1.) Ward, Ed. "Britannica Online Encyclopedia." The Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 08 Nov. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/>.
2.) “The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was the most successful and famous music festival of the counterculture movement. Woodstock was held on a dairy farm owned by Max Yasgur in Bethel, New York from August 15-18, 1969. The festival featured the who’s-who of late 1960s folk music, including acts like Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, and Creedence Clearwater Revival.”
3.) This entry on Woodstock is a somewhat comprehensive summarization of the events that occurred surrounding Woodstock. The article provides much background, but other than reinforcing some of the most commonly-known bits of information about Woodstock, it offers little else.
4.) This source was penned by an author employed by Encyclopedia who doubt has written countless articles with the same bland detachment and basic knowledge seen in this source. The author did not attend Woodstock or even align himself with hippie groups, so his point of view can be seen as objective. This is a bonus; most of my other sources come from witnesses who considered themselves part of the hippie movement or those who were eyewitnesses to the event. Though the author of this article, Ed Ward, is surely and probably susceptible to bias, he does not seem to be affected by the bias that might affected other authors, for example John Dominis of LIFE/Time whose account I annotated earlier.
5.) This source is applicable as a collection of the basic facts and numbers of the Woodstock Music Festival. It reinforces the points made by other sources, which proves the credibility of this source and the credibility of those sources whose credibility it reinforces. It can serve as a reference point for some of the more commonly asked questions about Woodstock.
1.) Roberts, John, Joel Rosenman, and Michael Lang. "Woodstock 1969." Woodstock. Woodstock Ventures, n.d. Web. 08 Nov. 2012. <http://woodstock.com/>.
2.) Joni Mitchell said, "Woodstock was a spark of beauty" where half-a-million kids "saw that they were part of a greater organism." According to Michael Lang, one of four young men who formed Woodstock Ventures to produce the festival, "That's what means the most to me – the connection to one another felt by all of us who worked on the festival, all those who came to it, and the millions who couldn't be there but were touched by it."
3.) Woodstock Ventures was the company founded by four men. Those men eventually went on to create the festival of Woodstock itself. Now, in the internet age, those men and their families created this website, Woodstock.com, in order to educate people about the events that occurred at Woodstock and in the hopes that the spirit of Woodstock would still live on today. The quote above is taken from the About Us section of the webpage, in which the authors of the site explain a little bit about the history of Woodstock and the reasons why it was so special and influential.
4.) This passage, though complete with ornate language about the importance and influence of Woodstock, might be considered the most biased source of all. Penned by the descendants of the creators of Woodstock, and the creators themselves, the authors would want the greater online community—most of whom cannot put the events of Woodstock into context without outside resource or influence—to believe the Woodstock was the epitome of success, that it went down without a hitch, and that it accomplished all of the goals it sought to achieve. However, this bias is not necessarily a bad thing. The optimism and triumph conveyed in the About Us paragraph can be taken as a reflection of the attitudes possessed by the hippies of the Woodstock generation.
5.) This source is applicable as a great source for pro-Woodstock quotes and statistics. While it reinforces those facts about Woodstock seen in nearly every source, it also provides a bit more of an inside perspective, not to mention including a comprehensive set list of the acts that performed at Woodstock.
BOOK
1.) Perone, James E. "The Legacy of Woodstock." Woodstock: An Encyclopedia of the Music and Arts Fair. London: Greenwood, 2005. 61. Print
2.) “The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia has been quoted as saying ‘The thing about Woodstock was that you could feel the presence of time travelers from the future who had come back to see it. You could sense the significance of the event as it was happening. There was a kind of swollen historicity—a truly pregnant moment. You definitely knew that it was a milestone; it was in the air.”
3.) Woodstock, written by James E. Perone, is just that—a veritable encyclopedia containing minute details and forays into the lives, contexts, and events that Woodstock was all about. The author includes details that had not occurred to me as being important. He opens the book with a detailed description of the music festivals that occurred in the same time frame as Woodstock, and then opens the centerpiece of his book—the festival itself—with brief biographies of each of the men who were important to the conception of Woodstock. Details on the preparation for the festival go on for several pages, and then the author provides description of each of the sets played at the concert. Other subtopics within the main chapter include “Drugs at Woodstock” and “The Legacy of Woodstock”.
4.) This book is the most valuable source I have come across while researching Woodstock. The details and statistics it provides are of the utmost credibility, and I have found the writing style to be very helpful. I think it is really important that I understand the context of the Counterculture movement and how that period of time shaped Woodstock. This book helped me because it provides specific information about music festivals of the late 1960’s, instead of just information about the Counterculture revolution itself, which is easily found on the internet but not quite as useful to me.
5.) This book is applicable in many ways—I could use it to verify statistics on the demographics of the people in attendance, I could use it to set a standard of context for the earlier music festivals, etc.
1.) “Woodstock." Apush-xl.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Nov. 2012. <http://apush-xl.com/>.
2.) “During his [John Sebastian’s] impromptu performance, he was allegedly so high on LSD that he forgot the words to his own song and asked the audience for help.”
