On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we look at Woodstock. Not only was it the most important music festival ever, it set the tone and soundtrack of an entire generation. It helped the nation stop thinking of hippies in so bad a light, and it created the careers of several of the largest musical acts of the era. What started as a music festival that was supposed to make people a lot of money and attract upwards of 50,000 people, became a free hippie love fest of a half a million people that bankrupted the concert planners.

When four guys in the music industry decided to have a music festival in New York state, they named their new group after an area where musicians like Bob Dylan would play—an area known as Woodstock. They started looked for large areas of open land that could house their enormous dream, and they settled on Howard Mills Industrial Park in Wallkill, New York. The people of the town, however, voted against the dirty hippies and shut it down with only 6 weeks left to plan.

The guys instead found a 600 acre dairy farm owned by Max Yasgur. The crew scrambled to get things ready. They decided they either had time to build a stage and a lighting tower or build a fence and ticket counters. They decided on the stage, which was a good thing. Soon, before the festival even stared, 50,000 people stormed the gates, and made Woodstock a free festival.

Within days, a ten mile stretch of highway was filled with abandoned cars. The entire city nearby was shut down as half a million hippies flocked to the show. An estimated half a million more went the other way and headed back home when they encountered the traffic jam to beat all traffic jams.

The acts had to be flown in by the national guard. Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Santana, The Grateful Dead, Credence Clearwater Revival, Sly and the Family Stone, The Who, Jefferson Airplane,

Joe Cocker, and Jimi Hendrix just to name a few! But it wasn’t the dream concert some people make it out to be. Raw sewage merged with rain water and the floor around the stage was a dung filled mud pit. It took an hour to get to the bathroom. There was hardly any food because no regular food vender would work there, and two of the three original food stalls got burned to the ground in anger when they raised hot dog prices.

Security was mostly comprised of a guy named Wavy Gravy and his workers from a hog farm co-op. They enforced the law by throwing pies at people and hitting them squirts of seltzer water. Like you do. Everything was laced with drugs, and people were roofied left and right. There was dope, sex, acid, music, sex, skinny dipping, more dope, more sex, music, and mud and sex and music. If you want to get nostalgic for the 60s, turn on, tune in, drop out, listen, laugh, and learn.

 

Visit Our Sources:

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/08/woodstock-50-photos-1969/596107/

https://www.woodstock.com/

https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/woodstock

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock

https://www.aier.org/article/woodstock-occurred-in-the-middle-of-a-pandemic/

https://allthatsinteresting.com/woodstock-festival-1969

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAGVGNWQ2Hc