8/14/2009

Woodstock: 40 Years Later

This weekend is the 40th anniversary of the legendary Woodstock Music and Art Fair, held on Aug 15-17, on the farm of Max Yasgur, in Bethel, NY.

For better or for worse, there will be no official concert to mark the occasion--we were hoping the Prospect Park idea would take off--but, as expected, there are plenty of write-ups and blog posts with either celebrations of nostalgia, or critiques of the current state of youth and music to be perused thru. The latter, of course, will just fuel more of the boomer fatigue that many born in the '70s have been decrying for a while now.

And while we may understand how they feel, the truth is, the boomers set the bar for popular culture pretty high in the second half of the 20th century and none of us have come even close since.

In any event, we just wanted to give props to a seminal moment in popular music history, one that Rolling Stone once deemed to have been one of "50 Moments That Changed Rock and Roll", and a pretty cool concert, after all.

"...[T]he important thing that you've proven to the world is that...a half million young people can get together and have three days of fun and music and have nothing but fun and music, and I God Bless You for it!"
- Max Yasgur addressing the crowd at Woodstock, Aug. 17, 1969.