http://www.jambands.com/Features/content_2009_07_31.02.phtml
Randy Ray
2009-07-31
Friday evening, Sunday in the afternoon…What have you got to lose?
I've got an answer…I'm going to fly away…What have I got to lose?
- CSN, "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," Woodstock (and beyond)
Time is one of the most powerful drugs man has invented. To write our
history, we demarcate the passage of events through a series of
happenings that are pinpointed with pegs which label its place in the
temporal zone. Whether we, as a collective body of humanity, care to
admit or it or not, the events we have stored in our little time
machines, often on stone, parchment rocks, or enormously well-crafted
pyramids of information, create the overwhelming impression that we
are a fairly arrogant species, a species bent on recording our
progress, and our accomplishments as if some wise overlord, or future
generation, will look back and say, "Well, far out, man."
In the case of the pyramids, one may have a point. Whether those
monuments to earthly beings, or celestial star maps to Orion
residents, were, indeed, crafted with the help of alien intelligence,
is beside the point. Of all of the human endeavors of a physical
nature, one is hard-pressed to think of a greater feat than those
Egyptian monoliths, or South American, for that matter, clear across
the globe, with no communication between cultures. Yes, let's throw
in the giant figures on Easter Island, and the odd ceremonial and/or
astrological beasts known as Stonehenge, as another 'what the fuck?' feat.
But there were two events in 1969 that cemented an American need to
conquer both inner and outer space within the human experience. In
July, three astronauts traveled to the moon, and returned to earth as
triumphant heroes who had stretched the boundaries of
extraterrestrial exploration. In August, 500,000 ventured to a
300-acre farm in upstate New York, and returned to their lives as the
keepers of a legend that has grown much larger than themselves. That
legend is a weird thing as those that either attended, or were on the
cusp of its realm (i.e. Rolling Stone's David Fricke, who was there
and captures a bit of the festival in his work) sometimes appear to
underestimate its ethereal essence, grounding the festival in…well,
the rain and mud, and lack of food, water, and politics.
Yesterday's hippie generation offered a promise of a better today
forged by Tomorrow's Children. But in many respects, the disorganized
agenda created at the festival known as Woodstock over three days in
August 1969, seems woefully lost on many of that period, not to
mention the generations that have been spawned by its heady legacy.
Some bands dropped rotten eggs at the festivalthe Grateful Dead were
victims of many unfortunate factors, but they were never really part
of this particular peace and love vibe, anyway. Some played epic sets
that have been interpreted in multiple waysThe Who's Roger Daltrey
remembers the incredible sunrise during a moment of Tommy-infused
epiphany, and his band mate Peter Townshend only has negative
memories of the entire experience. While some reached such a truly
epic height that their only option was a quick trip down to
earthJimi Hendrix who would die a year later after his rock god
performance closing the festival, and Sly & the Family Stone would
begin to disintegrate as an artistic force due to the narcotic
excesses of its eccentric genius group leader, Sly Stewart. Some just
plain endured and continue to this day exuding a wonderfully sublime
perfection despite whatever hardships, which includes Richie Havens,
Arlo Guthrie, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Carlos Santana. 1969 may
have come and gone, 40 years dead, but nothing seems to change the
timeless quality of the music created by those acts.
And to make this as plain and simple as possible in these very
post-acid and culturally-traumatic times, it was all about the music
back in August 1969. Woodstock was not the Dawn of a New Era, an
Aquarius where the Youth of the World would Unite to End the Tyranny
of the Older Generations as foreseen by those that were hip in those
days. No, Woodstock was the End of a Dream, with its own William
Blakesque uppercase symbology, and all of the bad trips and lack of
sustenance and mad fucking apocalyptic rain cannot change the fact
that the music is what happened, and it was never going to sound as
good as it did back in August 1969.
