woodstock and me
i was not at woodstock since i was way too busy making money in 1969 but it inspired me to help set up a similar outdoor rock festival in australia in the early 70's. it was called the Oddessy Festival and was held in a large field right outside of walicha. my friend, bobby oliver, was married on stage by a hippie guru and he and his wife rode off the stage on a motorcycle. it was too cool. my partner, ray patton, and i helped finance the shindig and made some money off of it but we would have been happy just being there.
woodstock had 450,000 people there for 3 days; to my knowledge no one got killed, no one got mugged, no one got raped, there were very few fights and for the vast most part everyone got along just fine. all this in the mud and rain while a very large number were doing all kinds of drugs and still it was peaceful. show me a town of that has 450,000 people between the ages of say 16-30 (which would mean a city of what? a couple of million or so?) where over any given weekend they had no murders, no rapes, no muggings by any of those 450.000 and i would kiss your ass in the middle of main street and give you a couple of hours to draw a crowd to watch me do it.
love and peace, brothers and sisters!
those days of love and peace and rock and roll and lsd helped change my life and from them i evolved into the man i am today, for better or worse. the 1968 democratic convention in chicago made me a pacifist. previous to that event, being from a family that had sent men off to war in WWI and WWII and being ex-army myself, i thought that the protesters against our involvement in vietnam were just cowards but when i saw those young people, all of whom were about my age or a little younger, face those cops and offered flowers to men who were about to beat them with clubs i knew that while they may have been many things, cowards they weren't. that lead me to do something i had not done before and that is look critically at what we were doing and why we were doing it and i realized that i, and the country had been conned and we were totally in the wrong in southeast asia.
BY THE WAY, ON MY FACEBOOK PAGE I RECENTLY LISTED ALL OF THE COUNTRIES WE HAVE BOMBED SINCE THE END OF WORLD WAR II. CHECK IT OUT.
on to michael vick. fuck him. he does not deserve another shot at the nfl. killing dogs shows a moral compass that is totally out of wack. most mass murderers start by killing animals. his brother is a creep too and got kicked off v.t.'s football team. there is something seriously wrong with mv and you just watch, he is going to do something horrible to somebody before his miserable life is over. wanna bet?
poker has been a disaster this month. the worst month i have ever had. every decision i make is wrong and if a miracle card can come up for my opponent it does so. shit.
i know i haven't been writing much on this page recently so i have probably lost a good number of readers but i just have had nothing to say so that is what i said.
i am also VERY disappointed in obama and will go into that on my next post whenever that may be.
woodstock had 450,000 people there for 3 days; to my knowledge no one got killed, no one got mugged, no one got raped, there were very few fights and for the vast most part everyone got along just fine. all this in the mud and rain while a very large number were doing all kinds of drugs and still it was peaceful. show me a town of that has 450,000 people between the ages of say 16-30 (which would mean a city of what? a couple of million or so?) where over any given weekend they had no murders, no rapes, no muggings by any of those 450.000 and i would kiss your ass in the middle of main street and give you a couple of hours to draw a crowd to watch me do it.
love and peace, brothers and sisters!
those days of love and peace and rock and roll and lsd helped change my life and from them i evolved into the man i am today, for better or worse. the 1968 democratic convention in chicago made me a pacifist. previous to that event, being from a family that had sent men off to war in WWI and WWII and being ex-army myself, i thought that the protesters against our involvement in vietnam were just cowards but when i saw those young people, all of whom were about my age or a little younger, face those cops and offered flowers to men who were about to beat them with clubs i knew that while they may have been many things, cowards they weren't. that lead me to do something i had not done before and that is look critically at what we were doing and why we were doing it and i realized that i, and the country had been conned and we were totally in the wrong in southeast asia.
BY THE WAY, ON MY FACEBOOK PAGE I RECENTLY LISTED ALL OF THE COUNTRIES WE HAVE BOMBED SINCE THE END OF WORLD WAR II. CHECK IT OUT.
on to michael vick. fuck him. he does not deserve another shot at the nfl. killing dogs shows a moral compass that is totally out of wack. most mass murderers start by killing animals. his brother is a creep too and got kicked off v.t.'s football team. there is something seriously wrong with mv and you just watch, he is going to do something horrible to somebody before his miserable life is over. wanna bet?
poker has been a disaster this month. the worst month i have ever had. every decision i make is wrong and if a miracle card can come up for my opponent it does so. shit.
i know i haven't been writing much on this page recently so i have probably lost a good number of readers but i just have had nothing to say so that is what i said.
i am also VERY disappointed in obama and will go into that on my next post whenever that may be.
posted by Ron Shock | 9:42 AM
5 Comments:
A fact that needs to get out there in the Internet age is that Woodstock was NOT the first, nor the largest, event of it's kind, it's just the one that was on film. Pizza parlor owner Alex Cooley did such a festival a month earlier in 1969, the Atlanta International Pop Festival. He had many of the same bands as Woodstock, and Led Zeppelin, to boot! A little later he organized the Texas International Pop Festival, too.
The largest such festival was also held in upstate New York a year or two after Woodstock, and the Allman Brothers were the headliners.
Now I've done my part for historical accuracy.
you are right. a couple of friends of mine were at the atlanta festival and i had forgotten that until this post.
the one we threw in australia had about 20-30 thousand there and it rained the first day which probably cut the crowd a lot. but, it was a blast.
thanks for the post
Ron,
You owe me a kiss
Montreal, downtown. anytime
The Montreal Jazz Festival's main public show draws that kind of crowd every single summer.
Richard,
I think the offer was based on finding a regular town with 450,000 "kids" on a given weekend that had virtually no major violence.
The point seemed to be that huge numbers of young people can come together for extended periods and, even after smoking the Dev'l's weed, just have a good time.
Happily, Montreal's Jazz Fest makes Ron's point and even pushes it a little farther down the field, since you undoubtedly have some over 30 jazz buffs attending.
Course Ron'll do what Ron chooses and smooch what he fancies, but if twas me, I'd pull my pants back up before the weather turns to what Ron calls "ball shrinkin' cold".
Art,
I think what Ron was mentioning is that there is no such thing as Woodstock anymore. It was a place and time that can no longer happen. The largest rallies lately have been what they call the teabaggers or "birthers" protesting our president.
No one's coming together except in anger. It took a while, but the right-wingers are now owning the festival mindset. And just 10 months after so many people joined together for the inauguration.
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