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The thing about Woodstock was, until then, nobody knew there were that many hippie/counterculture/rock music fans in the world. Most of the 400,000 who were there were considered "weirdos" in their home towns, and had no idea that there were kindred spirits in other towns and other states. Mainstream culture had been acting as if rock music, marijuana and long hair were just teenage fads that would soon fade. Woodstock is when everybody started to realize that there were a LOT of people who identified with the counterculture, and it wasn't going to go away anytime soon.
Hate to be a constant contrarian, but the Rock of Woodstock wasn't the Rock and Roll of Bill Haley, the Beach Boys or even the Beatles.
True, that's why I think so much of it's lame. An abberation which the hard rockers and then Punkers of the 70s put paid too. IMO the best "hippie" rock was from simplistic guys like Blue Cheer and Moby Grape, the Grape being basically a Pacific Northwest "Louie, Louie" band who tried to cash in on the hippie thing.
Be as contrary as you like; your comments are always thoughtful.
Speaking of the song "Woodstock", I doubt that many of today's listeners will recognize what Joni Mitchell was talking about: "I came upon a child of god / He was walking along the road..."
The Children of God was a distinct counter-culture sub-group that lived in communes and preached on the street. They were somewhat visable in urban areas in the late 1960s. There was a broader term, "Jesus Freak", that included several of these "hippie" religious cult-like groups. They mostly died out or morphed into some other, later version that was not very recognizable as a derivative of the hippy era.
The thing about Woodstock was, until then, nobody knew there were that many hippie/counterculture/rock music fans in the world. Most of the 400,000 who were there were considered "weirdos" in their home towns, and had no idea that there were kindred spirits in other towns and other states. Mainstream culture had been acting as if rock music, marijuana and long hair were just teenage fads that would soon fade. Woodstock is when everybody started to realize that there were a LOT of people who identified with the counterculture, and it wasn't going to go away anytime soon.
I disagree. Monterey Music Festival had 200,000 in attendance and pre-dated Woodstock by 2 years (and the music was better).
Watching the Woodstock movie, you can see plenty of iconic hippie images, but you also see multitudes of people with relativly short hair and standard apparel, NOT smoking doobage, that simply attended for the day. I actually see Woodstock as the final act in the counterculture movement (it being started in '67), people had been aware of it in mass media for years.
IMO the best "hippie" rock was from simplistic guys like Blue Cheer and Moby Grape, the Grape being basically a Pacific Northwest "Louie, Louie" band who tried to cash in on the hippie thing.
When I think of "hippie" bands I think of John Sebastian, Joni Mitchell, Joplin and definitely Hendrix and the Jefferson Airplane.
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