Nostalgia and Woodstock August 2009

Folk Plus is a mostly lyrically and theme based show of contemporary singer-songwriters, some older cuts and perhaps a spoken word or broadway entry, all based on a theme.
It has been hosted since 1993 by Angela Page airing Saturdays from 11:00 am - 1:00 pm at 90.5 fm in Jeffersonville, N.Y. and 94.5 in Monticello N.Y. following Car Talk.
Over a decade of Folk Plus playlists are at http://www.wjffradio.org/FolkPlus . The station's website and stream are online at WWW.WJFFRADIO.ORG

Tonight at the Bethel (the orginal actaul site of woodstock, not woodstock new york) Woods Site (now the name for the site), just a few miles from the station is something called Heroes of Woodstock - and it is sold out: Levon Helm Band, Jefferson Starship, Ten Years After, Canned Heat, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Mountain, Tom Constanten and Country Joe McDonald. Of course this is to comemorate the 40th anniversary of Woodstock which began its three days, 40 years ago on this date. Bethel is pronounced with the accent on the first sylable, not accenting the "el" as I hear Pete Fornatele and others saying while reminiscing.

[reading from the NYTimes August 5th] "Sheer size made Woodstock consequential. It was huge. The Beatles had played to 55,000 people at Shea Stadium; the 1965 Newport Folk Festival spread about 71,000 people over four days. Had Woodstock drawn the 100,000 to 150,000 people that its promoters planned for, it would simply have been one in a string of big rock festivals dating back to Monterey Pop in 1967, which had an estimated total of 200,000 people over three days. Several acts were booked and scheduled but didn’t show up. Iron Butterfly were stranded at an airport. Joni Mitchell missed it because of a highway closing, but made up for it by writing the song that became one of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's most famous. " www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/arts/music/09pare.html?

Today on Folk Plus I wove some music around 19 2 minute segments called "Two minutes of Peace and Music" sent by http://www.woodstock.com/
and also read some bits from http://classicrock.about.com/od/history/a/woodstock_101__3.htm about who played what at woodstock and other trivia and facts.

1. "2 minutes of Peace and Music" segment, segment one: The Woodstock idea of Michael Lang and Joel Rosenman
"Media, culture, everything was dominated by the establishment.... then in August 69 we thought ..... we are a whole movement"
Woodstock.com

Woodstock.com segment two- planning of the festival, how the producers were not experienced. They were amazed when 50,000 arrived early just for good seats three days early. There was huge need for shelter, food, sanitaiton ... the population made Woodstock the 3rd largest city in the state that weekend.

6 Segment Four- Jefferson Airplane's guitarist - Paul Kantner speaks about sneaking in a "secret road" (Google maps would make that not so secret these days)
He quotes Patty Smith referring to the "community of Rock and Roll" - referring to looking at the world differently after woodstock.

8 Segment Five: Rose Stone speaks about the sun coming up and how suddenly the band realized how many people were really out there.

10. Segment Six: Sly's bassist speaks of the comradery backstage during the festival

12 Segment Seven: Janis brought her new group Cosmic Blues Band to woodstock. One of her biographers states that she preferred intimate performances and did not like the huge crowds at he festival.

14. Segment eight - Santana got his break at woodstock, and he surprised everyone. After woodstock people knew they'd seen a star born.

15. Segment nine - Recording engineers thought there would be no way they would get anything recorded that day, but they did. Decades later they were able to remix the live performances, and fix some of the problems of the original tapes - ex, Santana was not in tune, and that was fixed in the remix.

17. Segment ten - Graham Nash speaks about how 1969 was a time of great upheaval - civil rights, poor, women, the vietnam war....and singer songwriters responded in song

19 Segment eleven - JOhnny was rushed on stage cuz whoever was supposed to play "next" was not around.

21. Segement twelve - Country Joe comments on the peacefull demeaner of the crowd... and also the difficulty with the delay in sing a longs.

23. Segment thirteen- Pete Fornatele says BethEL (should be pronounced BETHel) means sacred place in Hebrew. Pete had begun working at WNEW just around that time.

27. Segement fifteen - MC of the festival, Chip Monck, was also in charge of staging and lighting. They recruited folks from the crowd to help pull it off.

29. Segement sixteen - Jimi Hendrix closed the festival at 9 am, August 18th 1969.

29 Jimi Hendrix - Interview clip with Dick Cavett about the Star Spangled Banner

31. Segement seventeen - The producers talk about the making of the movie of Woodstock. It was realeased worldwide in 1970 and countries held their own "woodstocks"

32. Segment eighteen - Producers thought that Woodstock helped close the generation gap.

34. Segment nineteen - Producers feel that there still is a bond over woodstock.

The folk world lost Sandy paton, Sandy Ives, Suzi Wollenburg, and Mike Seeger in these past weeks. Each deserves a show of thier own, but I mention them in case some of the listeners didnt know.