Volumes and volumes have been written about the musical heritage
enshrined at Woodstock. There were some shit sets by a handful of
acts, but the tapes and films make a fairly powerful statementthe
enduring legacy of the so-called Tomorrow's Children is that their
music was better than yours, man. If art is in the eyes, ears, and
minds of the beholder, than one is still hard-pressed to find another
generation that fostered such a crowning and central achievement as
Woodstock. For once, the young people put on an event with a laidback
spirit and a utopian plan, and despite all of the problems from
people storming the fences and getting in for free (uh, everyone
after 186,000 who attended, that is), to the lack of politics
(politics and dope don't mix, man; bad argument, rock scribes), and
the absence of Dylan (Woodstock was put on to get Bob out of his
upstate New York house and back on stage, but he was already lost to
this generation; no doubt, unknown during the fast-moving Sixties
timeframe, but solidified with his series of country rock excursions
that sidestepped his acid rock image in a cowardly way. If one wanted
an honest troubadour, they had him in Arlo Guthrie, who was the real
son of Woody Guthrie, and a more honest artist, as well).
In the Woodstock film by Michael Wadleigh, the legend is both
enhanced and altered somewhat by the very real conditions of the
festival: God hates East Coast festivals, and that joke would
continue to endure for the next 40 years and beyond. "How come the
fascist pigs have been seeding the clouds?" states one festival
attendee during a particularly heavy Vietnam-like downpour (probably
a New Yorker, and begs the question: "if in doubt, why would you not
hold a hippie festival in California?!"). Other festival attendees
make what they can of the festival, but from personal experience,
altered substances can be a much finer form of drugs than our own
version: TIME. Time doesn't exist when you're young and/or high; it
just makes things seem a bit more pleasant and fun, and in 1969,
America and the world needed loads of both traits.
So…the legacywhat is this drug called time, and how does the Legacy
of Tomorrow's Children endure despite a billion little kaleidoscopic
cultural explosions since 1969? How did Woodstock appear to supersede
man's trip to the moon just one month prior? The August 1969
three-day festival doesn't so much endure because Jimi Hendrix played
"Star Spangled Banner" to a tiny Woodstock crowd early on an August
Monday morning after hundreds of thousands of festival-goers had left
to return to the chaotic oblivion that was America in 1969. It also
doesn't endure because Hendrix topped that performance earlier on
with the underestimated improvisational swing through "Jam Back at
the House," which was one of the darkest, funkiest pieces of music
that he ever playedcertainly in a live vein. If the joy of Woodstock
was hammered home with the high musical moments featured in
performances by the Who, Sly, CSN, Arlo, and Havens thrilling the
druggy masses on Friday through Sunday, then the moment of true
transcendence occurred when Hendrix and his mixture of old bandmates,
friends, and ex-Nam warriors tore through a set that marked Woodstock
as a once in a millennium event. Gods who built the pyramids walked
the earth during "Jam Back at the House," or so it seems as Hendrix
towered above the crowds of astonished and exhausted masses. The
piece is sloppy, redundant, and rhythmically less than complex, but
there is a taut line that Hendrix walked between heavenly and human
that places this song above the rest.
Jimi is still considered the best guitarist in rock history, but I'm
not sure if he gets enough credit with dismantling our human notions
of recording history via…ahem…outdated "time" constraints. Hendrix
found a way at Woodstock, two thousand years since the origins of
another great cultural legend, to deliver his own Sermon on the
Mount. And it is ironic that his almost alien sound sculptures speak
while using a universal translation system: music. I cannot define
why I smile when I think of the original Woodstock festival. I just
do, man, and that is something that perhaps stands outside of any
history booksindividual interpretation of events doesn't always have
to be written by the victors, or the intelligentsia. The legacy of
the Woodstock Generation endures because those sometimes hilariously
inept hippies tried to do something good for each other, despite its
origins as a way for a pair of young monied individuals to invest in
youth culture, and whether they succeeded or not, that cosmic idea
will always be open to fresh interpretation by tomorrow's children of
vastly different cultural origins.
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