WOODSTOCK MUSIC & ART FAIR, 3 DAYS OF PEACE & MUSIC

The Grandma arrives to Woodstock Festival, 1969

First of all, The Grandma wants to apologize because she has had to repair her blog because some links were not correct. She has had a confusion between her last two readings and she has mixed some chapters. It has been a great mistake and The Grandma has said literally I'm sorry. I have been wrong. It will never happen again while she was drinking a long glass of bourbon.

After repairing this incident, The Grandma has remembered Woodstock, one of the greatest events of folk and rock music which celebrates its 50th anniversary today. She has got eternal memories about that concert. The 60's were a decade of radical cultural transformation and Woodstock is not only music, but a life-style, a manner of thinking and understanding society, a claim of peace, respect and anti-war message of a young American society tired of wars that claimed civil rights, multiculturalism and free love.

Before remembering Woodstock, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Ms. Excel course.

Chapter 12. Graphics (IV) (Spanish Version)

Woodstock was a music festival held August 15–18, 1969, which attracted an audience of more than 400,000. Billed as an Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music, it was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York, 70 km southwest of Woodstock.

It was alternatively referred to as the Bethel Rock Festival or the Aquarian Music Festival. Thirty-two acts performed outdoors despite sporadic rain. It has become widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history, as well as the definitive nexus for the larger counterculture generation.

More information: History 101

The event's significance was reinforced by a 1970 Academy Award–winning documentary film, an accompanying soundtrack album, and a Joni Mitchell–written song that became a major hit for both Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Matthews Southern Comfort.

Woodstock Festival, 1969

Starting in 1979, music events bearing the Woodstock name have been planned for major anniversaries including the tenth, twentieth, twenty-fifth, thirtieth, fortieth, and fiftieth.

In 2004, Rolling Stone listed it as number 19 of the 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll.

In 2017, the festival site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Woodstock was initiated through the efforts of Michael Lang, Artie Kornfeld, Joel Rosenman, and John P. Roberts. Roberts and Rosenman financed the project. Lang had some experience as a promoter, having co-organized the Miami Pop Festival on the East Coast the prior year, where an estimated 25,000 people attended the two-day event.

Early in 1969, Roberts and Rosenman were New York City entrepreneurs, in the process of building Media Sound, a large audio recording studio complex in Manhattan. Lang and Kornfeld's lawyer, Miles Lourie, who had done legal work on the Media Sound project, suggested that they contact Roberts and Rosenman about financing a similar, but much smaller, studio Kornfeld and Lang hoped to build in Woodstock, New York.

More information: Billboard

Unpersuaded by this Studio-in-the-Woods proposal, Roberts and Rosenman counter-proposed a concert featuring the kind of artists known to frequent the Woodstock area, such as Bob Dylan and The Band.

Kornfeld and Lang agreed to the new plan, and Woodstock Ventures was formed in January 1969. The company offices were located in an oddly decorated floor of 47 West 57th Street in Manhattan. Burt Cohen, and his design group, Curtain Call Productions, oversaw the psychedelic transformation of the office.

From the start, there were differences in approach among the four: Roberts was disciplined and knew what was needed for the venture to succeed, while the laid-back Lang saw Woodstock as a new, relaxed way of bringing entrepreneurs together.

More information: Salon

When Lang was unable to find a site for the concert, Roberts and Rosenman, growing increasingly concerned, took to the road and eventually came up with a venue. Similar differences about financial discipline made Roberts and Rosenman wonder whether to pull the plug or to continue pumping money into the project.

In April 1969, Creedence Clearwater Revival became the first act to sign a contract for the event. The original venue plan was for the festival to take place in Wallkill, New York, possibly near the proposed recording studio site owned by Alexander Tapooz.

Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Jimmiy Hendrix & Grace Slick

On the morning of Sunday, August 17, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller called festival organizer John Roberts and told him he was thinking of ordering 10,000 New York State National Guard troops to the festival. Roberts was successful in persuading Rockefeller not to do this. Sullivan County declared a state of emergency. During the festival, personnel from nearby Stewart Air Force Base assisted in helping to ensure order and airlifting performers in and out of the concert venue.

Jimi Hendrix was the last act to perform at the festival. Because of the rain delays that Sunday, when Hendrix finally took the stage it was 8:30 Monday morning. The audience, which had peaked at an estimated 400,000 during the festival, was now reduced to about 30,000 by that point; many of them merely waited to catch a glimpse of Hendrix before leaving during his performance.

More information: Teller Report

In 1984, a plaque was placed at the original site commemorating the festival. The field and the stage area remain preserved in their rural setting and the fields of the Yasgur farm are still visited by people of all generations.

In 1996, the site of the concert and 5.7 km2 surrounding was purchased by cable television pioneer Alan Gerry for the purpose of creating the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. The Center opened on July 1, 2006, with a performance by the New York Philharmonic. On August 13, 2006, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young performed before 16,000 fans at the new Center, 37 years after their historic performance at Woodstock.

The Museum at Bethel Woods opened on June 2, 2008. The Museum contains film and interactive displays, text panels, and artifacts that explore the unique experience of the Woodstock festival, its significance as the culminating event of a decade of radical cultural transformation, and the legacy of the Sixties and Woodstock today.

In late 2016 New York's State Historic Preservation Office applied to the National Park Service to have 2.4 km2 including the site of the festival and adjacent areas used for campgrounds, all of which still appear mostly as they did in 1969 as they were not redeveloped when Bethel Woods was built, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

More information: Bethel Woods Center for the Arts

 Woodstock was both a peaceful protest and a global celebration.

Richie Havens