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(More customer reviews)The historic concert in 1969 was billed as the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, yet it took place 70 miles south of the town of Woodstock in the hamlet of White Lake, near Bethel, NY. Today, the story behind the peaceful assembly and its massive appeal are still compelling. Why did the town of Woodstock become a creative and spiritual center and how did that legacy influence the intention behind the event at Yasgur's Farm?
The Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival by Weston & Julia Blelock includes the transcript of a panel discussion that occurred one year before the 40th anniversary of the concert. The group included Michael Lang, who co-produced the "Aquarian Exposition" at Bethel in 1969, along with artists, photographers (Elliot Landy was there), writers and local townspeople (even the bartender from the old Sled Hill Café). They fielded questions posed by the authors that help us understand how this little town in the Catskill Mountains helped inspire "3 Days of Peace & Music" the likes of which had never been seen before and probably will never be seen again.
This book provides a concise history of the environment and circumstances which attracted and nurtured the arts at Woodstock for over two centuries.
A glass factory in nearby Bristol (now Shady) opened in 1809 and operated into the middle of that century. The greenish blue glass is still found in streams. A barn on a hill above the town that serves as a performance space today is part of Byrdcliffe, a utopian Arts and Crafts colony that was established in 1902. A few years later, the rustic Maverick Art Colony was founded nearby. Annual Maverick festivals financed construction of a music hall and other projects until 1931, and their productions were themed, offering discounts for those who came in appropriate costumes. It was like Mardi Gras, and thousands came. A wooden ship was built during the summer of 1924 only to be burned in one night for the sake of the performance - everyone was dressed as pirates.
During the 60's, folk/rock happenings called "Sound Outs" were held in Pan Copeland's field outside of town. Among the many interesting images in the Blelocks' book is a $50 check made out in August 1969 to Van Morrison for performing at a Sound Out. Other musicians who would leave an indelible mark on music and the culture were also attracted to Woodstock. Michael Lang was influenced by the idea of the Maverick and Sound Out music festivals when he arrived there after producing the Miami Pop Festival on a Florida racetrack.
After the astonishing phenomenon at White Lake, Albert Grossman built a recording studio in Bearsville. Local Woodstockers, including Gail Varsi, founded a program ("FAMILY of Woodstock") to provide for the young seekers who continue to step off the bus, possessing nothing but a vague notion. The local constabulary had been dealing with free thinkers for generations, but soon the politics would change with the times.
With 115 images, many of which I'd never seen before, a picture of the town before the big bang emerges. There was a time when even Bob Dylan, who owned a house at Byrdcliffe and then on Ohayo Mountain Road, could move freely about - before his motorcycle crash there in 1966 and before sightseers, fans, psychos, and political activists began staring at him in his yard and climbing through his windows.
My personal relationship to Woodstock lends immediacy to this book's message. There is a very old house in the woods near where I live and the tin roof is still on it, though the walls are nearly gone. I wonder, sometimes, who lived there and I know they ate breakfast and went out in the world and came home to a dark house sometimes, but I am even more curious about what came before Max Yasgur, Michael Lang, and Pan Copeland. When I am lost in reverie, Woodstock sings to me.
I was born in Brooklyn in the last half of the 1950's, too late to understand the concert at the time. A few years later, when it began to make sense, I became a regular visitor, and now I bring my wife and 8 year old son along. I've been back to Brooklyn, but it isn't there anymore (at least, not the way I remember it); on the other hand, Woodstock is as sweet today as it is in my memory.
This place has a special vibe that resonates in me. The smell of scented candles in the stores, the taste of stone ground pancakes eaten on a patio beside a brook that glitters between the leaf shade, the artistic and organic sensibility you find here, and the ubiquitous magical touches define cool in my book. Today, the town is more upscale - and less funky - but it's still a sacred place to me, and it's not like anywhere else, either. The historic concert took place somewhere else, but this is the center.
