Below you can see an original ad for the Woodstock Music & Art Festival from the August 1969 issue of Ramparts Magazine and it’s riddled with bad information including the very location of the festival itself right around a month before the whole thing was supposed to go down. Woodstock, of course, opened on August 15th of that year.
 

 
Along with the major problem of not being right about where concert goers were supposed to show up, there were also some pretty significant omissions in the ad, showing that the list of performers wasn’t quite locked down a month in advance either. Performers not listed in the ad that actually did play Woodstock include Melanie, Bert Sommer, Quill, John Sebastian, Sly and the Family Stone, Country Joe and the Fish, Ten Years After, Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Sha Na Na.

As is stated in the ad, the original location for the festival was to be in Wallkill, NY.  It was supposed to take place on the property of one Howard Mills who owned approximately 600 acres of land in the area that he eventually hoped to turn into an industrial complex. This according to the book Young Men with Unlimited Capital from 1974 written by Joel Rosenmen, John Roberts and Robert Pilpel, all planners, organizers and financiers for the event, not necessarily in that order. The book is an at times hilarious tome about the nail biting, often poorly thought-out process that led to the festival and the events on and after the legendary weekend. According to the book, Wallkill’s zoning board approved the festival on April 18th, 1969 but as the event grew nearer, the citizenry of Wallkill became increasingly concerned about the safety of their fair town if such an event were to take place. According to Young Men with Unlimited Capital, at the previously mentioned April zoning board meeting, Woodstock’s promoters were presented it as kind of an arts fair that would maybe draw forty or fifty thousand people if the event exceeded all attendance expectations. When asked what kind of music would be played, Joel Rosenmen supposedly responded with:

“I guess the best way to describe it would be, uh, folk. Basically folk. A little swing, too, maybe. A little jazz. You know.”

By July of 1969, however, some of the good people of Wallkill began to feel that they had essentially been duped, and, freaking out about the potential influx of drugs, the volume of the music, nudity and generally unsavory hippie behavior of all sorts, backed out on the deal.

Here’s a horizontal version of the above ad with the not-so-insignificant addition of Jimi Hendrix on the bill, but still listing the wrong location.
 

It’s amazing that the earlier ad didn’t even show that Hendrix was playing. Huge bonus if you already bought your eighteen-dollar weekend pass!
 
Musicians in both ads who didn’t end up playing include The Jeff Beck Group, Iron Butterfly and Moody Blues, so you were out of luck if you were planning on seeing any of those acts, I guess. The order of appearances in the ad is all out of whack as well, but the ad does state very clearly “All programs subject to change without notice.” 

A “progress report” from Young Men with Unlimited Capital shows that a month before Woodstock things were indeed far from being in ship shape:

Progress (?) Report: July 15

Land: None

Staff: Same as June, give or take twenty people. Fifty construction workers redundant

Ticket Receipts: $537,123

Talent Bookings: Shaky

Attorneys: One in New York City for Woodstock Ventures; one in New York City for film and record contracts; on in Wallkill for suing; one in New York City for political influence; one in Liberty, New York for land acquisition

Portable Toilets: Another additional 500 ordered, for a total of 2,000

Money Spent: $481,519

 

 
After losing the Wallkill site so close to go-time and suddenly facing the prospect of having to hand out $500,000 in refunds, the event organizers were understandably panicked. But, once word got out that the deal in Wallkill had fallen through and people got wind of the kind of money involved, calls started rolling in with offers of land. John Roberts says in Young Men with Unlimited Capital that Max Yasgur, owner of the farm where the Woodstock Festival actually took place offered up his land without first being approached and by July 16th, they basically had their solid location in place again. 

Not surprisingly, Joel Rosenman and John Roberts created a new ad once the final location was established and plastered it, according to Roberts, “for a week straight in every newspaper we could find.”  The new ad depicted the people of Wallkill as reactionary, armed hayseeds and promised a lawsuit at a later date in retaliation for the last-minute change of plans.
 

 

 
Most rock fans know which bands distinguished themselves at the Woodstock festival, properly styled the “Woodstock Music & Art Fair,” in August 1969—Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Joe Cocker, Janis Joplin, CSNY—but less well known are the various fees that producers John Roberts and Joel Rosenman paid to each individual artist. By that reckoning, Santana was a bargain and Blood, Sweat & Tears might have been just a touch overpaid, no offense to that fine combo.

