Loading ...The Top Ten Reasons Why Woodstock Sucked
By Evan ~ August 14th, 2009. Filed under: top ten.
Don’t even get me started about last night’s softball game. It was dreadful. Well, now that I’ve gotten myself started I suppose I can spend a paragraph writing about it. We lost, we sucked, but worst of all, the other team was a bunch of assholes. Their pitcher was the biggest fucking douchebag I’ve ever met, and if we meet again in the playoffs (and we will), it wouldn’t surprise me if a brawl occurs. There was no verbal or physical animosity towards the other team shown last night, but everyone on our team was steaming for the duration of our 7-inning game. The complete lack of respect that was shown to us, the stall tactics and non-chalance with which they played…it was nauseating. Joking between pitches, mocking one another when they didn’t get a hit, chit-chatting with the umpire…fuck, this is a softball league not a fireside chat. Play the game, have fun, but not at the expense of the other team, and don’t be such douches. I wanted to brain someone with a bat. I still might. I don’t know.
Fucking Woodstock. Why do people care about Woodstock? My mom was there, she doesn’t talk about it, but every fucking ‘boomer in the country has Woodstock-fever this weekend. It’s the 40th anniversary I guess. All the radio stations on Sirius/XM are talking about it and playing cuts from the new CD box set. Talk radio stations are interviewing folks involved with the production of the movie. People are all talking about what an amazing event it was, how it defined a generation, blah blah blah. Woodstock was total bullshit. It shouldn’t be present in the public and media consciousness. It should be forgotten, like the dumb baby boomers who won’t stop gloating about it until they’re all dead.
The Top Ten Reasons Why Woodstock Sucked
10. 5,162 Medical Cases – That amounts to about one out of 100 people in attendance required medical attention during the festival. Almost 800 of those cases were drug-related (so, in other words, they were completely avoidable, but the spoiled brats who went to Woodstock didn’t know any better). Two people died of heroin overdoses. One idiot was crushed by a tractor during the clean-up. Eight women miscarried at Woodstock. Maybe it had something to do with the horrible conditions, the preening assholes in the crowd, or the shitty music on stage.
09. It Was A Disaster Area – Martin Scorsese described the mood at Woodstock as “volatile” and “threatening” from start to finish. He’s also made allusions to war (ironic, of course, because all the kids there were opponents of war) when discussing what it felt like to survive Woodstock. The drugs sucked, the weather sucked, they ran out of food and the idea of sanitation was a joke. Sickness swept across the crowd. It was a filthy, ugly mess. But hey, it was a weekend of “peace and love” so none of that other shit matters I guess.
08. Fucking Traffic – So many idiot kids showed up that it created immense traffic james. Many of the acts who were supposed to perform on the first day were stranded and had to be flown in by army helicopters. Richie Havens had to perform for three hours — including seven encores — before someone else was flown in to take the stage. Jesus Christ.
07. It Was All About Money – The organizers described themselves as “young men with unlimited capital” in search of investment opportunities, and they would up creating an outdoor music festival as a money-making scheme, the film rights for which they sold to Warner Brothers for a cool six figures. Tickets cost the modern equivalent of $75, and who knows how much the organizers lost when half a million people showed up and started breaking into the event. The Who refused to play without being paid in advance, the dicks. Karma dicked The Who over when they consumed drinks they didn’t know were dosed with LSD. Roger Daltry called it “the worst performance we ever did.” The only redeeming factor of this colossal attempt to swindle the youth of America out of their cash is that it turned out to be a colossal failure as far as marketing albums and creating a tedious documentary film were concerned.
06. The Townspeople Hated It – Not only did they toss out their supervisor during the November 1969 elections specifically because he brought the festival to their town, the entirety of New York State joined Bethel in passing laws preventing mass gatherings and more festivals from occurring. To keep visitors from visiting the site, its owners spread chicken shit over the grounds. During one anniversary, state police formed roadblocks to stop people from gathering at the original site. I’ve spent a good deal of time in New York State, and the people that I’ve met there are all super nice. You’d have to be a real asshole to piss off those salt-of-the-earth people. Now imagine 500,000 real assholes descending on your peaceful town. Fuck ‘em, right?
