On the morning of August 15th 1969 what was supposed to be an impressive but contained concert at a private residence outside of Woodstock, New York, turned into a sprawling free concert that defined a generation of music. We have been reminded of this event a lot over the past few weeks as we celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the '69 Woodstock festival. I am not so sure that this spontaneous event could have happened in today's world. Sure, we have a social networking infrastructure that they could not have dreamed of back then. But can that really compete against the corporate sponsorships that tightly monitor admission, security and promotion of current festivals?
I am all for free concerts, in fact there is going to be a big one in my home town of Baltimore. That said, I have a sneaking suspicion that Virgin Music Festival won't have the same "free love" aura as Woodstock '69. I'm just sayin'.
What do you guys think?
Lots of that nostalgia about - I wrote a book about the 70s and hippy festivals and currently hoping to get an EP to fund it into a movie too - its centred around another huge hippie rock festival (run by a friend of mine) called NAMBASSA... (it acutally out ranked Woodstock in attendance on a per capita population basis and was the biggest in the southern hemisphere) - Check out the "news clip" on my page www.myspace.com/colleenpoulter
Posted by: CA Poulter | August 27, 2009 at 11:42 PM