UltimateGuitar.com found this great chart—it lists the fees for every act with the exception of Bert Sommer and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band:
 

 
Here’s the full chart, with 2015 equivalents listed in parenthses. For reference, $1 in 1969 is worth the same as $6.37 in 2015 dollars. The entire collection of talent cost $140,700 in 1969, which comes to $895,982.97 today. Whoever decided to fork over $1,375 to compensate Joe Cocker for his time made a very, very good decision.
 

1. Jimi Hendrix: $18,000 ($115,000)
2. Blood, Sweat and Tears: $15,000 ($95,000)
3T. Joan Baez: $10,000 ($63,000)
3T. Creedence Clearwater Revival: $10,000 ($63,000)
5T. The Band: $7,500 ($48,000)
5T. Janis Joplin: $7,500 ($48,000)
5T. Jefferson Airplane: $7,500 ($48,000)
8. Sly and the Family Stone: $7,000 ($45,000)
9. Canned Heat: $6,500 ($41,000)
10. The Who: $6,250 ($40,000)
11. Richie Havens: $6,000 ($38,000)
12T. Arlo Guthrie: $5,000 ($32,000)
12T. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: $5,000 ($32,000)
14. Ravi Shankar: $4,500 ($28,500)
15. Johnny Winter: $3,750 ($24,000)
16. Ten Years After: $3,250 ($20,000)
17T. Country Joe and the Fish: $2,500 ($16,000)
17T. The Grateful Dead: $2,500 ($16,000)
19. The Incredible String Band: $2,250 ($14,000)
20T. Mountain: $2,000 ($12,700)
20T. Tim Hardin: $2,000 ($12,700)
22. Joe Cocker: $1,375 ($9,000)
23. Sweetwater: $1,250 ($8,000)
24. John B. Sebastian: $1,000 ($6,300)
25T. Melanie: $750 ($5,000)
25T. Santana: $750 ($5,000)
27. Sha Na Na: $700 ($4,500)
28. Keef Hartley: $500 ($3,100)
29. Quill: $375 ($2,400)

 
The entire set from Jimi Hendrix after the jump…

 
I posted this show-stopper of a performance by folk singer Melanie (with The Edwin Hawkins Singers) doing her classic “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” a couple of years ago, but fuck it, it’s that good, so here it is again. When is the last time you saw a musical performance this good on television? Was it even in the past decade? Sadly, probably not.

These days we’ve got Katy Perry and Rhianna at the top of the hit parade. It’s not the same thing. This powerful performance was about really connecting emotionally with the audience, not strutting around and sexing it up with a bunch of buffed-out, well-oiled himbo dancers! [Well maybe not those Dutch people in the top clip!] In forty years, they’ll probably still be using Melanie’s song in TV ads and film and TV soundtracks, but frankly, I don’t expect the same will be true of Ke$ha or Nicki Minaj’s tunes (I could say the same thing about Robin Thicke and any number of male performers, too, of course).

The song’s powerful lyrics were inspired by events that took place at the “Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam” demonstration of November 1969 and by Melanie’s experience performing at Woodstock. She’s describing the feeling of generational hope and solidarity that came over her as she looked out over the vast audience who held up candles (or more likely Zippo lighters) in appreciation during her soggy set.

When David Bowie asked “Ain’t there one damn song that can make me break down and cry?” on Young Americans, frankly, I don’t thing he was anticipating the extreme vapidity of today’s artistically merit-less top 40 radio.

Listen to her voice! How many little white girls have lungs that could standout against the mighty pipes of The Edwin Hawkins Singers??? Positively sublime!
 

 
More incredible Melanie performances after the jump, including a little-known clip from Woodstock…

 
“Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” is a suite of four short songs written by Stephen Stills about his soon-to-be-former girlfriend, folk singer Judy Collins, known for her piercing blue eyes. The song was the first number that Crosby, Stills & Nash performed when they took the stage at Woodstock (Neil Young bailed on most of the acoustic numbers) and indeed it was only the second time they’d ever played together in public, as they nervously admitted to the vast Woodstock audience.

Stills had dated Collins for two years and was well aware that he was probably about to lose her to actor Stacy Keach. He wrote the song as a way of working through his sadness over their impending break-up.

Judy Collins (recently seen in a very controversial episode of Girls) told of her reaction to hearing the song for the first time:

“[Stephen] came to where I was singing one night on the West Coast and brought his guitar to the hotel and he sang me “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” the whole song. And of course it has lines in it that referred to my therapy. And so he wove that all together in this magnificent creation. So the legacy of our relationship is certainly in that song.”