05. The Sound Sucked – For a music festival, the sound at Woodstock was dreadful. Forget trying to even see the stage or performers in a crowd of 500,000 stoned losers who were too high to move, try hearing the music when “sound equipment failed, amplifiers buzzed, guitar cables, cracked, and microphones cut out.” After playing an out-of-tune guitar for nearly ten minutes, Stephen Stills complained about his monitors. I can’t imagine how awful that sounded for the people who had to endure it. Even the folks at the Wall Street Journal think it sucked. That’s where I got that quote!
04. Nostalgia Sucks – The media’s canonization of Woodstock alone is enough to sully any rational person’s idea of what festival actually meant in terms of cultural, philosophical and political significance. It’s like Obama all over again, only it’s been going on for 40 years!
03. Food And Shit – Everyone knows there wasn’t anything to eat and the bathroom facilities were doomed after day one. There’s nothing new I’m going to add to this, just think about how foul the area was, and how you’d feel if you showed up to an outdoor festival and had to endure no food, drinkable water or places to piss and shit. You’d wish death upon every single person there, and you know it.
02. The Lineup – The Doors, Led Zeppelin, The Byrds, Bob Dylan and plenty of others declined invitations. What the hell does that say about the perceived importance of Woodstock? All of the importance has been heaped upon the event in hindsight. Sha-Na-Na, Blood Sweat & Tears, Country Joe and The Fish, Sweetwater, Bert Sommer, Melanie, Canned Heat, John Sebastian and Keef Heartley do not a memorable concert make. I already told you The Who sucked (or so says Daltry), Jimi Hendrix’s memorable solo that concludes the concert LPs was edited out of a long, rambling, ineffective piece. It was in no way a musical revolution. The “folk” first day was completely out of time considering Dylan himself went electric at Newport FOUR YEARS earlier. Folk music was pretty much dead already. They devoted an entire day to it. African-American music was nearly non-existent. Let’s face it, most of the artists involved sucked.
01. The People – Don’t even get me started on the spoiled children of elitist parents who attended Woodstock. While an equal number of their peers enlisted in the army and fought in a fucking war, these kids borrowed money from their parents, borrowed the family car, and went an danced around like a bunch of self-indulgent knaves. Every armed conflict has opponents. Listening to music and getting high does absolutely nothing to aid an effort to end a war. The people who fought Vietnam with “flower power” are now themselves mired in two overseas conflicts, and most have “sold out.” What possible reason do we have for celebrating this event and these cretins? I say let the ‘boomers in the media navel gaze a little while longer. Most of ‘em lie about being there anyway. The good news is, we know the truth about Woodstock: The music sucked, the sound sucked, the people sucked, and it was organized by people who craved only money and cashed in on “free love,” “peace” and a generation of pampered dolts. The idea Woodstock is mythology, not fact. Remember that.
William Harris – Hot Time Blues
Mattie May Thomas – Workhouse Blues
Elvie Thomas – Motherless Child Blues
August 15th, 2009 at 1:46 am
I knew there was a reason I came back to read this site. I’ve never been able to figure out what made this concert any more important than any other massive, over-hyped festival before or since. I think it’s that poster.
August 15th, 2009 at 6:49 am
Bethel, NY, where the concert took place, was only forty-two miles from my boyhood home. The concert’s second day coincided with my eleventh birthday (I’ll be fifty-one tomorrow).
I have always regretted not having been there. Now I’m not so sure.
Great piece!
