« Signs of Apocalypse: Real Estate Crisis Ruins My Day | Home | iShares Poster Ads: What Were They Thinking? »
September 01, 2008
What I Did on April 29, 1972
On April 29, 1972, I bought the triple-album Woodstock soundtrack. I know, because I wrote the date on the album, as I have done with almost every album and CD I've bought in the last 35 years (not that I'm obsessive or anything). As a rock-lovin' eighth grader at Mission Junior High School in Texas, the album connected me to the big, skinny-dipping-hippies world out there.
On August 31, 2008, over 36 years later, I FINALLY made it to Woodstock as I drove 130 miles to the town in the Catskills region of New York that lent the concert its name. I took my son, now 14, to the "Original Woodstock Museum Film and Video Festival" to see the area and check out the documentaries at the festival, which had the theme "Freedom."
The drive took over two easy hours, with the final stretch up the New York State Thruway. Anybody who's ever listened to the Woodstock album repeatedly at an impressionable age (as I did) will have memorized much of the stage patter. So the closer we got to Woodstock, the more powerful was my urge to tell my son, several times, the immortal words of young Arlo Guthrie,
The New York Thruway is closed, man!
Caught in the spirit of the moment, I then started chanting, "No rain! No rain!" and then exclaimed to my son, "Wow, it really worked, there's not a cloud in the sky!" Surely that's a moment that convinced him, as all teen offspring must think, that his father was completely off his rocker.
"Dad, um, what actually happened at Woodstock?" he asked.
"Why is this concert different from every other concert?" I replied in best leading-the-seder mode. "It all began with a humble Jewish farmer named Max Yasgur . . . "
Back home, I tinkered with my stereo until I got the turntable to work, and immediately pulled out my sturdy 1972 vinyl of Woodstock. "Rock 'n Roll High School is now in session," I said, "Principal Dad leading the class."
I started at the beginning, side 1, track 1, John B. Sebastian playing solo on "I Had a Dream," followed by Canned Heat's studio version of "Goin' Up the Country," and on and on. One side was enough.
Part 2: Woodstock, the town and the film festival.
Van | 09/01/08 at 08:50 PM | Categories: Sensual pleasures
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.keshertalk.com/cgi-bin/mtb.cgi/6747
![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.keshertalk.com/nav-commenters.gif)