3.) This article from the website Historicity provides a very detailed report of some of the most notable acts at Woodstock. It includes notes on the status and fame of each performer at the time that they performed at Woodstock, any notable problems that occurred during the set, and occasionally a few examples of the songs they performed.
4.) This source is helpful in describing the acts at Woodstock, but it is full of holes. Not all of the acts that performed are included, including such notable ones as Jimi Hendrix. It seems fair to question the credibility of the source as it doesn’t include the most famous performance of the festival.
5.) This source can be used to draw patterns and similarities between the performing acts of Woodstock, and the anecdotes about the performers can give a better idea of the vibe and atmosphere at Woodstock. One can use the reports of performances to try to draw a timeline of the event; in which order the musicians performed and the moods the audience were in during various stages of the weekend.
PRIMARY SOURCE
1.) Cocker, Joe. Live At Woodstock. Joe Cocker. Rec. 17 Aug. 1969. A&M Records, 2009. MP3.
2.) “I get by with a little help from my friends/Yes I get high with a little help from my friends.”
3.) This album is a live recording of the set that Joe Cocker played with his band, The Grease Band, at Woodstock. Joe Cocker played one of the best (musically) sets at Woodstock, earning a general positive reaction from the crowd. Just after he performed, however, rainstorms prevented another musician from going on for a while. The album itself is interesting to listen to. On many tracks, you can hear response and applause from the audience, and on others you can hear Joe Cocker mumbling to himself/his band/the crowd. As with most live recordings, tracks go on for a great deal longer than they would on a regular recording. Joe Cocker and The Grease Band make sure to take time to jam, to the delight of the audience.
4.) This album was a great source! Listening to it, I felt connected to the audience members and Joe Cocker himself, as I could hear the subtleties of a great concert recording like the audiences’ applause and the words of response Cocker offered himself. This source is the only source I have found that truly conveys the atmosphere and nostalgia of the concert. The sound quality is surprisingly good for a set performed on a roughly constructed stage in the middle of a rainstorm on a farm in front of a rowdy crowd.
5.) This album shows reinforces the ambient, hazy atmosphere present on the Sunday show at Woodstock. For all of the research collected about the facts and figures of building the festival from a historian/researcher’s point of view, it is entirely different to literally hear the sounds of Woodstock from the audiences’ perspective, which is surely just as valuable as the perspective of the objective historian.
PRIMARY SOURCE
1.) Hendrix, Jimi. Live At Woodstock. Jimi Hendrix. Rec. 18 Aug. 1969. Sony, 2009. MP3.
2.) “Purple haze all in my brain/Lately things just don’t seem the same/Actin’ funny, but I don’t know why/’Scuse me while I kiss the sky/Purple haze all around/Don’t know if I’m comin’ up or down/Am I happy or in misery?/Whatever it is, that girl put a spell on me.”
3.) This two-disc album includes the 16tracks that Jimi Hendrix performed at Woodstock, including his controversial version of “The Star Spangled Banner” and other classics like “Purple Haze” and “Voodoo Child.” Almost every track on the album is laden with Hendrix’s signature intense ornamentation. For example, in “The Star Spangled Banner,” sections of “Taps” are sampled in addition to minute-long sessions of guitar solos hat seem entirely improved. The sound quality is not as good as the quality of Joe Cocker’s Live At Woodstock album, but live-recording charms, like hearing the euphoric screams of the audience, are still there.
4.) This album is a really important and interesting source for this project. Listening to the music that was the central focus of the festival is really important in determining the mood of the festival, but I think the importance of listening to a Jimi Hendrix album goes further than that. Hendrix’s controversial and dramatic set is without a doubt the most remembered performance of Woodstock, so to understand those very songs is to understand the festival itself.
5.) Hendrix’s music provides a stark contrast to the sounds produced by Joe Cocker or John Sebastian. While other artists performed in the groove of ambivalence, relaxation, and peace, as was the trend in 1969, Hendrix’s music reflects the anger and frustration of a generation who was able to see the pointlessness and waste in such pursuits as the Vietnam War and the War on Drugs. This source is the first source I’ve come across that can accurately convey that anger which motivated the hippies to do all that they did.
PRIMARY SOURCE/SCHOLARLY JOURNAL
1.) Gorman, John. "The Counterculture In Crisis." JSTOR. JSTOR, Winter 1972. Web. 29 Nov. 2012.
2.) “The counter culture has also discovered the political significance of marijuana. As early as the mid-Sixties, pioneers like Timmy Leary had already made clear the role played by various drugs as manifestations of the political and social content of different cultures. The device of the Cannabis plant appears on the flag of the Youth International Party as well as the insignia of the Rainbow People’s Party. Decals and stickers of every sort show the marijuana plant or ‘joint’ coupled with anti-Establishment slogans or pictures. Newscasters or politicos who have been particularly bitter in their attacks on the counter culture are often deluged with anonymously sent “joints” arriving in the morning mail.”
3.) This article from JSTOR provides a detailed summary of the major events of the counterculture movement seen from the perspective of an author in the 1970s. It includes notes on drug use, music, and attitudes of participants of the counterculture revolution as a whole.