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
August 15th, 2009 at 8:42 am
Interesting blog. Arguably, the biggest legacy of Woodstock is its huge impact on the real children of the sixties: Generation Jones (born 1954-1965, between the Boomers and Generation X). This USA TODAY op-ed speaks to the relevance today of the sixties counterculture impact on GenJones: http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20090127/column27_st.art.htm
Google Generation Jones, and you’ll see it’s gotten a ton of media attention, and many top commentators from many top publications and networks (Washington Post, Time magazine, NBC, Newsweek, ABC, etc.) now specifically use this term. In fact, the Associated Press’ annual Trend Report chose the Rise of Generation Jones as the #1 trend of 2009.
Here’s a page with a good overview of recent media interest in GenJones:
http://generationjones.com/2009latest.html
August 15th, 2009 at 9:19 am
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POWER AND CONTROL :LSD IN THE 60’s
Features the CIA LSD Brothel in San Francisco (MK ULTRA), Groucho Marx’s LSD Trip….Doc Ellis pitches his no-hitter while high.
Tim Leary’s Miricle of Good friday Experiment is explored with one of the original PREACHERS who took part.
LSD and the Protest Movement, JFK & LSD plus more.
All posted for free at this youtube link..please share this knowledge.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZdz0G4lG6k&feature=channel_page
August 15th, 2009 at 9:36 am
To quote Danny Ben-Israel: The Hippies of Today are the Assholes of Tomorrow
August 15th, 2009 at 10:22 am
“I’ve spent a good deal of time in New York State, and the people that I’ve met there are all super nice.” Yeah right, the people in New York are all super nice.
What a fucking idiot.
August 15th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Really, Frank? All that baiting and the one problem you have with this piece is that I called the people from upstate New York whom I’ve met nice?
I think we all know who the fucking idiot here is…
August 15th, 2009 at 11:39 am
[...] Tussen alle Woodstock hosanna ook maar even de andere kant van het verhaal, een link naar een Duits artikel en een link naar een Engels verhaal op ‘Swanfungus’. [...]
August 15th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
I wish i knew how old you were (the author) so i could really get an understanding of were it is you’re coming from. Based on your opinion on the event i’m gonna say you were born in the 80s( probably mid)….still too young to understand anything of significance. but only because you were born in a time of pessimism and insignificance. There are alot of romantic ideas surrounding this event (and many more) that people like you and even me wont really understand…but you have to look at the big picture…what was happening in 1969?…a war…a very confusing war…a war these people didn’t believe in but were losing friends to…a war during a time where it was bad to be in it and bad to be against it….and there was no one to turn to except your music if you didn’t know which way to go….you might think it’s stupid, but you know what WAS great about it……thousands of people showed up to this unimportant place for an “unimportant event” that ended up “sucking” music wise and facility wise and people could have lost their minds like they would today, but do you know how many cases of violence there were…almost zero!…..it was almost a miracle considering everything that factored into it……it was definitely a weekend of peace, love, and music….even if the only people who thought so were those looking at t in hindsight…….open your mind more….but be who you are too….respect
August 15th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
hmmm….i did the math and you’re probably a lot older than i gave you credit for, aren’t ya?…hmmmm….oh well…..my opinons still stand ;-)
August 15th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Great post *applause applause*
August 15th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
I see my blogthing referring to this post is also mentioned between the comments, because most of the text is in (double)dutch I want to explain that I’m 50/50 OK with Evan’s view. Though I’m aware of all the negative aspects of the over-romantised Woodstock mudbath I know about the impact it had world-wide, be it with commercial or idealistic intentions.
From the reactions I also learned I belong to the ‘generation-jones’ (@HD45009), an interesting thing to consider however.
I don’t care if Evan/Swan F is 100% serious or just trying to break through some (all too positive) bias, I’m sure he made a point.
But even so this overrated mudbath changed something in the mindset of lots of ppl, no matter how the visitors at the time had their 3 days of love blabla experience….
August 15th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
I think there was so much more to this era that the “Woodstock” phenom just doesn’t truly capture. I don’t like the oversimplification of what the 60’s was supposed to mean all attached to this one concert. Joan Didion’s essay on San Francisco in 1967 from Slouching Toward Bethlehem is a far more interesting glimpse into the counter-culture of the time than anything that ever came out of Woodstock. Bob Dylan defending his Ulster County home from invading hippies with a shotgun makes for the kind of folklore I want to follow. How many more hammy cliches will evening news anchors shove down our throats about “if you can remember it, you probably weren’t there”?
