We are Stardust, We are Golden....

In 1969, a monumental music festival changed our world. More than half a million people came together - united in a message of peace, openness and cultural expression – and demonstrated how a generation could be heard. Today, Woodstock lives on. Gathered on Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, New York, they came from all over....changing forever the face of rock and roll-encrypting our minds with images of love and peace....

Woodstock originally was designed as a profit-making venture. It famously became a "free concert" only after it became obvious that the event was drawing hundreds of thousands more people than the organizers had prepared for. Tickets for the event cost $18 in advance and $24 at the gate for all three days. But a late change in venue did not give the festival organizers enough time to prepare. Organizers felt they had two choices. One option was to improve the fencing and security which might have resulted in violence; the other involved putting all their resources into completing the stage, which would cause promoters to take a financial hit. The crowd, which was arriving in greater numbers and earlier than anticipated, made the decision for them. The fence was cut the night before the concert.

During the sometimes rainy weekend, thirty-two acts performed outdoors. Among them were sensational bands like Santana, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, the Who, Jefferson Airplane, Ten Years After, the Band, CSN&Y and Jimi Hendrix. I know, that's a lot of acts!

The influx of attendees to the rural concert site in Bethel created a massive traffic jam. To add to the problems and difficulty in dealing with the large crowds, recent rains had caused muddy roads and fields. The facilities were not equipped to provide sanitation or first aid for the number of people attending; hundreds of thousands found themselves in a struggle against bad weather, food shortages, and poor sanitation.

The festival was remarkably peaceful given the number of people and the conditions involved, the audience, in tune with the idealistic hopes of the 1960s, Woodstock satisfied most attendees. There was a sense of social harmony, which, with the quality of music, and the overwhelming mass of people, many sporting Bohemian dress, behavior, and attitudes helped to make it one of the enduring events of the century.

It is widely regarded as one of the most pivotal moments in rock and roll's music history...I have often wondered what it would be like to have experienced this.



25 years later gave birth to a new generation to the those attended the first. Organizers had come with plans for a second Woodstock to commemorate the anniversary of the original. Of course by then, the times had changed and the music had evolved. Skepticism arose as plans unraveled. Would the memory of the original be tarnished?

Woodstock '94 was settled in a large field in Saugarties, NY, about ten miles away from the original site and it was originally proposed as the location for the 1969 concert for permission to use the property was not granted. Tickets were sold for $135 to try to limit attendance to 250,000 people. Kind of steep price, yet considering the Eagles were charging the same amount for their shows, to see 67 acts in three days seemed fair. An eight foot high fence was erected around the venue to thwart gate crashers.

Instead of driving cross country and paying the big bucks to see this historical event, it was decided that staying at home and spending $50 to watch it on pay per view was a better idea. After all, it was my Woodstock...and I got a free T-shirt out of the deal. So I took the liberty of video and audio taping the ENTIRE concert...

67 acts and a wide diverse amount music covering two stages was presented to the hordes of music fans that came in from all points of the globe. Some new acts as well as the older ones. Among them were Collective Soul, Blues Traveler, Blind Melon, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, Aerosmith, Allman Brothers Band, Green Day, Bob Dylan, Traffic, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Peter Gabriel. Returning from 1969 were Santana, Joe Cocker, Country Joe, CSN and the Band. There was no way I could miss this...

As I was watching this spectacle, I couldn't help to notice how surreal and crazy it was. It was a combination of generations-young and old-in the crowds and in the mosh pits. Body surfing, beach balls and naked people. An experience that felt a reminiscent to the original Woodstock with a modern twist. Rains came down during Saturday afternoon turning the place into "Mudstock". Out came the "Mudpeople" turning hills into mudslides-all caked with mud. By the time Aerosmith hit the stage late Saturday night with a mind blowing show, the crowd had swelled to an approximate 450,000 people. The gates had been taken down, lest people getting injured breaking in. At that point it became a free concert....

By the time I shut down my VCR and stereo, moments after the Sunday night Peter Gabriel finished his set, I was exhausted. Yet I smiled when I went to bed knowing a peaceful show worthy of the Woodstock name would bring up memories of a lifetime for me....




Five years later, as promoters wanted, came another Woodstock. Given the circumstances of the previous peaceful Woodstocks back in '69 and '94, it didn't seem to be a bad idea at first. A Woodstock every five years? The first one was a sacrilege while the second one was a peaceful commemorative, the third one was overkill.

