ’65. They must have come later. But those 11 songs remain some of my favorite Beatles music. Obscure. Understated. Un-blockbuster. I Feel Fine (beginning with George’s famous guitar riff, ending in his reverb feedback), I’m A Loser, I’ll Follow The Sun, and No Reply are just plain sad. Then you’ve got John’s raucous Rock And Roll Music with lumbering Ringo’s slow moving country on Honey Don’t.

What I remember most about that time is starting to know what it meant to fall in love, elementary school style (after all, Michael Suggs gave me his ID bracelet). And I remember what it felt like to lose love (how could Ronnie Collins fall for someone else?). I remember my Uncle Bill having dance parties at our house. He and his friends lined up like trains to do Little Eva’s Locomotion; they’d scoot around the corner of the house to steal a kiss in the dark by the luminous magnolias.

I remember my parents doing The Twist in the living room, the balls of their feet rotating on the Johnson’s paste wax floor (they loved to dance). I remember the succulent magnolias, the lone Charlie Brown pine out front, the massive green water tower built on the layers of pine needles back behind our house. (My step-dad reminded me in June that I went inside the tower with my friends, even though I’d been given strict orders not to. I got in so much trouble that day.)

I remember that music became a shelter for me. Shelter from the coming storms. The suitcase record player I carried from room to room had a setting for 45’s, a setting for LP’s. Later, I would get a green RCA spindle style record player for Christmas. I’d stack album after album; they spit a dull clack! when they dropped on top of each other. The static cling that hit the diamond needle, the counterbalance on the arm that had to be just so not to wear out the grooves in the wax. (If it was a double album set, Sides 1 and 4 would be on one record, Sides 2 and 3 on the other so you could listen in order.)

Records had a smell, too. Not plastic – vinyl. Have you ever smelled vinyl? And sometimes they were pressed in dull red, yellow or blue. The Beatles? Basic black.

My friend, Gail, saw the Beatles play in Minneapolis in the Twins old Met Stadium. Built in 1956, the classic outdoor stadium in Bloomington was abandoned for the Metrodome in 1982 and torn down in 1985 to make way for the Mall of America. The Beatles played at the Met during the Shea Stadium days and they were only a finger’s width big against the distance to the nosebleed seats.

The Beatles were the biggest thing ever to hit America up until that point in time. I loved them right through my 20’s and 30’s. When the Beatles Black Box Master Collection of albums came out in the early 80’s, I bought it. And when I first met Liz, I played a couple of the wax masters for her on the refurbished turntable Gail gave me for my birthday that year.

What I really want to say is music gave me a place to hide. Growing up in a large family where space was at a premium, I fell straight down into the headphones during my privacy starved junior high days. I don’t know when I decided it was okay to crawl out. In the 70’s, FM radio was king, the alternative to pop love songs and country twang. I first heard Neil Young, CSN, and the Grateful Dead on FM radio.

And remember quadraphonic speakers and albums? Reel-to-reel or 8-Tracks? Everything was analogue and simpler then. I went to Brown Institute in recording for a few semesters in the 1980’s. I had an instructor who taught me how to mix albums. He hated digital. Why? He said analogue captured the guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards in their purest state, the closest to Live. And to this day, I can hear the difference. He taught me what to listen for. Deep listening.

I still use deep listening. In writing. Art. And, yeah, when I listen to music. I still love music. And I remember those Christmases in North Augusta with great fondness. My heart thumps a little faster when I think of race car tracks winding through the living room or the smell of train transformers (remember that bottled liquid you dropped into the smokestack with an eyedropper to produce train smoke?).

I remember real tinsel and my grandmother’s first aluminum tree with the color wheel that rotated through primary green, red, blue, with a dash of diffused orange. Her birthday is tomorrow, Winter Solstice. She comes to visit me from the other side quite often.

I remember feeling safe and scared at the same time, something not unfamiliar to me now. I remember Beatles ’65. And I feel fine.

