RedGage

Forty years ago, hundreds of thousands of people descended on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in the rural town of Bethel, New York to enjoy “3 Days of Peace & Music.”

Over a period of three days, the Woodstock Music & Arts Festival tapped in to all the raw emotion, all the confusion, and all the struggles of the Sixties and gave young people a moment in history to show that they could come together in a time of war, inequality, and despair in a broken society.

I did not live through Woodstock, but part of me has always been drawn to and spellbound by the festival---its music, the people in attendance, the turmoil and historical events surrounding it.

Michael Lang, a man who is partly responsible for developing the concept of Woodstock, went ahead with plans after contemplating the state of his generation. He ultimately decided to celebrate the social movements of the Sixties by organizing a music & arts festival.

Lang intended to show that a generation could believe in one another. He wanted hundreds of thousands of people to come and just enjoy the music and participate in something that was about “ideas and music interwoven through their lives.” He wanted them to experience a festival that they could “hang [their] hope for change” on.

When I think of Lang's success, I’m stricken with jealousy and cynicism. Not just because my generation’s music is a lot of bullshit---auto tunes for the masses---but because as I imagine what it would be like if somebody in my generation organized a Woodstock I am disappointed.

I imagine what it would be like if today I had heard about a music & arts festival and was on the road to Woodstock and think that I would not come away with the sense of pride and rebellion that hundreds of thousands of people came away with after that event was over.

Nowadays, LiveNation and Ticketmaster would sell the tickets through their service. Woodstock tickets were $5 or $6 a day (and as more and more people arrived, it became free for tens of thousands of people). The Bonnaroo Music & Arts Camping Festival (which seems to be modeled after Woodstock) costs at least $200 to attend the festival.

Probably, members of the counterculture in my generation wouldn't pay that much. And iwouldn't pay that much either---$25/ticket or whatever the price would have to be to cover all the costs of logistics would be all I would be willing to pay and nothing more.

Inevitably, there would be problems with the location (whatever that location would be). The city it was held in and its zoning commission and politicians especially asswipe conservative Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats wouldn’t want it to happen fearing problems with security, water, sewage, traffic, etc. They would be afraid of hundreds of thousands of young people coming together.

This wouldn’t be unique to the time. Woodstock Ventures ran into this problem in Walkill,. A Concerned Citizens Committee (CCC) organized and gathered signatures on a petition to stop the festival arguing “citizens fear for the health, welfare, and moral well-being of the community and festival visitors as well.”

What would be different is that now all the fears and paranoia would bounce around in a vacuum on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC and the blogosphere (like health care rumors are bouncing around). Stories would air comparing this festival to Woodstock and misinformation would definitely be spread.

Also, the anxiety that has been perpetuated by the idea that somehow Americans live in a post-9/11 world would infect the festival’s atmosphere. When the concert occurred, there would be security checkpoints, tight supervision by authorities (police and possibly even military), and lots of press who would be preying on the event searching for controversy.

My generation, Generation Y, is bought off by gizmos and gadgets. You would have tens of thousands of people with cell phones, text messaging and possibly Twittering. The iPhones would be out and people would be updating their Facebook status like crazy.

How many people do you think would be live blogging and letting everybody know what is happening instead of cutting loose and having a good time? I admit I would find it difficult to not write a blog post at the end of each day of the festival.

Would this event even be a counterculture event? Those attending Woodstock were making a political statement during clashes over civil rights, women’s rights, Vietnam and taking on issues of sex and drugs that were societal taboos. They were standing up to prejudices against their generation.

My generation---the YouTube generation, the Facebook generation, the Obama generation (however, you want to characterize it) ---isn’t struggling. We aren’t overwhelmingly up against a society and culture who refuses to accept us for who we are.

There are some exceptions. Gays and lesbians and those skeptical of the role of religion, patriotism, and politics plays in society could give some significance to the festival.

Unlike the Woodstock generation, with so many outlets of expression, with technology giving an entire generation a voice, and with the recent “campaign for change” that Obama embarked on and won with the help of young people, the overwhelming opinion among my generation is a belief that our generation can be accepted for who we are.

This means any festival with young people at the helm---even if organized by articulate, intelligent, artistic, culturally and politically savvy minds---would most likely find those in attendance just don’t quite get the point of having a cultural event devoid of politics which can give culture a chance to stand on its own and make a political statement just by simply being about the festival itself.

Lack of imagination would lead many in my generation to wonder what the point was and why it would matter.

Maybe the music would be enough to get hundreds of thousands from my generation excited. But what music would they travel to hear? Who would the musical acts be? What would the criteria for selection be?

Let’s say we apply the same criteria the Woodstock organizers had for Woodstock in 1969. Blues, classic rock and roll, acid rock, pop, and folk acts would be invited with the idea in mind that “kids of the counterculture” cannot be “pigeonholed in their musical tastes.”

Keeping in mind the fact that few of the acts that played Woodstock were experiencing huge success and keeping in mind the fact that we don’t want to invite anybody with so much stardom that they eclipse the importance of the festival itself (Woodstock organizers didn’t want to invite the Beatles or Stones for this reason), the bands and artists invited would have to be recently formed bands or bands with a good concert following.

Today, the festival would have to incorporate soul, rap, and hip-hop too. (Woodstock meets Wattstax?)

I would like to develop a bill that represents who I think should play music at the “next Woodstock." I’m thinking of Todd Snider, James McMurtry, Regina Spektor, White Denim, Mos Def, Blitzen Trapper, Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele, Angelique Kidjo, Raphael Saadiq, and other indie/folk/rap acts.

I would include a few acts that were as well known as Jimi Hendrix or The Who was in 1969, but I am not sure who those acts would be.

I could continue to pick apart the idiosyncrasies of Woodstock for another hour and figure out how to replicate it. But, see, isn’t that the problem? Isn’t that why Woodstock ’94 and ’99 may were maybe good for the music but lacked the cultural or political significance of the Woodstock ’69?

All this thinking about what a festival like Woodstock would be if done today just makes me think of how much my generation does not have culture. The “counterculture” ---those who reject the current music of the day --- choose to listen to the kind of music that was played at Woodstock.

We listen to the pioneers of rock music. We love Hendrix, the Dead, Led Zeppelin, the Doors, the Who, the Beatles, the Stones, and we support the commercialization of this culture by buying T-shirts and other merchandise with band pictures and logos and symbols of peace, love and rock n’ roll on them.

How disappointing is it that we lived under a criminal Bush Administration which had utter disregard for peace and love and nobody in Generation Y produced an anthem comparable to Country Joe’s “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die” or a rendition of America’s national anthem like Jimi Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner,” which plugged into all the emotional turmoil of the time to create something which rebuked war and inequity in society?

We also terribly misunderstand the role LSD and marijuana played in the creation of music & art during the Sixties. Our conception of drugs has been trivialized and ruined by films that turn drugs into a joke and by music lyrics that cheapen the use of drugs. We do not buy into the idea of using it to open our minds, enhance our spirit, and move from between our conscience and subconscience.

What defines my generation is largely antithetical to what defined the Woodstock generation. We are a generation of digital technology.

While some may find it acceptable to be a generation defined by technology, I do not and cannot. It’s not that I am terribly technophobic. I am just cynical about the way technology cheapens and deadens the human experience of life as we know it.

My generation desperately needs to give itself permission to find its soul, its purpose, and what it would like to live for.

We need to begin to author the culture of our times, and if another Woodstock is what it takes, I will be there to share the land, to send a message to love, to raise my hand, and to experience the other side of this life.