Woodstock: Peace, Music, and Memories
In the summer of 1969, a music festival known as “Woodstock” took place for three straight days in Upstate, New York with thirty-two musical acts playing, and over 400,000 people from around the world coming to join this musical and peaceful movement. Woodstock started out being a small concert, created to promote peace in the world. Now, Woodstock is still being celebrated over 40 years later. This three day music festival represented the perfect concert for the “baby boomers” during a messy political time. Woodstock significantly impacted the counterculture era of the 1960’s in a number of ways; how it began, the ideas of the concert, the sense of union and love it represented and it …show more content…
Sunday's line-up included The Band, Joe Cocker, Crosby, Stills, & Nash, Ten Years After, Johnny Winter, and Iron Butterfly. Jimi Hendrix was the headliner (Littleproud 23). Although he did not play until 9 am, Monday morning, he delivered an outstanding performance, including the "Star-Spangled Banner", in honor of the War (“Hendrix at Woodstock” eLibrary). There were people everywhere. Tents were staked as far as the eye could see, the smell of marijuana was in the air. Rain started to fall at around midnight, and people were swimming everywhere they could (Littleproud 34). There was a tent dubbed the Freak-Out Tent (Szatmary eLibrary) which in reality was the nurses' station. A certain Nurse Sanderson presided over the tent, and her first patient kept screaming. She learned quickly that she had to deal with bad trips by physical stroking and soft words. She was getting paid only $50 a day, but she wanted to learn how to deal with new sicknesses associated with the drug culture (Littleproud 203). Continuous rain caused an abundant amount of mud at the festival. The spontaneity comes from the fact that the rain caused the site to be switched twice, which resulted in the loss of preparation time. On the opening day of Woodstock, the stage was not finished, the sound system had been dangerously thrown together, and last but not least, the rain and muddy ground had disintegrated the gates and fences.