Yeah, alright, so it could have been worse. I’ll give them that.
August 15th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
you should check out ed ward’s column about this
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/Music/87882-Beginning-Or-end/
he was old enough to have gone but opted not to, and makes a lot of the points you’re making.
August 16th, 2009 at 7:32 am
Gosh, its hard to read what you wrote. I think your 10 reason are true, that is, there was bad traffic, it was muddy and gross, its was a money making enterprise, etc. However, why do you believe it is reflected upon so fondly, then, by the people who were acutally there? I can’t agree that the line up sucked, however. The Who, Janis Joplin, Hendrix, CCR, Crosby, Stills, Nash, Neil Young, and have you ever even heard Melanie, or John Sebastian? I think not. You sound so angry. Even if an exaggerated legacy of peace and love remains, what’s wrong with that? I think you’re mad you missed it.
August 16th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
It was all about the drugs. My mom wasn’t old enough to go, but she’s glad she didn’t. The whole reason behind the concert was so that they could get all the people who attended high, and that is just terrible. We shouldn’t be trying to ban ciggaretes, we should be trying to eliminate Marjuanna!
August 17th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
I went. And you are completely right on every count. We got disgusted after one night and one day and left. The most fun we had was when all the traffic was stopped and we visited from car to car. Everything else was a disaster. I was 18 years old and even then I felt incredibly sorry for the people of Bethel . Most everyone I know who actually went had a horrible time. The event started being mythologized by the promoters as soon as it was over… So that everyone would see the boring movie, buy the t-shirt etc. etc. etc.
It was basically a lot of upper middle class white kids messing up a cute little town and a lovely field. I am kind of embarrassed to have been one of them.
August 18th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Great post. Woodstock is only interesting to me for the same reason I find my grandfather’s homemovies interesting; it’s a bit like time travel. THe images of the people are interesting, not the C list musical acts. Whenever I see the documentary on TV I change channels when the music starts. Seriosuly.
Also, why are people always trying to make Woodstock into Vietnam protest rally? Jimi Hendrix was about as political as Don Knotts (that means he wasn’t political) and said on the Dick Cavet show shortly after Woodstock how annoyed he was at the way even then people were trying to interpret his Star Spangled Banner as somesort of ‘heavy political statement’ – WRONG. He was just jamming and frequently played improvisational, distirted versins of common tunes like that. It wasn’t a political event. By August of ‘69 the U.S. was essentially withdrawn from Viet Nam anyway. The war was winding down. I don’t mean to be insensitive an dintend no disprespect to the Nam vets or dead, but even the inflated figure of 58,000 is not a very high number for a 10 year war. To put it into perspective, about a 6800 Americans dies over the course of just 3 days of battle at Iwo Jima ion WW2; at that rate they’d surpass theVietNam totals in well under two weeks. To suggest that “everyone knew someone who’d died in the war” is simply BS.
August 18th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
PS – Yeah, yeah I noticed the typoes too. I don’t have the time or interest to spell check… SORRY ;)
August 20th, 2009 at 5:19 am
i don’t feel it was a political anti-war thing….i think it was just another way for all these people to escape it for a bit. I mean hell…they promoted it as three days of peace. Who wouldn’t wanna try to attend such a thing after all the build up to that moment (even if it did turn out to be crap as you suggest)? and Joe they might not have personally known these people, but this was the first “in-your-face”, media covered war. People were seeing this war…and young folks were seeing people like them fighting and dying in that war and free love….people were always looking for escape, hence the drugs and sh*t…..the only reason why more people don’t do it now is cause we all know better now and know how dumb it is…..that generation didn’t….they had to break it in for us. Why not just let them have their moment in time…..whether you agree with it or not…..i mean why are you so Anti-Woodstock, youngin?…you afraid of a little “peace and love, man”?
