The music of Woodstock

The music of Woodstock

http://www.austin360.com/music/content/music/stories/2009/08/0809woodside.html

CD sets highlight the weekend's best sounds

By Joe Gross
AMERICAN-STATESMAN MUSIC WRITER
Saturday, August 08, 2009

Forty years ago come Aug. 15, Richie Havens took the stage at 5:07
p.m. to kick off the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, and music and art
were never the same.

The festival spawned a movie, a couple of albums, dozens of
imitators, two anniversary festivals and decades of mythmaking and
seemingly endless discussion about what it all meant.

Intermittently lost in the aftermath was the music that was produced
at Max Yasgur's farm in Upstate New York, more of which is now
officially available.

Consider the six-CD box set "Woodstock - 40 Years On: Back to
Yasgur's Farm," which contains 95 tracks in all, including almost all
of the "Woodstock" and "Woodstock Two" tracks from a 1994 box and 38
previously unreleased songs and bits of speeches. Missing: Music from
the Band, Ten Years After and the Keef Hartley Band; those bands
would not allow their music to appear. (Ten Years After's blazing
"I'm Goin' Home" is still on the first Woodstock soundtrack album,
and music from the Band is on the 1994 Woodstock box set.) But for
the first time, there's music from Tim Hardin, Blood Sweat & Tears,
Bert Sommers, Sweetwater, Ravi Shankar and Quill.

Did we need the music from Sweetwater? Probably not, but the bigger
picture of the festival's sounds is fascinating. The Grateful Dead's
"Dark Star" gets a vibrant 19-minute workout but is totally lapped by
Canned Heat's excessive 28-minute "Woodstock Boogie." (The latter's
"Going Up the Country" has rarely sounded better.) The Who rages,
Creedence Clearwater Revival is tightly wound and, oh, yeah, the
Incredible String Band played a set. And Hendrix's "Star Spangled
Banner" remains one of rock culture's most riveting moments, hippie
America's sound and fury and electric beauty made manifest.

Even more revelatory are the five double-CD sets Epic has assembled
for five artists. Each volume teams the full set from Woodstock with
the band's 1969 album. The best is Sly and the Family Stone's
machine-gun funk, a fusion of rock's power and R&B's swing that
nobody has touched since. The "Music Lover/Higher/I Want to Take You
Higher" medley still dazzles, while "Stand" and "Everyday People"
feel like brilliant everyday anthems.

Jefferson Airplane's "Wooden Ships" is the famous track from their
set, but "The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil" is the revelation, a
noisy, bassy jam that morphs into a full-tilt boogie and back.

Speaking of full-tilt boogies, Janis Joplin's band is more R&B than
Big Brother's meaty psychedelia. Joplin's take on George Gershwin's
"Summertime" has an epic feel, "Work Me, Lord" is a mind-blower and
"Piece of My Heart" casts a Staxy vibe. But she sounds tired - the 2
a.m. start time couldn't have helped.

Johnny Winter's blues rock has aged oddly, but only "Mean Town Blues"
is previously released and the full set will thrill hardcore fans.
But with bands such as the Mars Volta extrapolating from their work,
Santana's 45 minutes of Latin rock sounds utterly contemporary. And
yes, the Woodstock instrumental MVP should probably still go to
Santana drummer Michael Shrieve, not just for his jaw-dropping solo
on the legendary "Soul Sacrifice" but for powering the whole set with
verve and subtlety. You hear moments like that and you think, why,
yes, this concert is legendary for a reason.
--

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926
--

Grading Woodstock

Various Artists
'Woodstock - 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur's Farm'
Grade: B+

Santana
'Santana: The Woodstock Experience'
Grade: A

Sly and the Family Stone
'Sly and the Family Stone: The Woodstock Experience'
Grade: A

Jefferson Airplane
'Jefferson Airplane: The Woodstock Experience'
Grade: B+

Janis Joplin
'Janis Joplin: The Woodstock Experience'
Grade: B

Johnny Winter
'Johnny Winter: The Woodstock Experience'
Grade: B

(all Epic/Legacy)

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