Goin' Down The Country

[Jet Black]

Well, it seems like just a few years ago we had the much-balleyhooed 25th Anniversary of the Woodstock Festival, and here we are approaching the 40th. I just finished reading the second installment of a two-part excerp of a new Woodstock book, published in Goldmine magazine, which was in fact a really good read.

I'm of two, or rather several minds, on the whole Woodstock thing. On the one hand, I really think it was watershed event, a really fantastic once-in-an-epoc experience. Not just a festival but the zenith of a whole movement, movements being what they are. On the other hand, if I focus my microscope on it, it was a bunch of people acting irrationally, no food, no sanitation, everything in chaos; and the worship not only of freedom and music and doing your own thing (which are all great,) but the worship also of choas and recreational drugs and irrationalism and anarchy and the total rejection of common decency as it was defined at the time, all of which I abhor, and think have generally been proved out more or less to be traps for the foolish. So, I really admire the whole Woodstock thing, I love the music, I'm awed by the movement it represents; but by turn I think that much of what is celebrated by Woodstock is at best well-meaning ignorance and at worse depravity.

So, as I sit here listening to Neil Young's Decade, I wonder if any of you have any interesting thoughts about Woodstock's 40th?

[genlock]

I couldn't go. I had another commitment.
I was at the US Army Southeastern Signal Center and School,
Located at Fort Gordon near Augusta, Georgia.
I had finished basic combat training and was about a third of the way thru
training to be a communication center specialist. MOS 72B20.
Basically a Teletype Operator and crypto clerk.
We were all clean, neat and orderly. Good sanitation.
Barracks to sleep in and actually pretty good food.
My take home pay was about 75 dollars a month.
I got free clothes and boots. Pretty good deal.
That was before everybody yelled "ooh-rah" at everything.
Watched Apollo 11 launch from the barracks tv on government time.
Woodstock was followed as an alien adventure.

[Hoosier Daddy]

I couldn't go, either.
I was in the 3rd grade and probably had homework.



In all honesty, I'm probably aligned with your thinking, Jet.
I was too young to completely understand what fueled the 60s counterculture.
I think that generation and their antics changed the face of America for both good and bad.
A few people I know now (through church) are still proud of their outspoken "hippie-ness" back in the day.
I've never been the wild child type as a young lad or an adult.
I can't help you much beyond that point.
Woodstock was still an unintentional and accidental one-in-a-million, though.

[Scott Reppert]

Grant Stewart went. Cut his foot. Bad. Missed a lot of stuff. That's my story.

Oh, yeah. I think it was overrated. But then again, the only form of rock and roll I come close to hating are concerts and live albums...

[cgarison]

I wasn't born so I could not have gone.

[Lee]

How about Woodstock '94 or the one Limp Bizkit played?

[Hoosier Daddy]

How about Woodstock '94 or the one Limp Bizkit played?

Knock offs. They don't count.

[Bob Campbell]

My brother went, said it was amazing.
I was hired to work part time as an usher at our local theatre when the movie came out. It was amazing. I saw it probably a dozen times all the way through. Customers kept complaining that it wasn't LOUD enough!
Jet, you talk like recreational drugs and depravity are bad things.
Amidst the chaos, no fighting, no shooting, no knifing, no fire setting.
Best thing about Woodstock 94 had to be the riot at the end when they set the radio station van on fire. Forget which station, but I believe it was a NYC one.

[AmpedNow]

I wasn't born yet, so I have no care about it.

This generation ridiculed their parents from the Greatest Generation for being uptight and ruining the world.

Fast forward 40 years... The Greatest Generation has almost died off. And, now that they're finally running the show, they're being uptight and ruining the world.

When I think of the Greatest Generation, I think of those guys running headlong into a hellstorm of bullets and cannon fire on the beaches of Normandy to save the world from a genocidal madman.

When I think of this generation, I think stoned, naked hippies sliding in the mud, peace signs, and protesting everything their parents stood for.

The end.

[Bob Campbell]

Amped, when I think of this generation I think of my cousin getting shot down twice in Nam while piloting helicopters, becoming at the time the youngest captain in the history of the Army, going on to teach at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
I also think of Bill Gates, and the guys from Apple.
Bob who lived down the street from me who worked on the Human Genome Project.
And Winston Salem Police Dept. Sgt. Howard Plouff, who was killed in the line of duty by someone from your generation in 2007.

While many may think of your generation as a bunch of underacheiving,feel like everybody owes you something for nothing, lacking in intellectual curiosity, and not willing to work for anything, I say, "Give 'em time, they may show us something yet".

Each generation has its greatness, each has its embarassments.
The Greatest Generation saved the world in WWII, but it also perpetuated institutional racism and sexism, and gave us Vietnam, the Cold War , Joe McCarthy and Lee Harvey Oswald.

There are two sides, or more, to every coin. Time for a beer.

[Jay Nunley]

I was at Woodstock '94. It sucked balls. The entire thing. All of the bands either sucked or didn't usually suck, but sucked that particular day(s). The people attending were a mixture of assholes and extreme assholes. The weather was awful, a bottle of water cost $6000.00, and the smell was monumentally nauseating. Not one good moment.

O.K. There were two good moments.

I saw a 100 pound hot chick punch her douchebag, soul patch boyfriend right in the face. I swear she knocked his ass out.

The other good moment was leaving early. I missed most of the real stupidity.

As far as the real Woodstock goes... eh. What do I know about it?