August 20th, 2009 at 5:22 am
i added that “and free love part” as an afterthought and put it in the wrong place lol…it was supposed to be after the next sentence about the drug use…..oh well
September 9th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
your a fucking retard
September 9th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
and so is everyone who agrees with this page. negative nancys :]
November 11th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Someone didn’t get what they wanted for christmas. And let me guess, you are a conservative republican
November 12th, 2009 at 7:22 am
seriously though. You can’t blame the promoters for 500,000 people showing up. That was clearly out of their control. Years ago we suffered as severe ice storm. The electricity went out for a week. several relatives and friends gathered to ride out the hardship. Some bitched and complained and were completely miserable, while the majority had the time of our lives. I suggest that many people when given lemons make lemonade while you sir just make a face and cry about how bitter the lemons are.
January 2nd, 2010 at 12:00 pm
I can only imagine how old the majority of these posters are. Especially the author…”Evan”. (An 80’s name.)
The spin most of you place on Woodstock clearly comes from a current perspective, that’s obvious. We cannot explain the 60’s to someone who wasn’t alive at the time, and you cannot grasp its significance or experience. As poster Joe states: “Woodstock is only interesting to me for the same reason I find my grandfather’s homemovies interesting; it’s a bit like time travel.” And that’s the best understanding you people can hope to have.
Speculate all you like. When people of my generation (I’m 58) read comments about Woodstock from kids of later generations, it puts a smile on our faces. You know not what you speak of.
March 5th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
You really should visit the museum at Bethel Woods, the site of the festival, and get to know some of the people involved. I know many who were there, and more who tried to get there and could not, including my best friend’s husband who had a ticket but shipped off to Viet Nam the first day of the festival. I think you should take a visit to the Viet Nam memorial in D.C. and look at the names on the wall, then try to tell us what you think that war’s effect on the generation of the sixties was. Talk to some Nam vets, and see how that changes your perspective. Rich from Chicago is right when he says you know not what you speak of, in that you show no understanding of the shift that was occuring in American society, the changing roles of the young people at that time, “The Man”, and the importance of the music. If you think the music sucked, you have not seen the footage of Santana or truly listened to Crosby, Stills and Nash in their first public performance. Folk was not dead – in fact it is still alive and well. Dylan went electric, and that was a monumental moment in history, but has little meaning in relation to the Woodstock Festival. Were the promoters trying to make money? I certainly hope so. This is America, after all, and capitalism is what it is all about. Was it all about the drugs? No. It was about a defining moment in the life of a nation.
March 29th, 2010 at 6:46 am
You are very stupid. Woodstock was a turning point in american history. 500,000 people were there and it was mostly kept under control. People were being peaceful, they were there for peace and music. They weren’t there to become famous, or be in a movie. The music was great. Many of the best musicians of all time were there, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby Stills, and Nash, Santana, and Country Joe and the Fish. If you think that is bad music then what do you think is good music. You can’t say Woodstock sucked because that straight up is immature. That’s like saying the movie that wins the best picture is a terrible movie. Your mom is stupid as well. Why would she go if she didn’t like what it was going to be. Obviously she knew there was going to be “bad” music and drugs. I would pay hundreds of dollars to go to woodstock and same with many people, then its conservative bastards like you who make fun of it and say it was a horrible event. You also probaly thought the Vietnam war was good. Guess what the government did research into Vietnam and said it was an unwinable war. But it didn’t matter it just made us look Patriotic to go into a hell hole and have thousands o soldiers die just to look patriotic. The patriots had a reason to fight a war, to get freedom. Did we need freedom, no. The republicans just want blood. So why the hell do you post bullshit stuff on the internet when it is completely wrong.
April 7th, 2010 at 8:10 pm
Thanks, Evan. Enjoyed reading the article as you exposed the bizarre attraction to Woodstock and the hypocrisy of the supposedly peace/love generation.
You might want to check out:
The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation
http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/