As a younger man, I ambled along Tinker Street on a crisp autumn day in the morning sun with the whole day ahead of me and my whole life, too. The chill was backing off and a few early risers like me were opening their shops, buying fresh bread, and sipping herbal teas with honey. I chatted with the woman who owns the candle shop while she lit the one that has burned every day since that August weekend. Like a candelabra cactus from a dream, it stands taller than me and drips fragrant colors, encasing the mementoes, trinkets, and shrines that have been added along the way to commemorate events and celebrate the lives of people who have passed. It is a time capsule, or a core sample, back into near history - my history.
The countryside is lush in summer. Just up from town off MacDaniel Road is the Magic Meadow, filled with flowers and light. A bit further, from a trailhead that is at the base of Overlook Mountain and across from the Tibetan Buddhist temple, I've hiked up to the ruins of a mountain house that burned down first in 1875 and then again in 1923. The walk to the top is steep, but the view of the Hudson Valley is sublime. Back in town, the farmers' market, tea shop, cafes, galleries, bookstores, and boutiques provide everything one might need, or wish for.
The cottage we always rent is on the millstream, and it's an easy stroll into town. The stream has shallow pools populated with tiny fish you can pet if you are gentle and move slowly. Early each morning, a young couple bakes fresh pastries for the people who are staying in the cottages. Time slows down for me there.
Years ago, I was walking through the countryside as the trees' long shadows became overwhelmed by dusk. I spied a young couple and their friend leaving an old country house and they were carrying chairs. Then, they brought out a card table, a pitcher of lemonade, and their instruments: two guitars and a flute. She wore a long summer dress that caught the breeze. The friends chatted in low tones, chuckling after a bird called out to them. I watched as they set up in the front yard with only yellow lamplight from the house to see by. I edged closer and listened to them play their music, wishing I lived there too. I stayed there a long time, listening. I am still wistful about that.
Woodstock is one of the things I miss about New York because it is a milestone on the one true path. I have veered, somewhat, from my own path as I acquired other commitments, and it is sometimes difficult to reconcile such things, but it is not so difficult to explain how the heart knows when it is home.
The ideals responsible for the concert's success as a peaceful statement and joyful expression have their roots in the shadow of Overlook, a mountain sacred to the Iroquois, just west of the Hudson River in upstate New York. The spirit that transcends place but is present there in abundance is a touchstone for many of us and we know who we are - we are the Woodstock Nation. This book by Weston and Julia Blelock, more than any other I've read, addresses an essential question, and I am happy to recommend it to students of the era and fellow seekers.
I commend Wes and Julia for asking the right questions while it's still possible to document firsthand accounts. Why and how did the momentous concert happen as it did? The answers are worth knowing.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival: The Backstory to "Woodstock"
This book explains definitively and for the first time why the festival was named Woodstock, and why it continues to be so closely associated with the town, even though the concert actually took place in Bethel, New York. The project began as panel discussion among townspeople knowledgeable about the music scene in the late sixties. It was held on August 9, 2008, at the Colony Cafe in Woodstock (and followed by a contemporary "Sound-Out"). Panelists included Michael Lang, a Woodstock resident and legendary 1969 Woodstock Festival promoter; Jean Young, a co-author with Lang of Woodstock Festival Remembered; Bill West, active in local government since the 1960s; Jeremy Wilber, former Town Supervisor and bartender during the sixties at the Sled Hill Cafe; and Paul McMahon, a local music icon. During the course of the wide-ranging conversation the audience learned how Lang and his partners developed the concept for the world-renowned Woodstock Music and Art Fair, and how their thinking was shaped by Woodstock's legacy of art and music festivals. A richly illustrated panel discussion transcript comprises the first part of the book. It is followed by a roots of Woodstock photo essay that highlights such Woodstock writers and performers as Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, and Richie Havens. In addition it chronicles the Arts and Crafts origins of the town from the 1800s, and highlights the town's hallowed tradition of weekend-long musical concerts. These began in the early 1900s with Woodstock's Maverick festivals, and stretched up through the countercultural Sound-Outs of the 1960s. Bob Fass, a Woodstock Sound-Out emcee and host of WBAI's Radio Unnameable for close to fifty years has contributed a brilliant and evocative foreword to the book. Also included are a compendium of important Woodstock players, a map of historic 1960s locations in the Woodstock area, and 115 images many of them rare, vintage photos of the Woodstock music and art scenes.
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