It is a magnificent song, let there be no doubt, but you have to smile when considering the satisfaction that the dumped Stills must’ve known when “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” became a staple of FM radio play, literally for decades afterwards.

Judy Collins titled her 2011 autobiography, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes.
 

 
I’m going to let this TV commercial speak for itself.

The photo: Re-usable, eco-friendly, 100% organic tampon available from the Sacred Magick Shoppe.
 

 
Over on AV Club journalist Steven Hyden has come to the end of his ten part look-back over the alternative music of the 90s called Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation? Cataloging his musical obsessions year by year from 1990 to 1999, the series (named after the long-defunct MTV alt-rock show) is a great read, and ends on a spectacular low point for pop culture - Woodstock ‘99.

Remember Woodstock ‘99? The one where lots of people got beaten and raped? Just as we had almost completely erased it from the collective conscious, back come memories of Fred Douche shouting at a bunch of drunken jocks to “RAPE SOMETHING!!” in his squeaky, balls-not-dropped voice, while security throw their badges an the ground and dive into the mosh pit. OK, so he didn’t encourage rape (not that I’m aware of anyway), but the point is still the same. The ‘90s pretty much started with Kurt Cobain in a dress, and ended with Durst’s audience forcibly ripping dresses off harassed women. What a fitting end to the decade, this series, and the story of rock music itself over those years.

So here’s a clip of Limp Bizkit playing “Break Stuff” at the festival. Yes, sorry, it is more terrible music on DM this week, but whereas I can find genuinely interesting aspects of Gaga/AntwoordAndrew WK, I cannot for the life of me see a shred of redemption for anyone involved in this aside from car-crash attraction. Durst goads the crowd into breaking stuff, advice they take literally, and then bemoans their lack of attention for almost two minutes while asking “is this mic working?”. An audience member tells him it is - presumably the crowd are too busy rioting or trying to avoid danger to pay much attention to the band. The situation has the strange, menacing air of a child playing with grown-up forces they don’t truly understand. And that pre-pubescent, squawking, try-too-hard-yet-not-hard-enough MC style of his is in full effect between 2:40 and 2:50, delivering hilarious lines like “I pack a chain saw!”

Hey it’s ok, you don’t have to watch this if you really don’t want to:
 

 
OK enough of that crap, back to WHTAN? The current article “1999: By The Time We Got To Woodstock ‘99” contains some interesting and chilling details from Woodstock ‘99, including stories of women getting gang raped in mosh-pits or being forced to bare their breasts to large groups of drunk guys, and security being woefully under-staffed and themselves being refused drinking water from the festival organizers. It begs the question - how the fuck did this festival ever take place? Oh wait, it’s that old devil called greed again. Greed and the fact that the hippy ideal hadn’t cottoned on to the fact that by the end of last century it had been almost completely wiped out. But then how the hell did acts like Korn, Kid Rock and Metallica embody Woodstock’s ideals in the first place? Needless to say the organizers of Woodstock do not come off looking good in this article.

So, were the late Ninties a complete curtural waste ground? No. Of course not. If I have a complaint about WHTAN? it is that it’s too rockist. I left this comment which describes how I personally feel about the path of “alternative” music in the 1990s:

“Great series but it just underlines for me how spent a cultural force rock became over this period. The original sense of anarchy and rebellion that made rock so engaging was strip mined to nothing in the Nineties. The real story of the decade is how rock, or alternative, was superseded by other genres and how people who before would have dismissed those genres started to like them. A lot. It’s what happened to me.

I would like to see someone write about what was REALLY alternative and fresh in the Nineties. Hip-hop (THE genre that defines those times), house (the early-to-mid 90s was probably the most gay-friendly period the mainstream has ever been), electronica (producers like Aphex/Squarepusher pushed boundaries that rock bands are still catching up with), drum & Bass, rave, Daft Punk etc. Real progression / boundary breaking in 90s music was being done by kids with samplers, computers and machines, not by guys with guitars trying to fit into patterns established 30 years before. Not to mention that the drugs were better. I hope someone will write a series about music beyond rock in the 90s, because that is the real story waiting to be explored. “

This post was brought to you in association with Niallism.

 
“I’d lost my heart to a long-hair named Flowers.”

For more Woodstock heartbreak visit Golden Age Comic Book Stories here