Never really understood what the big deal was about Woodstock. To this day I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why Woodstock – a poorly-organized outdoors concert attended by drug-addled muddy naked people exposing themselves to all sorts of social diseases – is considered by some as some kind of “defining moment” for an entire generation . . . unless, of course, you were (or wanted to be) one of the drug-addled muddy naked ones.
Luckily I’m not alone, so I’ll get by with a little help from my friends:
Jules slices and dices it:
Hedonism wrapped in misguided self-righteousness and hypocritical idealism.
Unfortunately, the so-called Woodstock generation morphed from seeing themselves as the children of God, to the children for whom God does not exist. And they really never have accounted for that misguided calamity.
Forty years later, free love is mainstream and the abortion industry that supports it and feeds on it is painted as a public servant empowering individual autonomy and liberty rather than the agent of greed and death that it is.
Blue Crab and I are on the same wavelength, and he links to the funniest [put down your drink right now] illustrated translation (captioned for the clearheaded) of Joe Cocker’s rendition of “I’ll get by with a little help from my friends.”
Please take a moment to check out my new LSD Documentary film.
POWER AND CONTROL :LSD IN THE 60’s
Features the CIA LSD Brothel in San Francisco (MK ULTRA), Groucho Marx’s LSD Trip….Doc Ellis pitches his no-hitter while high.
Tim Leary’s Miricle of Good friday Experiment is explored with one of the original PREACHERS who took part.
LSD and the Protest Movement, JFK & LSD plus more.
All posted for free at this youtube link..please share this knowledge.
Or one could simply look at a coherent version of Joe Cocker by John Belushi.
To respond to your first paragraph, I’d say Woodstock is a milestone in that it was the culmination of everything the hippies wanted, everything that generation of free love, drug experimenting bums rebelling against all things traditional and conventional was looking for.
On a final note, I should say that just because something is a milestone doesn’t make it good. The birth of Jim Jones isn’t a milestone Hoosiers such as myself note with great joy.
Whoa…where did those 40 years go! It really does seem like yesterday. The energy of that time was…so positive and loving. It was everywhere I went in 1969. We were happy all the time whether we were high or not.
What do we do now…just sit back and “Retire” or do we finish what we started in the 60’s? I say we get on with it.
We want an end to greed and selfishness and especially the attitude of profit over people..where did THAT idea come from?
We want peace not just the absence of war but a perpetual state of cooperation among people for the mutual benefit of all. Violence is never allowed to be a solution for ANY situation.
We are smart enough to develop renewable energy sources using the sun, wind, water and geothermal, feed everyone of the planet and provide health care for all. It’s time to provided these basic human needs.
In 2009 Woodstock is the perfect concept to germinate those ideals from 60’s in the soil of the 21st century and digital age and fertilize them with the ideas of the progressive-thinking youth of today.
And of course there will be a lot of great music!
Spread the word.
Peace, love, music, one world,
RFWoodstock
rfwoodstock@gmail.com
Woodstock, Shmoodstock!
Yiddish says it best for the WIN!