Woodstock 40 years later ... by gimleteye

It is family legend, how my parents hauled me out of a honking car filled with friends in Providence on the way to a weekend rock concert. I was fourteen years old. ("You're too young!") My friends were older. Probably stoned. And that is how I missed Woodstock. The year was 1969. Al Gore hadn't even thought of the internet. We were all wrapped up in the blue ink of typewriter ribbons and carbon paper. Cable television, MTV, and David Bowie: not yet. I had dreams of a KLH model 20 turntable. I remember, because I saw one just the other day in the home of a 92 year old who has just gone deaf. It was sitting buried in his pantry. I did a double-take. I got the turntable as recompense for that teary eyed scene forty years ago. I used that KLH and music to wear grooves into my emerging self.

There's a good, new Woostock documentary on the cable channel VH1 making the rounds. Graham Nash (of Crosby, Stills and Nash) talks about how frightened they were to perform. Not because it meant facing a crowd of 500,000 and no one had ever seen an audience that large. It was because, a week after forming and their first live performance, they were scared to death of being held up to measure by Janis Joplin, the Who, Sly, Richie Havens, and others standing at the side of the stage. I didn't know that Jimi Hendrix closed out the concert with the Star Spangled Banner, to a ragged crowd of 40,000 standing amidst a sea of garbage since the rest had left by Monday morning. But my 19 year old son did.

That is a remarkable point about the enduring power of Woodstock for generations far removed from coming of age in 1969. (It was a big moment, a few years ago, at Green Street Cafe in Coconut Grove having brunch and turning to see David Crosby at the next table, calling frightening attention to my own age.) Today's moments of musical discovery are all organized for corporate purposes in a split second of poll testing. My son tells me that there is a thriving music culture, operating independently and far outside the manufactured view of Fox Broadcasting. I am sure there is.

The news and journalist commentators on the VH1 documentary have it right: Woodstock was a moment. Not really a generation. Even from the distance of a 14 year old crying bitterly into a pillow, it was a moment suspended in time. In that moment Janis still sings her heart out and Jimi Hendrix still makes his guitar weep with every note of discontent and unkept promises.