Flashing back to 1969
http://www.edmontonsun.com/entertainment/music/2009/07/05/10028066-sun.html
By DARRYL STERDAN
Last Updated: 5th July 200
Old hippies love to say that if you remember the '60s, you weren't
really there. But with the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock festival
coming up next month, it's getting harder and harder to forget the
whole scene.
The movie, DVD and music industries are dishing out so much Woodstock
product this summer, I'm already getting acid flashbacks. Director
Ang Lee's movie Taking Woodstock -- a dramedy about the festival --
is due in August. A new DVD version of Michael Wadleigh's original
documentary, augmented with a couple of hours of bonus footage, came
out a few weeks back in a fringe-vest package. Rhino is releasing a
six-CD box set featuring nearly 40 previously unreleased cuts from
the three-day event.
Not wanting to be left off the wavy gravy train, the folks at Sony
Legacy have come up with their own far-out, right-on and solid
marketing concept: The Woodstock Experience Series, a set of
limited-edition CDs focusing on artists who played the festival. Each
two-disc instalment includes their entire Woodstock performance,
along with a remastered version of their 1969 studio album, vintage
photos, a commemorative poster, and eco-friendly cardboard packaging
(including replicas of the original LP sleeves). Not too shabby for a
cash-in. Here's our take on the first five titles in the series
(which are also available as a box set).
And if you forget to buy them before they're sold out, don't sweat --
you'll have plenty of other chances to get into the whole Woodstock
vibe this summer.
Just stay away from the brown acid.
Jefferson Airplane
The Woodstock Experience
Acid-Rock
Sun Rating: 4 out of 5
Studio: Volunteers, Grace Slick and the psychedelic San Franciscans'
landmark anti-war album (which didn't come out until after the
festival, but is a more apt choice than 1968's Crown of Creation).
Live: Their energized 14-song Sunday morning set -- the longest in
the series -- includes hits like Somebody to Love,
seven previously unissued cuts and Nicky Hopkins on keyboards.
Download: The Other Side of This Life, Wooden Ships
Janis Joplin
The Woodstock Experience
Blues-Rock
Sun Rating: 3 out of 5
Studio: The Texas native's first post-Big Brother solo release I Got
Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, whose stiffly generic soul and R&B
grooves pale in comparison to her other albums. Live: Her 58-minute
performance, though drawn heavily from the album, is a lot looser and
more emotionally charged. Too bad all but three of the 10 songs have
already been released.
Download: Raise Your Hand, Summertime
Santana
The Woodstock Experience
Latin-Rock
Sun Rating: 3 out of 5
Studio: Like the Airplane and Joplin discs, cosmic guitar warrior
Santana's self-titled debut wasn't out for Woodstock -- it appeared
weeks later. Close enough for rock 'n' roll. Live: If you don't
already own nearly all of this, you're not a fan -- seven of the
eight songs in his 45-minute set were included in a 2004 reissue of
the studio disc. The holdout: An out-of-tune Evil Ways.
Download: Evil Ways, Soul Sacrifice
Sly & The
Family Stone
The Woodstock Experience
Funk
Sun Rating: 4 out of 5
Studio: Sly's breakthrough fourth album Stand! is also his strongest
work, jammed with gems like Everyday People, I Want to Take You
Higher, You Can Make it If You Try and the title cut. Live: His
50-minute late-night set includes riotously funky versions of all
those hits, along with more. Only about half is previously unissued
-- but since live Sly is rare, we're not complaining.
Download: M'Lady, Love City
Johnny Winter
The Woodstock Experience
Blues
Sun Rating: 4 out of 5
Studio: Unless you're a major blues fan, you probably don't own
albino Texas blues singer-guitarist Winter's self-titled sophomore
album. But take it from us -- you should. Live: Winter's gritty,
barnburning 65-minute show didn't make the movie (though it does
surface in the new expanded DVD) -- so this is your first chance to
hear the unreleased set. We suggest you take it.
Download: Mama, Talk to Your Daughter, Leland Mississippi Blues
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Newly released:
Complete Woodstock sets by Sly, Joplin, Santana, Airplane and Winter
(with video)
June 30th, 2009
by Eric Snider
Uh oh, the 40th anniversary of Woodstock is about a month and a half
away. Did you remember? If not, it's probably due to the distinct
lack of buzz, seeing as there is no official concert scheduled,
although boosters keep adding "as yet" in hopes that original
co-producer Michael Lang will manage to put together a show in New
York's Prospect Park.
