Great post about an iconic moment in not just rock music, but popular music history. Agree with you wholeheartedly on your 1 - 5 list of revelations. What comes close nowadays to this kind of community spirit do you think?
Tough question. What makes Woodstock so remarkable is its organic assemblage. Today the world is saturated by marketing that creates digital silos that separates communities into commodities. It's harder to sell to the masses. It's easier to divide and target. We enjoyed a panorama of music just on the radio. This gave us a broader perspective and exposure. Our spirit was more collective rather than exclusive. Nowadays, influencers, media and politics gain followers based on differences. The breaking points are surfacing as the world fissures into two groups: the haves and the have-nots. Something organic will arise out of the muck, but it seems headed towards conflict over togetherness. Sorry, my reality bias took over.
True all that. I guess the recent Ticketmaster kerfuffle with Taylor Swift confirms and sheds a hard light on the corporate ownership of music, as opposed to the community ownership that we had when we used to listen to our AM radio stations waiting for 'that' song, then we had something in common with the cooler kids at school. As an Australian musician, I quickly became aware that it was the non-musician 'suits' who made the big bucks in the industry when I moved up into a level of 'coalface' gigging in the 90s. So glad I'm not trying to clamber up that slippery pole anymore.
Great post about an iconic moment in not just rock music, but popular music history. Agree with you wholeheartedly on your 1 - 5 list of revelations. What comes close nowadays to this kind of community spirit do you think?
Tough question. What makes Woodstock so remarkable is its organic assemblage. Today the world is saturated by marketing that creates digital silos that separates communities into commodities. It's harder to sell to the masses. It's easier to divide and target. We enjoyed a panorama of music just on the radio. This gave us a broader perspective and exposure. Our spirit was more collective rather than exclusive. Nowadays, influencers, media and politics gain followers based on differences. The breaking points are surfacing as the world fissures into two groups: the haves and the have-nots. Something organic will arise out of the muck, but it seems headed towards conflict over togetherness. Sorry, my reality bias took over.
True all that. I guess the recent Ticketmaster kerfuffle with Taylor Swift confirms and sheds a hard light on the corporate ownership of music, as opposed to the community ownership that we had when we used to listen to our AM radio stations waiting for 'that' song, then we had something in common with the cooler kids at school. As an Australian musician, I quickly became aware that it was the non-musician 'suits' who made the big bucks in the industry when I moved up into a level of 'coalface' gigging in the 90s. So glad I'm not trying to clamber up that slippery pole anymore.