Woodstock Revisited...Again!

Get ready to bang the Woodstock drum, kiddies!





So, where was you at, August, 15, 16, 17, 1969? And oh yes, the early morning of Monday August 18, when Jimi Hendrix, closing the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair rattled windows and doors for miles around with other-worldly guitar shrieks and devastating decibels previously unrealized, even for the original psychedelic Voodoo child.
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I know what I was doing; getting ready to start grade 9 at Glendale High School, in Hamilton, Ontario, and listening to my
parents bitch and moan about those "disgusting, dirty, hairy, un-Godly hippies who had rolled and done who knows what else in the mud," down at the Woodstock music festival in lower new York state on diary farmer Max Yasgur's spread.
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Of course I filed away all the paternal outrage as definitely having good possibilities, and when the feature film of the fest rolled into town almost a year later, I was there. Three times in 10 days.
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Well, for a 15 year old who had been brought up on the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and even the Monkees and their ilk, this presentation of the musical giants of the white-hot youth and counter-culture really blew my mind.
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For sure-he said only half-jokingly- I became a LIBERAL democrat after watching wide-eyed as Joe Cocker attacked With A Little Help From Friends, unlike anyway the Fabs' had done.
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Throw in the "GIMME AN F"- Fish Cheer, Ten Years After, and the game -changer for me, the Who, and I was a signed, sealed and decidedly anti-authority, free-love, stop the war, at least as much as a middle-class teen living in the Great White North could be who had a father that forced monthly (short) hair-cuts on me, and who thought Walter Cronkite was a Communist.
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Yet I still managed to get my hands on the original 3 record soundtrack from the film
and play the shit out of it and dream, especially when the old folks were not around.
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And I've never lost my affection for Woodstock '69, buying the show through the years on vinyl-even the 1/2 speed mastered audiophile kind-8-track, CD, and DVD.
(Here is my BMR review of the current "best" sounding Woodstock recordings:
http://www.boomermediareview.com/Woodstock1/2.html)
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But now, with the 40th anny of the freak-out on us in three weeks, we will be seeing first, a brand new remastered, loaded with extra performances DVD of the original film, and then, according to Rolling Stone, a special 6 CD collection of LOTS of heretofore unheard festival tunes.
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Given that half a dozen discs can hold about 6 or 7 or even 8 hours of music, we are due to hear LOTS of unheard performances, including, a newly over-dubbed by Carlos Santana version of Evil Ways, that had to be left off the first offerings of the soundtrack due to Santana's acid-induced untuned guitar.
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And basically, this is the gig that just-or should-keep on giving as over the 3 1/2 days of the concert, about 30 hours of music was recorded, so we are, even 40 years later, only barely scratching the surface.
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Can't you just wait to hear a reported 45 minute version of Playing in the Band by the Grateful Dead? Ah, some day. Some day...
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In addition, at last count there were at least 13 books being offered for release this summer, including one by original co-promoter Mike Laing, and even one by Martin Scorsese, who was a cameraman at the concert.
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Obviously, this is all very groovy, man.
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Hope you can dig it, again.
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As always...we invite your comments.