“By the time [they] got to Woodstock…”

Where was I on August 14, 1969?

Putting in a shift as a waitress at the Webster Square Big Boy’s in Worcester, that’s where.

I hadn’t been scheduled, but I took the hours for one of my fellow waitresses so that she could go to Woodstock.

I had been casually invited to come along, but took a pass. A hard pass. No desire to be there. None at all.

Not that I didn’t like most of the performers who were on the Woodstock program – Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Creedence Clearwater, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Tim Hardin,The Band, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, John Sebastian… I even liked Sha Na Na (which seemed like the odd man out group at Woodstock no?). I wouldn’t have gone out of my way for The Dead or Jimi Hendrix, but most of the acts were musicians that I listened to.

Anyway, I had no interest in going.

I was a music fan, and always had the radio on or an album spinning on the turntable, but wasn’t a huge concert goer.

Not that I was averse to crowds. But most of my crowd-time was spent demonstrating against the war in Viet Nam. (Demonstrations, on occasion, turned into concerts of sorts. Later in 1969, I heard Peter, Paul and Mary and John Lennon perform at the Moratorium in Washington DC.) But I had no desire to spend a couple of days hanging out on Yasgur’s Farm, even if no one knew ahead of time that it was going to turn out to be as much an uncomfortable, rained-on hellfest as it was a had-to-be-there concert. 

Interesting that the attempts to mount a 50th anniversary concert failed. Guess the boomers are too into creature comforts, these days. No hanging around in the mud, trying to stay warm in a sodden sleeping bag while catching a contact high.

The cancellation of the memorial concert does not mean that Woodstock’s Golden Anniversary won’t be observed. And one way it’s being observed is the release of “Woodstock—Back to the Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive.”

This is a thirty-eight-CD set – yes, you read that correctly: 38 -

…that includes nearly every moment of recorded sound from the festival, spanning thirty-six hours of audio. (Disk 38 consists largely of crowd noise and announcements from the stage.) By this point, the listener has heard thirty-two performances, a treatise on “celestial sound” from Sri Swami Satchindananda, and countless calls from the stage for concertgoers to climb down from the sound towers.  (Source: The New Yorker)

By this point, I would have been diving off a sound tower, head first, hoping to put myself quickly out of my misery. Probably after listening to Sri Swami S’s “treatise on ‘celestial sound’”.

M.C.s deliver announcements about a lost three-year-old girl with blond hair and about people locked out of their cars, or missing their duffel bags, or in desperate need of their insulin.

A three-year old? Even as a 19 year old Big Boy waitress I would have known better than to bring a three-year-old to a sprawling outdoors middle of nowhere music festival. And I’m pretty sure that if I were a diabetic, I’d have known enough to pack enough insulin.

Guess I just wasn’t cut out for Woodstock.

One aggrieved Mets fan keeps asking for the result of the game, while anyone who was in contact with someone named Fritz is advised to “please go to the infirmary, identify yourself, and get a hepatitis shot.”

Well, 1969 was the year when the Amazin’ Mets won the World Series, so you can’t blame the fan. And I’m wondering whether Fritz has heeded today’s ads for those with Hep-C and asked his doctor about Harvoni. That’s assuming he survived Woodstock.

You’d have to be a survivor, or a cultural anthropologist, to subject yourself to listening to 38 CD’s full of Woodstock. At least IMHO.

But if you fill either of those bills, the producers have made a limited number – 1,969 to be precise – of the boxed sets. And they’re available for $799.98. Or, as we’d say in marketing-speak, “under $800.” Or, as we’d say in the real world, 800 bucks.

Or you could just read what Abbie Hoffman had to say about it.

“I took a trip to our future. That’s how I saw it. Functional anarchy, primitive tribalism, gathering of the tribes. Right on! What did it all mean? Sheet, what can I say, brother, it blew my mind out.”

A gathering of the primitive tribalists? Oy, Abbie. Ow wow.

Abbie, by the way, was a Worcester boy. His connection to Woodstock was two-fold. He wrote the book Woodstock Nation, from whence cometh the excerpt above. And, while on acid, interrupted The Who’s performance to make a political statement. Pete Townshend chased Abbie off, yelling "Fuck off! Fuck off my fucking stage!" Would that incident have made a trip to Woodstock worth it? Tempting, but nah…)

John Sebastian – a man after my own heart (and someone I saw in concert twice: once with the Lovin’ Spoonful and once, a decade or so ago, solo. (Or was it with Maria Muldaur?) – urged concert-goers to pick up after themselves so that the olds couldn’t accuse them of being fuckups.

Fifty years on, I still think I made the right decision to take a pass on Woodstock. I’m pretty sure that I would have loathed every last minute I was there – heat (Canned and otherwise), mud, too many people, poor sanitation…That said, I wouldn’t have minded if I could say I heard Janis belt out “Piece of My Heart.”

Anyway, Happy Anniversary to the Woodstockians. Enjoy listening to that 38-CD boxed set!