4.) The perspective is an interesting and as yet unseen. The small gap between the occurrence of the counterculture movement and the publication of the article means that much of the article was written in the vernacular that the hippies themselves used, which makes the article more authentic and the time period more real in my mind.
5.) To a certain extent, this article can be used as a context clue for the counterculture movement and as a detailed yet far-reaching account of the revolution.
BOOK
1.) Miles, Barry. Hippie. New York: Sterling. Pages 315-318. 2004
2.) “Joni Mitchell wrote a song about it; Abbie Hoffman wrote a quick book, Woodstock Nation, Charles Schultz introduced a character called Woodstock in his “Peanuts” comic strip. Woodstock entered popular culture as shorthand for a period, an attitude, a generation. Just as the survivors of May 1968 in Paris are known as the soixanthuitie heads, so American youth of the later 60s are the Woodstock Generation. “
3.) Hippie is written by Barry Miles, who came of age during the height of American counterculture. The book tackles the prime of the hippie period in years, beginning with 1965 and ending in 1971. In each chapter, the most important things to happen within the year are discussed, and pictures, depictions of artifacts, and quotations from musicians and revolutionaries are included.
4.) This book was written by a man who engaged in the hippie culture at a young age, which adds an interesting perspective to the writing. The book was published in 2004, nearly 40 years after the kickoff of the counterculture movement. With all those years passed, Barry Miles is able to look at the events of his youth the way a parent would looking at the silly mistakes of their child: affectionately, but still able to see the silliness and pretention behind it. I have no reason to believe that the book is illegitimate in any way; it verifies its truthiness with the inclusion of major hippie icons and depictions of album art and psychedelic posters.
5.) This segment provides the readers with details about the Woodstock experience, including notes on the acts that performed and the relative response to those acts. A few other incidents of interest are included, and it gives the reader more specific details on the basic understanding of the event that they might already have had.
PRIMARY SOURCE
1.) Dominis, John. "Life At Woodstock, 1969." Life.time.com. LIFE/Time Magazine, n.d. Web. 08 Nov. 2012. <http://life.time.com/>.
2.) “For those who passed through it, Woodstock was less a music festival than a total experience, a phenomenon, a happening, high adventure, a near disaster and, in s a small way, a struggle for survival. Casting an apprehensive eye over the huge throng on opening day, Friday afternoon, a festival official announced, ‘There are a hell of a lot of us here. If we are going to make it, you had better remember that the guy next to you is your brother.’ Everybody remembered. Woodstock made it.”
3.) In this article, the LIFE/Time photographer John Dominis is quoted. This article discusses his experience as a journalist at Woodstock, removed from the counterculture movement and the general attitude of the Woodstock participants.
4.) An interesting perspective comes into play here. John Dominis was neither a historian nor a hippie, which seem to be the two major groups that people who write about Woodstock fall into. John Dominis visited Woodstock as a middle-aged photojournalist who was decidedly NOT a hippie. He knew little about the counterculture or its ideals, or at least no more so than the average American. He reports on the attitude of those in attendance at Woodstock from a purely objective point of view, which speaks to the credibility of the article—as a person not involved in countercultural society, he doesn’t need to, or have anything to make up.
5.) This article makes it easier to understand the feeling or vibe running through the hordes of people at Woodstock. The more significant quotations of the article are ones that reflect the mood of peace and nonviolence that went hand in hand with hippie philosophy.
SCHOLARLY JOURNAL
1.) Burke, Patrick. "Tear Down The Walls: Jefferson Airplane, Race, and Revolutionary in 1960s Rock." JSTOR. JSTOR, Jan. 2010. Web. 29 Nov. 2012
2.) “Jefferson Airplane's references to black culture and politics were multifaceted and involved both condescending or naïve radical posturing and sincere respect for African American music.”
3.) This article describes the paradox of certain musicians in the counterculture revolution as people who had grown up in privileged white families who pretended to understand the difficulties of being black in the 1960s. It also examines the difficulty of those same artists to assert those same difficulties without racial posturing within the boundaries of what is respectful and appropriate.
4.) This article is interesting as it comes from the perspective of a black historian examining the widely white movement of counterculture. He points out the pretention of those hippies that thought themselves attuned to the struggle of minority groups across the country but actually remained ignorant.
5.) This will come in handy for my subtopics of Woodstock’s effect on politics.
PRIMARY SOURCE
1.) Joplin, Janis. "Summertime." Rec. 16 Aug. 1969. Janis Joplin: The Woodstock Experience. Janis Joplin. Sony, 2009. MP3.
2.) One of these mornings/You’re gonna rise, rise up singing/You’re gonna spread your wings/Child and take, take to the sky/Lord the sky.
3.) This song is Janis Joplin’s most popular song that she performed at Woodstock. It exemplifies her bastardization of classic Americana music into a more aggressive, raw punk sound.
4.) Janis Joplin was a troubled and sad songtress who was a heroin addict who died of an overdose at a far too young age. This song shows her troubled nature and how her sadness bled into the seemingly happy and carefree music she produced.
5.) Since this is a live recording, it can be used to understand the atmosphere of Woodstock.