A handful of mostly lame events are planned for different parts of
the country, and a tour called Heroes of Woodstock featuring
Mountain, Jefferson Starship, Tom Constanten (repping Grateful Dead)
and others has 16 dates on the books (none in the Southeast). In
all, though, it would seem as if folks have other things on their
mind than memorializing the watershed cultural event.
That doesn't mean it's a complete wasteland. Sony Music has released
a well-thought-out group of reissues called The Woodstock Experience,
five two-CD packages pairing a classic 1969 album and a complete
Woodstock performance. Sony catalog artists Santana, Janis Joplin,
Johnny Winter, Jefferson Airplane and Sly and the Family Stone got
the treatment.
Thirty-three acts performed at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair from
Aug. 15-18, 1969, including such long-forgotten names as Quill,
Sweetwater, Keef Hartley Band and Bert Sommer. (The Beatles, Led
Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, The Byrds and a handful of lesser-knowns
declined invitations. Jeff Beck, Iron Butterfly and Joni Mitchell canceled.)
Only a handful of the performances have been immortalized, mostly via
the 1970 film Woodstock and its soundtrack. And Sony can legitimately
boast three of them in this collection: Sly, Santana and Joplin.
Winter did not make it into the movie and while Jefferson Airplane
were represented with two songs in celluloid, their set has not
earned the same historical cachet as the top three.
Let's have us a closer look at these twofers. I've ranked them on
their merit as live performances.
Sly and the Family Stone. The runaway winner. Sly's 50-minute,
nine-song show is a balls-out party from the opening "M'Lady" to the
closer "Stand!" The group's rhythm tracks have a collective
propulsion that has as much to do with Larry Graham's rumbling bass
and the interlocking guitars as it does with drums. Deep, deep funk
with rock crunch. Sly and company find just the right blend of
scripted performance and in-the-moment spontaneity.
A band has to be really tight to play this loose. They accelerate the
pace of "Everyday People," giving it a gospel-tent fervor. The
sing-along during "I Want to Take You Higher," one of Woodstock the
film's crescendos, benefits from the leadup tune "Music Lover" and
Sly's spoken set-up. Even the song "Love City," in my view a
second-tier Sly tune, has an uncommon crackle. The set's companion
CD, Stand!, is a terrific bonus, the best Sly album this side of Greatest Hits.
Santana. The band's self-titled debut, which is the companion CD in
this twofer, was released in May '69 and reached No. 4 on the charts
in late September, so it's safe to say that a scintillating
performance at Woodstock played a big part in putting Santana on the map.
The group's use of Latin rhythms must have been an exotic treat for
the hippie hordes in upstate New York. Santana plays a fairly rote
version of the hit-to-be "Evil Ways," but excels in the dynamic Latin
jams, especially "Soul Sacrifice," with its relentless groove, roil
of hand percussion, monster riff and hair-raising guitar solo.
Janis Joplin. The damaged blues-rock songstress had made her bones
two years earlier at the Monterey Pop festival. A few months before
Woodstock she left the sub-par Big Brother and the Holding Company,
went solo and transformed her show into kaleidoscopic R&B revue,
heavy on the horns. I generally find Joplin's vocals akin to a razor
blade scraped against a rock, but I'll give her credit for the
unhinged energy and commitment she puts into her ragged performance.
Of all the live CDs in this series Joplin's most effectively captures
the flavor of Woodstock. Before closing with "Ball and Chain," she
launches into a spacey speech, in which she says, "Music's for
grooving, man, and music's not puttin' yourself through bad changes.
You don't have to take anybody's shit, man, just to like music. So if
you're getting more shit than you deserve, you know what to do about
it." Uh, OK. If Joplin's caterwauling in her Woodstock set wears you
out, load up the companion CD, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again
Mama!, where she tones it down considerably.
Johnny Winter. Very few people knew of the reed-thin albino when he
took the stage and pumped out an hour of raucous Texas blues, boogie
and early rock 'n' roll. Winter's set thrust him into pantheon of
late '60s guitar heroes. He played fast, and fast was much revered in
that era. As his career has worn on, Winter has spewed so many notes
that it's devolved into chattering, but at Woodstock he brought a lot
of slides, slurs and bends into play. His bottleneck work on "Mean
Town Blues" still raises goosebumps.