Organizers picked the abandoned Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, NY, which was about 200 miles away from the original site, to solve the problems dealing with the mud that plagued the previous shows. Tickets were sold for $150 a piece, which were considered expensive that time period standards. Prior to the concert, the promoters of the event were determined to avoid the gate-crashing that had occurred at previous festivals, and had characterized the site as "defensible", describing the 12-foot plywood and steel fence intended to keep out those without tickets. About 500 New York State Troopers were hired for security. Woodstock 99 was conceived and executed as a commercial venture with dozens of corporate sponsors, and included the presence of vendor "malls" and modern acoutrements such as ATM's and e-mail stations.

Over 100 acts came to this event! Among them were Insane Clown Pose, Buckcherry, Korn, Bush, Kid Rock, Counting Crows, Dave Matthews Band, Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine, Muse, Godsmack, Jewel, Willie Nelson, Creed and Megadeth, Returning from '94 were Collective Soul, Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. No one from the '69 show made an appearance...

Sounds if the promoters finally got it all together....WRONG! Very wrong...

But what went wrong? Crass commercialism for starters. Participants who had not brought sufficient food or water to the show had to either buy from onsite vendors, whose merchandise was expensive: a single-serving pizza sold for $12, bottles of water and soda went for five bucks a pop. The oppressive heat —which reached above 100 F-baking concert goers on the asphalt certainly didn't help matters. One by one, the testosterone driven metal bands pushed the crowds into a frenzy. Some crowd violence and looting was reported during the Saturday night performance by Limp Bizkit, including a rendition of the song "Break Stuff". Violence escalated the next night during the final hours of the concert as the Red Hot Chili Peppers performed. During the band's set, the crowd began to light candles, some also using them to start bonfires. The hundreds of empty plastic water bottles that littered the lawn/dance area were used as fuel for the fire. Many large bonfires were burning high before the band left the stage for the last time. Participants danced in circles around the fires. Looking for more fuel, some tore off panels of plywood from the supposedly inviolable security perimeter fence. ATMs were tipped over and broken into, trailers full of merchandise and equipment were forced open and burglarized, and abandoned vendor booths were turned over, and set afire.

Police investigated four alleged instances of rape that occurred during the concert. Eyewitnesses reported a body-surfing woman being pulled down into the crowd and gang-raped in the moshpit during Limp Bizkit's set. Seven arrests were made on the final night of the concert and, afterward, police reviewed video footage, hoping to identify and hold accountable rapists and looters who, amid the chaos, had not been arrested. Approximately 12 trailers, a small bus and a number of booths and portable toilets were burned in the fray. Six people were injured.

I was so glad that I turned down the $50 per per view for this show. The only acts that I was even interested in at the time were Metallica, Collective Soul, Counting Crows and Dave Matthews Band. It deeply saddened me, to know that the great sacrilege of Woodstock was tarnished by a bunch of assholes....

Saturday Night Videos

Experimentation is a part of rock and roll. The need to experiment, to create and the stretch the boundaries is essential. The overgrowing technology has certainly helped to the cause, without it rock and roll wouldn't be the same as it is today....

Inspired by the Beatles' 1965 release, Rubber Soul, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys wanted to create the "greatest record ever". The result was Pet Sounds (1966), where Wilson's growing mastery of studio recording and his increasingly sophisticated songs and complex arrangements would reach a creative peak. Influenced by psychedelic drugs, Brian Wilson turned his attention inward and probe his deep-seated self-doubts and emotional longings. The album's meticulously layered harmonies and inventive instrumentation set a new standard for pop and rock music. Wilson was a pioneer of the 'studio as instrument' concept, exploiting novel combinations of sounds that sprang from the use of multiple electric instruments and voices in an ensemble and combining them with echo and reverberation. He often doubled bass, guitar and keyboard parts, blending them with reverberation and adding other unusual instruments. It remains one of the most evocative releases of the decade.



Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the most important rock and roll album ever made, an unsurpassed adventure in concept, sound, songwriting, cover art and studio technology by the one of greatest rock & roll groups of all time. This album is also rock's ultimate declaration of change. For the Beatles, it was a decisive goodbye to matching suits, world tours and assembly-line record-making. Producer George Martin's innovative and lavish production included the orchestra usage and hired musicians ordered by the band. Genres such as music hall, jazz, rock and roll, western classical, and traditional Indian music are covered. Several then-new production effects feature extensively on the recordings. The use of multi-tracking , a new idea back then, is prevalent throughout the album...



