OT - 50 years ago...

[Limp Lizard]

Old Max Yasgur had a farm
E -I-E-I-O
And on that farm he had...A HALF MILLION TEENAGERS??!!
E -I-E-I- YIKE!

Three days of Peace and Music
No violence, despite lots of drugs, lots of rain, and very inadequate facilities
Only two people died. One person died of a drug overdose. The other person who died at Woodstock was sleeping in a sleeping bag under a tractor. The driver did not know he was there, and accidentally ran him over.

 

[Opintel]

Ah...the aroma of Woodstock.

 

[Frog-in-law1995]

 

[CryptoMiner]

 

[CryptoMiner]

A concert that will never be re-created though they have tried:

 

[Eight]

A concert that will never be re-created though they have tried:

can't be re-created, because it just happened and wasn't planned.

one of the biggest gripes i have about attempts to create atmosphere around an event is you can't reproduce something being orgranic and real.

whether it is a concert or crowd interaction at a sporting event you can't "create" a reaction.

 

[Limp Lizard]

It was definitely planned, just on too tight a budget and way, way underestimated the crowd. Work was way behind schedule because the original location had be taken away. Yasgur's location was much better, with a bowl location.

It won't happen today because there is not the unity in one generation. The nation and that generation lost it's soul in the 80's and never got it back. Can't get 10 Americans together now without a fight breaking out.

 

[Deep Purple]

Recent news story about archeologists scouring the Woodstock field at Yasgur's farm in search of festival artifacts, but little success. The Woodstock organizers did such a good job at directing the post-festival cleanup, very few items were left to become historical artifacts.

 

[Hoosierfrog]

Recent news story about archeologists scouring the Woodstock field at Yasgur's farm in search of festival artifacts, but little success. The Woodstock organizers did such a good job at directing the post-festival cleanup, very few items were left to become historical artifacts.

According to some who lived there, the site was not exactly left in pristine condition...

“Today, we think of hippies as gentle souls who believe in peace, love, and taking care of Mother Earth. In the late sixties, hippies were mostly just about the first two items on the list, and not so much about the third. Unless they maybe just didn't think of Max Yasgur's dairy farm as "Mother Earth," necessarily.

At any rate, the people who went to Woodstock did not, for the most part, seem to give an actual crap about the environment at the festival. According to a 1969 article in The Village Voice, there were still "piles of garbage up and down the hillside" a month after the festival, one of which was "still smoldering."

There was evidently some effort to keep the site clean during the festival — trash bags were passed around through the audience at various points — but it wasn't enough to keep the garbage from inundating the nearby woods and the shoulders of most roads. Photos of the aftermath show volunteers filling bags with trash during the last days of the festival, and local people cleaning up the debris that was left in front of their homes and neighborhoods. Perhaps organizers should have billed the festival as "three days of peace, music, and sanitation." That might have at least saved them something on the cleanup.”

 

[Hoosierfrog]

It was definitely planned, just on too tight a budget and way, way underestimated the crowd. Work was way behind schedule because the original location had be taken away. Yasgur's location was much better, with a bowl location.

It won't happen today because there is not the unity in one generation. The nation and that generation lost it's soul in the 80's and never got it back. Can't get 10 Americans together now without a fight breaking out.

Having lived as one of that generation, there was hardly unity in one generation. Just as today the winds of the media blew in one direction. The odd, the different, the colorful and the loud got the headlines.

 

[Hoosierfrog]

can't be re-created, because it just happened and wasn't planned.

one of the biggest gripes i have about attempts to create atmosphere around an event is you can't reproduce something being orgranic and real.

whether it is a concert or crowd interaction at a sporting event you can't "create" a reaction.

Woodstock was planned by the usual suspects. Two NYC entrepreneurs and two lawyers - Michael Lang, Artie Kornfeld, Joel Rosenman, and John P. Roberts. Roberts and Rosenman financed the project.

 

[Frog DJ]

Yes, there were two deaths at Woodstock, but as the OP pointed out - neither came as a result of violence.

Grace Slick once said, "Woodstock was a fluke. Altamont was reality." Her overarching point was that when you packed a gigantic number of people into a space that's too small to comfortably accommodate them violence will inevitably occur.

And to confirm Limp's point: Woodstock was very well planned in advance, and you only need watch the documentary about the event to understand that. As Limp said, the last minute change of venue was the source for much of the ensuing chaos.

No one had any idea that many people would show up, so the security staff was completely unprepared to maintain order. As a result, the organizers just gave up and let everybody in whether they had a ticket or not. The facilities were quickly overwhelmed.

Go Frogs!

 

[tetonfrog]

Yes, there were two deaths at Woodstock, but as the OP pointed out - neither came as a result of violence.

Grace Slick once said, "Woodstock was a fluke. Altamont was reality." Her overarching point was that when you packed a gigantic number of people into a space that's too small to comfortably accommodate them violence will inevitably occur.
Go Frogs!

You want reality? Look at the 1999 Woodstock Festival. It was a disaster. The crowd got totally out of control. There were fires, rapes, theft........check out theringer.com. They have a series about that festival.

There was very little peace and love a the 99 Woodstock.

 

[Eight]

Woodstock was planned by the usual suspects. Two NYC entrepreneurs and two lawyers - Michael Lang, Artie Kornfeld, Joel Rosenman, and John P. Roberts. Roberts and Rosenman financed the project.

yes, it was planned because hendrix, the who, and the other bands just didn't happen to bump into each other.

what wasn't planned was the crowd, the environment, etc......

 

[Froggish]

Counter culture is to easy to experiment with today. In the days of Woodstock you had to work to engage like minded people.

 

[Limp Lizard]

Contrast the two "security" groups: Woodstock vs Altamont

Woodstock with a hippie commune from The Hog Farm led by Wavy Gravy.

People thought: "What were they thinking?" Oh, OK, now I see it.

Altamont, Hell's Angels

People thought: "What were they thinking?" OK, now...What the hell were they thinking??