-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, December 20th, 2007

-related to Topic post, WRITING TOPIC – LOVE ME LIKE MUSIC (TOP 10)

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WRITING TOPIC – LOVE ME LIKE MUSIC (TOP 10)

    

    

Blood On The Tracks, newly painted garage door on Dylan’s childhood home, part of the Dylan Days tour, Hibbing, Minnesota, May 2006, photo © 2006 by Liz. All rights reserved.

I’ve had music on the brain. Last week I watched an October interview with Nancy and Ann Wilson on A&E’s Private Sessions. The two members of one of the greatest rock bands of all time, Heart, were in fine form. Ann Wilson has a new CD called Hope & Glory.  She tackles everyone from Shawn Colvin, Alison Krauss, k.d. lang, Rufus Wainwright, and Elton John – all the way to classic rockers, Led Zeppelin.

Watching I’m Not There a few weeks ago at the Uptown, and researching The 6 Faces Of Dylan, stirred up a few memory bars, too. I started compiling a list of my all-time Top 10 Albums (remember those scratches, ticks, and pops!), followed closely by my all-time Top 10 Singles. What happened next was a flood of memories associated with not only the songs, but whole albums.

I cut my teeth on early James Brown, Chubby Checker (is there anyone who doesn’t know The Twist?), and Beatles ’65. I listened to them on a beige RCA suitcase record player with a silver latch. I toted that thing everywhere and wore extra grooves into my coveted collection of 45’s (housed in a padded pink, Barbie record case).

I remember my favorite 33 rpm’s as concept pieces – I couldn’t listen to just one song. I had to hear the whole waxy platter (flip!), both sides:  Neil Young’s, Harvest, Joni Mitchell’s Court & Spark (and Blue), Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, the Anthology: Best of the Temptations (double set), Elton John’s Tumbleweed Connection with Come Down In Time. And don’t forget the Johnny Mathis and Nat King Cole Christmas albums.

Then there are the obscure singles like Brook Benton’s Rainy Night in Georgia (this song still gets to the sadness in me), Lulu’s To Sir With Love, or The Association’s Cherish. Along with blockbusters like Bill Withers’ Ain’t No Sunshine, Otis Redding’s Dock Of The Bay, Bobby Darin’s Mack The Knife, Wilson Pickett’s Mustang Sally, or Tina Turner’s version of John Fogerty’s (Creedence Clearwater Revival) Proud Mary.

Maybe for you it was Elvis, the Fugees, Crosby Stills & Nash, The Guess Who, Steely Dan, the Supremes, Janice Ian, or Ferron. Maybe it was an old rock or country album your parents played when you were growing up. What about Hendrix, Woodstock, Janis Joplin, The Jayhawks, Los Lobos, Nirvana, Glen Campbell (I admit, Wichita Lineman, written by Jimmy Webb, is one of my faves), Leonard Cohen, or The Squirrel Nut Zippers.

Music and memories. Head back as far into your mental musical archives as you can go. Then connect the dots:

• Make a list of your Top 10 Albums (8-tracks, cassettes, CD’s) of all time, music that has impacted your life (it doesn’t have to be forever. You can change your mind later. Grab them off the top of your head. Don’t anguish over it!)
• Make a list of your Top 10 Singles of all time (same thing, don’t make it a big deal)
• Choose one of the Titles from your combined lists of 20 Hits.

Do a 15 minute writing practice on one of the following:

• When I hear ____ I remember…
• The first time I heard ____ …
• The last time I heard ____…
• This song reminds me of _____…
• The first time I saw ______ in concert…

It doesn’t matter what kind of music you like. What matters is how the music moves you. Music lifts the spirits, forces your body to sway, slings you into the fires of passion, keeps you young, and, for better or worse, is undeniably connected to love.

Think about the music that has most impacted your life. Drop some of your Top 10 Titles into the comments below (the more memories we stir, the better!).

And if you Love Me Like Music, I’ll be your song.

-posted on red Ravine, Monday, December 10th, 2007

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