Beginning with the sound of a heartbeat, Pink Floyd "Breathes" air into their 1973 release of the legendary The Dark Side of the Moon. Recorded in the famous Abbey Roads Studios between May 1972 and January 1973, the band were assigned staff engineer Alan Parsons (you know who he is) to oversee the recording of the Dark Side of the Moon. The recording sessions made use of some of the most advanced studio techniques of the time; the studio was capable of 16 track mixes, which offered a greater degree of flexibility than the eight- or four-track mixes they had previously used, although the band often used so many tracks that to make more space available second-generation copies were made. The sound effects on "Money" were created by splicing together Waters' recordings of clinking coins, tearing paper, a ringing cash register, and a clicking adding machine, which were used to create a 7-beats effects loop. And that's the tip of the iceberg...

Saturday Night Videos

Until recently, I never really was a big fan of AC/DC. Quite seemingly, in the last couple of years I've finally accepted AC/DC's classic rock status and even embraced them a little bit. Since then, I've picked up a couple of CD's from them in hopes to compile a best of collection from them. One of them, their third release High Voltage, offers up a plate of primal sleaze. The opening track "It's a Long Way to the Top (if You Wanna Rock n Roll)", really got me rockin'! I remembered hearing it for the first time in the Jack Black's movie School of Rock and became intrigued. Even more intriguing was the bagpipe solo on the tune. That's something you don't hear in rock and roll too often...



As I was digging through my collection looking for some lost classics that I haven't heard in awhile, I stumbled across Judas Priest's forth album, Stained Class. Released in 1978, before the days of the headbanging leather, Stained Class offers up streamlined, melodic metal reaching often new heights of power, speed, musicality, and malevolence. Never in your face like their more famous later day hits, Stained Class is focused with knife like precision. The songs pack an enormous visceral impact, jacked up to punk-level speed-leaving listeners with an all-out adrenaline rush.



Then there is the David Bowie led Tin Machine, a forgotten band from the '80's. Though Bowie is the lead singer, Tin Machine is a band with a band attitude. Their music is hard-edged guitar rock with an intelligence missing from much of the work of that genre at the time. Stunt guitarist Reeves Gabrels provides much in the way of ambient guitar solos. The album is a nice piece of artistry...

Sunday Afternoon Videos

I've been around....traveled... Over the years of my life, I've seen the majestic snow capped mountains of Colorado reflecting a mirror image on a crystal clear lake. Seen the vast waters and felt the sea breeze of the Pacific Ocean as I waded in the waves off the coast of Oregon. Gazed in wonder along the lines of palm trees at the golden sandy hills of Southern California. Yet, to this Midwestern native from Wisconsin, there is no place like home...


Home, that someone would describe as "flat as a pancake". Yeah. From what I see in this land of rolling hills of corn, the ample barns and silos and desolate towns and villages is the integrity of the people who live here. The integrity of who we are... Farmers and industrial workers. The blue collar of America's Heartland and taking pride in who we are....

Yet, some amazing music has come from America's heartland... First we have John Cougar Mellencamp. Born and raised in Indiana, Mellencamp often sang about teen rebellion, the plight of the farmers and life of the heartland of America.... He often gets political, but we're not going to into to it are we? Here's one of my favorites, "Small Town", from the Scarecrow album.



Next is Kansas, a progressive rock band from where else? Kansas, of course. This six piece band rose to fame in the '70's with their heart warming lyrics of spiritual uplifting, Native Americans and other things that will ponder the mind. Their music is a mix of American-style boogie-rock and complex, symphonic arrangements with changing time signatures. Here is a cool video of one of their lesser known songs, "Cheyenne Anthem" off of their best album, Leftoverture.



The recent passing of Clarence Clemons, of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band had affected me deeply. Few musicians can match the "Big Man" in the terms of the sax.His sax solo on "Jungleland" is one of the most impressive I've ever heard. I've never seen Bruce Springsteen in concert, but I've heard it's an experience itself. An experience I'd always wanted to try. "The Boss", lyrically has the most visionary approach to the America's Heartland that I've ever known. His blue collar feel singing away about the misfortunes of America, yet embracing to the heart. Springsteen is the true defender of the faith in the heart of America.

Satuday Night Videos

As summer is getting closer to the mark, I've been finding myself hitting rummage sales and thrift shops, anywhere I could buy music for real cheap. One of these stops, was at at a blogging friend RWWackoStu's rummage sale in Sturtevant. There I picked up Oranges and Lemons from XTC. Those who don't know XTC, it is a band that is best described as New Wave meets the psychedelia pop of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds with a twist of REM. Sounds different don't it? It is. Oranges and Lemons is a record exploding with details, while sonically rich and filled with immaculately crafted songs.



