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WOODSTOCK

August 15, 16 and 17 1969

Three Days of Peace and Music!

It was hard to believe that the likes of Arlo Guthrie, Bert Sommer, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, Canned Heat, Creedence Clearwater, Country Joe and the Fish, Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young), Grateful Dead, Tim Hardin, Keef Hartley, Richie Havens, Incredible String Band, Iron Butterfly, Janis Joplin, Jeff Beck Group, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, Joe Cocker, Johnny Winter, Mountain, Quill, Ravi Shankar, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, Sweetwater, Ten Years After, The Band and The Who would get together and play at what was to be the Worlds Largest Rock Concert.

It seemed as though if it were really going to happen their would have been more publicity. That was the reason I did not trek all the way across the U.S to what I felt was most likely a hoax. Instead I made plans to spend my 19th birthday, August 20th in the San Francisco Bay Area where I lived. My birthday celebrations back then always started two or three days before the 20th and sometimes a day or two after!

Around July 20, 1969 the promoters announced that the concert would not be held at the original site, the 300-acre Industrial Park in the town of Wallkill, New York. The new site for this now controversial Rock Concert would be a dairy farm (Max Yasgur's) in the small town of Bethel, New York. It has been said it was that very move that created the publicity to cause some 450,000 so called Hippie's to hit the road to the now infamous Max's Hippie Music Festival (WOODSTOCK). I'm sure that over half of them had no idea what to expect on those three days in mid August. How about temperatures in the mid-eighties and the humidity around 90%. It had been raining on and off the two weeks prior, which might be part of the reason things like the stage and the sound systems were not ready on opening morning, they were haphazardly thrown together at the last minute, other reasons could of been the utter chaos and some of the best LSD known to mankind!

Illegal drugs, namely marijuana and LSD were prevalent throughout the festivities. The police looked the other way for the most part, afraid that simple possession arrests would piss off almost half a million people. Although I'm sure that a few people sold small amounts of drugs at the concert, it was the exception and not the rule(THE RULE TURNED OUT TO BE FREE MUSIC, FREE LOVE, FREE DRUGS, FREEDOM!)

Hippie Rider

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