Winter, joined mid-set by his brother Edgar on sax and keyboards,
played a show in front of a few hundred thousand people in much the
same way he would've performed at a roadhouse outside Fort Worth. The
second album in the package is Winter's self-titled debut.
Jefferson Airplane. The San Francisco band's ensemble vocals always
sounded precariously held together, even on this set's companion CD,
the stridently anti-war Volunteers. At Woodstock, the singing came
unglued. Grace Slick's pitch wavered and her already shrill voice
turned into a yelp.
The blend of instruments is mushy and not just because of the
recording quality and the guitars consistently slide out of tune.
The rhythms wander, and the extended jams especially on "Wooden
Ships" come off as rudderless noodling. The band gets a foothold
near the end of the set with a sharp "White Rabbit," but by then it's too late.
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Woodstock 40th - Sly and the Family Stone
July 3rd, 2009
by Joe Viglione
Listening to the original Woodstock 3 LP vinyl set (later reissued on
a double CD), one heard this rendition of "Dance To The Music" that
was lifted along with the MEDLEY: Music Lover/Higher to comprise
track 4 on CD 2 after iconic farmer Max Yasgur speaks. It was a
dynamic slice of the Woodstock festival which now, thanks to
Sony/Legacy's 40th Anniversary Woodstock releases is -finally - and
thankfully - put in its proper perspective.
Along with previously unreleased material that original over 12
minutes of music is found on tracks 5 and 6 of the complete set by
Sly & The Family Stone live at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair,
Sunday, August 17, 1969.
The "feel" of those songs does change in its original context, and
historically both documents are vital. On the Woodstock set as a
collection one can gauge the music in a setting where it is alongside
the groups' peers, as part of Sly's stand-alone Woodstock document it
provides a fun and insightful look into one of the major pioneers of
rock & roll and funk/pop as he brings his artistry to the ocean of
faces at this major outdoor rock concert. Sony/Legacy include
ecologically friendly cardboard slip covers for each disc and sleeves
that include dates, credits and liner notes. I, of course, enlarge
them on a xerox machine and wish the labels would expand the liners
or create an easier to read document, but that's a minor quibble at
this point, these packages are beautiful and the music is
wonderful. I don't know how you readers feel about the double-sided
color poster included, but forty years after the event I'm not
putting posters on my bedroom wall any longer! So, a one sided
poster with the liners/credits might have been more enlightening, but
again a minor observation. M'Lady, Sing a Simple Song, You Can
Make It If You Try, Everyday People, Dance To The Music, Music
Lover/Higher, I Want To Take You Higher, Love City and Stand, all
Sylvester Stewart originals, are here in all their glory. You can
listen to a concert from a year and two months after this up on
Wolfsgang's Vault - Fillmore East 1968, and M'Lady is even crisper
and more intense as the opener. The band goes through a number of
songs different from the Woodstock set and both concerts give a
perspective on this brilliant but erratic artist.
STAND - the CD
The Stand CD is a phenomenal work and for those chagrined that an
able from the day is packaged along with the Woodstock live tapes be
of good cheer: the Jefferson Starship package would've been two CDs
anyway so you get the bonus of the Volunteers album and the Stand CD
from Sly Stone and his Family is a parallel that is historically
essential to play next to the Woodstock concert. STAND was truly
the breakthrough for the band, the hit song opening with the same
"stand to attention" drum roll Bobby Hebb used to open his classic
"Sunny" four years before this (And Hebb would be recording his Epic
release, Love Games, across the hall from Sly when the Family Stone
recorded "There's A Riot Going On" for the same label!). "Everyday
People" and "Sing A Simple Song" were pretty much a double-sided hit
45, "Stand" and "I Want To Take You Higher" were also heavy airplay
items. The album was released on May 3, 1969, just three months
before Woodstock, with 5 of the album tracks getting the live
treatment. As Sly Stone/Sylvester Stewart was a producer for Autumn
Records (y'know, home of the Beau Brummels and The Mojo Men) his
production chops are awe-inspiring on the Stand disc. It's a
textbook of funk/pop/rock as well as record production. Sly is the
inspiration for Earth, Wind & Fire and other groups who were mass
appeal. Even George Clinton, who pre-dates Sly, must owe some of his
popularity to the innovations of Stone/Stewart. The rendition of
"Somebody's Watching You" is more uptemp and not as remarkable as
Little Sister's hit version, but it is also a revelation and worthy
of attention.