This afternoon, my girlfriend and I stopped at the library to check out the book sale that they were having there. Not only we picked up some books and video cassettes for dirt cheap, I picked up a dozen albums for a buck. Two of these were for the Southern prog rock band, the Dixie Dregs. I've heard of these guys before and I was familiar with the guitarist Steve Morse who played for Kansas and Deep Purple. The Dixie Dregs is a complicated band. Mostly instrumental, the Dregs employ a wide variety of sounds to the listener. It's Southern rock with a violin player and a keyboardist. Kinda like an instrumental version of Lynyrd Skynyrd meeting with Kansas, Yes and bluegrass. Hard to explain, yet I like it. To make our day, we ran into OrbsCorbs on the way out.



The band I've been digging SOOO much lately is Badfinger. Although my Badfinger tapes have been silent for the past few years, much of the resurgence was due of interest in john's Rock Roots blog. As I pulled my tapes to listen to, I remembered what I was forgetting-a Beatleque like band with strong catchy hooks and crafty lyrics. Anyone can sing along to their songs! Anyways, Badfinger suffered dearly due mismanagement of the band. Once recording under the Beatles' Apple Records label, the band fell under hard times when Apple Records went under. Unable to secure a new label, the band went under. Because of the financial issues, guitarist/vocalist Peter Ham committed suicide by hanging, followed by the baas player Tom Evans years later. A damn shame, These are f#*king good! If you love the Beatles, you'll like these guys!

Saturday Night Videos

As I was on my way off to to attended my girlfriend's youngest daughter's graduation party in Elkhorn, I found myself listening to Back Door Slam's first album, Roll Away. As I was explaining my girlfriend about what a phenomenal guitar player Davy Knowles was, I finding myself molding into that blues/jam band frame of mind. Yet, I wanted to do Davy Knowles justice with his live music. Now, I don't have any Back Door Slam live materiel in my collection, just recollection of seeing him in concert back in the summer of '09 at Summerfest.

After I returned home, I dug through YouTube on a search for some excellent live Knowles. Guess what I found? The very show I saw at Summerfest almost two years ago! Reeling back memories and getting stoked here, I was totally amazed to even FIND a show that I've been to. As I was watching the video, I noticed whomever was recording this show was sitting behind me and off to the right. (We were in the first row on the left) So, I didn't myself nor my companion in the vid, yet I did some familiar faces.

We DID get to meet Davy Knowles and his manager after show, thanks to our friend, Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru. Davy Knowles seems like a very humble young kid, unaffected by his recent fame. Really pleasant to hang with. My companion and I were thinking of staying to see Buddy Guy, who playing after wards, but we had to leave early to catch an early flight to California.



On the way home, I was in the mood for some Rolling Stones. This time, something off their mysterious classic Exile on Main Street. The Stone's most druggist and creative effort ever! Recorded in a dirty basement in France and smacked up on heroin, the Stones pulled off an album that was considered among the best in rock and roll per say.



As I was sifting through videos, I came across a local band I used to get into back in the '90's-Zoot Suit Boogie. Their guitarist Robert Allen Jr, held me captivate with his impressive hollowed bodied Eliphone guitar flowing through a tiny Fender amp playing the blues....

Saturday Night Videos

I tend to stay up late on Saturday nights, chilling out after a long weeks of work with a couple of beers and listen to some great music. Nothing is more soothing to the soul than some great music. Here's where I can kick up my feet and relax. Anyways, this sharing my thoughts and introducing the music that I listen to could become a regular thing....

My first pick of the night is "The End" by the Doors from their debut album released in 1967. Jim Morrison's amazing poetry and baritone vocals always have given me the chills. His lyrics can become deep and meaningless, yet the provoke the mind. The tune starts off slow then it cascades to an apocalyptic Oedipal ending with shocking lyrics. I was stunned the first time I heard this tune...



If that didn't shock you. the next tune will..

Some of you maybe ready to break out your lava lamps and black velvet posters. The Rolling Stones went through their psychedelic/golden years in the late '60's and early '70's with albums like Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street. There wasn't much that could be wasted here, even the deep cuts were something to behold... "Jigsaw Puzzle" off of their Beggars Banquet album (released in 1968) set a tone further beyond the Beatles' bad boy imagine-with a huge amount of talent! No disrespect towards the Beatles-I love 'em! The Stones pushed the envelope of censorship, shocking people with their creativity... Yes, "Sympathy for the Devil" is on the same album.



I've been working on my DrewTube blog lately. It's a documentation of my album collection. Just started a couple of months ago. It's project in the works and will take years to finish...So far, I've gotten to Allmam Brothers Band. Yep, I've got that many albums and bootlegs. Here is the latest entry....Live from Austin City Limits...Unfortunately, I can't embedded from that show, but I'll leave you with "Ramblin' Man" from the House of Blues in 1995.



ENJOY!