Woodstock Lives!

The Woodstock Music Festival was held August 15 -18, 1969 in upstate New York. It was in many ways the capstone of an utterly wild time, when young people revolted against the conformist stereotypes of the day. There’s plenty of content online about the event and the tumultuous 1960’s that surrounded the weekend.

“Woodstock was a celebration of joy which wiped out, at least temporarily, the persistent feelings of meaninglessness that permeate our culture,” Billboard’s Danny Goldberg wrote. “It was perhaps the dawning of the age of Aquarius. Questionable as a business venture, it was, at least, a moment of triumph for the better side of man, in a time when the devil seems so often to be winning.

My bitch is that now, some 50 years later, this historic event hardly received notice among our many outlets of corporate media. PBS ran a piece or two, but there was hardly a mention on our 24/7 ‘news’ channels or right-leaning talk radio.

It’s my assumption that the corporate overlords are not keen on reminding us of that little piece of history. 

While the event itself was something of a mess, nearly half a million folks in the rain for three days without proper infrastructure, but it was also marvelous! The energy was electric. We young folks thought we could change the world, and indeed we did – though it did not last.

Woodstock typified the free love, egalitarian, back to nature movement that is only now re-emerging as we awaken to corruption foisted upon us these long years. Woodstock featured Ritchie Haven singing about Freedom, Jimi Hendrix disrupting the national anthem, Carlos Santana, Jefferson Airplane and other remarkable acts.

So why the great silence when we should be celebrating one of humanity’s finer moments? Go ask our corporate overlords…