This is my second of 5 essays on the Sony/Legacy Woodstock releases -
and it won't stop there. This is the Summer of re-living Woodstock
and these releases of rarities are not only like finding buried
treasure on the beach, they are so good they are going to save the
summer of 2009.
--------
Janis Joplin
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/102345-janis-joplin-the-woodstock-experience/
Janis Joplin: The Woodstock Experience
(Columbia/Legacy)
US release date: 30 June 2009
UK release date: 6 July 2009
By Steve Horowitz
7 July 2009
Sometimes it's okay to trust somebody over 40 -- years later that is.
Columbia/Legacy commemorates the 40th anniversary of Janis Joplin's
appearance at the Woodstock Music & Arts Fair and her first solo
album, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, after departing from
Big Brother and the Holding Company with a two-fer entitled Janis
Joplin: The Woodstock Experience. The title connotes peace, love, and
flowers and all those groovy things the fest was supposed to stand
for as a cultural beacon. The reality of Janis at Woodstock was a
much different experience.
Joplin's many biographers have noted that the singer was not stoned
on pot or tripping on LSD like many in the crowd at the festival.
Instead, she was shooting heroin and drinking heavily during the
10-hour wait before she took the stage. She died of an overdose about
a year later. Her last years were not happy ones.
That said, even a drugged out Joplin gave energetic live
performances. She truly came alive and electric on stage, which is
one of the main reasons she still enjoys such a legendary reputation
as an artist. Joplin offered everything to her audiences.
A complete set of Joplin at Woodstock has never been available
because of its ragged nature. In fact, not a single song was included
in the original Woodstock documentary film or soundtrack, despite
Joplin's stellar reputation, although the 25th anniversary director's
cut includes her performance of "Work Me, Lord". Joplin and her new
back-up group, the Kozmic Blues Band, are not always in sync, but the
truth is she's working hard and making great, soulful music. Joplin
at Woodstock is wild, wooly, and wonderful. She may be in pain and
engaging in heavy drug use, but Joplin lets it all out with verve and gusto.
Joplin sings lead on nine out of the ten tracks here. The Kozmic
Blues Band play Stax-style horn riffs behind her as if she were Otis
Redding. Joplin's love for that kind of rhythm and blues comes across
in her powerful renditions as she alternately wails and cries, shouts
and murmurs, speeds up the tempo and then slows it down dramatically,
and engages in all kinds of heartfelt tomfoolery. She's willing to
try anything, and then try it again just a little bit harder baby, to
please her audience.
The song selections vary from those her fans would already know from
her Big Brother days, like "Summertime", "Piece of My Heart", and
"Ball and Chain", to new ones from her then-forthcoming release, such
as "Kozmic Blues" and a cover of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody".
Joplin engages the Woodstock crowd in empathetic reparteelistening
here one might think she was playing an intimate club rather than for
a mass audienceas she tells them, "I don't mean to be preachy, but
we ought to remember, and that means promoters, too, that music is
for grooving, man, not for putting yourself through bad changes. You
don't have to take anyone's shit, man, just to like music, you know
what I mean? So if you're getting more shit than you deserve, you
know what to do about it, man? It's just music, man. Music's supposed
to be different than that." Indeed, in the voice of a talent like
Joplin in concert, music is different. It's redemption, salvation,
deliverance, release, and emancipation all at once.
The sound on the re-release of I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!
is beautifully re-mastered. While the album received mixed reviews
upon its original release in 1969, the music holds up remarkably
well. Joplin expressively handles herself well, and the material is
continually varied and interesting, from the old girl group hit
"Maybe" to Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's "Little Girl Blue" to
her self-penned Texas blues number "One Good Man". The troubles she
may have had with the Kozmic Blues Band live are not present in the
studio, and certain special guests like Mike Bloomfield on guitar
play on some cuts.
Joplin may not fit the Woodstock myth, as she and her music were
always much more grounded in troubles than good times. But the
reality of Joplin at the Woodstock Festival is more compelling than
any fairy tale. And the album she released just a few months
afterwards shows that she was still making excellent music.
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