WOODSTOCK MUSIC & ART FAIR. Just the name of an event that took place almost fifty years ago still conjures images in most people’s minds—regardless of age and often political and philosophical disposition—of youth innocence joy, of music color summer, of endless horizons and possibilities, of three days of peace and music.
And of one-on-one, person-with-person intimacy, of being here now, of intimacy and grokking the moment—even if the moment is filled with problems and inconveniences and even actual hardships.
And don’t forget the mud!
If such as event was held today, during the summer of 2018, there would be 500,000 people sitting on their asses, staring blankly into their smartphones. They would be chatting with someone who wasn’t there, texting them about how great it was to be there, not realizing they really weren’t there either.
And some clever songwriter could rewrite the lyrics to the song that commemorated the event in 1969 and made popular by Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young as a hit single in 1970.
Thank Wholly Grommett that these insidious devices didn’t exist sixty years ago or this could have been me with my brother and sister.
We are stardust, we are golden
The original music and lyrics for the song Woodstock were written by Joni Mitchell. When Joni’s boyfriend Graham Nash expressed interest in his band recording the song, they made some changes in the lyrics, mostly moving them around. Below find my shameless rewrite/spoof of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s version of Joni Mitchell’s song.
I came upon a child of Jobs, he was walking along the road,
and I asked him, “Tell me, where are you going?” and this he told me.
Said, “I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm,
I’m going to join in a twittering band.
Got to get back to my phone and set my soul free.”
We are stardust, we are golden.
We are billion year old carbon.
And we’ve got to text ourselves back to our friends’ phones.
“Well then, can I walk beside you?
I have come to lose the smog,
and I feel myself a cog in something turning.
And maybe it’s the time of year,
maybe it’s the time of man, and I don’t know who I am,
but life is for texting.”
We are stardust, we are golden.
We are billion year old carbon.
And we’ve got to text ourselves back to our friends’ phones.
By the time we got to Woodstock,
we were half a million strong.
And everywhere were smartphones and private conversation.
And I dreamed I saw the bomber jetplanes
leaving chemtrails in the sky,
killing bees and butterflies across our nation.
We are stardust, we are golden.
We are caught in Steve Jobs’ bargain.
And we’ve got to text ourselves back to our friends’ phones.
At the advice of her management, Joni Mitchell did not attend the Music & Art Fair in upper New York state. Instead, she appeared on appear on television on The Dick Cavett Show, an excellent venue that would provide her songs and her singing much-needed exposure. She wrote the song in a hotel room in New York City, inspired by watching television and from what she had heard from Graham Nash.
“The lyrics tell a story about a spiritual journey and make prominent use of sacred imagery, comparing the festival site with the Garden of Eden. The saga commences with the narrator’s encounter of a fellow traveler (‘Well, I came upon a child of God, he was walking along the road’) and concludes at their ultimate destination. There are also references to the Vietnam War (‘bombers riding shotgun in the sky’) in combination with the peaceful intent of the festival goers (‘turning into butterflies above our nation’).” (Wikipedia)
FEATURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page are of two unidentified people making music at Yasgur’s farm in August 1969. Despite the set-up being the largest in history at the time, some people were so far from the stage that they heard little of the concert. So they made do . . .
Mystically liberal Virgo enjoys long walks alone in the city at night in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig who strives to live by the maxim, “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a college dropout (twice!). Occupationally, I have been a bartender, jewelry engraver, bouncer, landscape artist, and FEMA crew chief following the Great Flood of ’72 (and that was a job that I should never, ever have left).
I am also the final author of the original O’Sullivan Woodside price guides for record collectors and the original author of the Goldmine price guides for record collectors. As such, I was often referred to as the Price Guide Guru, and—as everyone should know—it behooves one to heed the words of a guru. (Unless, of course, you’re the Beatles.)
