R.I.P. Marty Balin, January 30, 1942 – September 27, 2018

Paul Kantner and Marty Balin both gone now. I can't imagine how Grace Slick feels tonight.



I remember in Grace's autobiography that she wrote about sleeping with every member of the band except for Marty, but she made love to him every night on stage. That's so obvious in some of these duets. The Slick/Kantner mix has one kind of magic, but the Slick/Balin blend of voices was the early Airplane sound.

"Oh, bummer." -- Jerry Garcia, December 6, 1969

If the popular myth has the decade of "The Sixties" reaching its cultural apotheosis in August 1969 on the green East Coast at The Woodstock Music & Art Fair, then its obituary was written less than four months later on this date in '69 on the dusty West Coast at Altamont Speedway. With Santana, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, and The Grateful Dead on the bill of the Altamont Free Concert along with the Rolling Stones, the plan was to recreate heaven rather than hell, but the Dead never took the stage and Jerry Garcia summed up the day with two words:


In the eternal American argument between Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby about our ability to recreate the past, Nick won this round.

Happy 73rd to Joni Mitchell.

We all need a little bit of non-election news today, don't we?

Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it's the time of man
I don't know who I am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

"...morning maniac music..."

Happy 76th Birthday to Grace Slick!



I visited the Museum at Bethel Woods for the first time last summer and there was one thing that shocked me. In one of the Woodstock Festival displays, the Jefferson Airplane's early Sunday morning set was described with the word 'uninspired'; it almost (almost) ruined the whole Museum experience.

Happy Birthday Grace.

Joe Cocker, 20 May 1944 - 22 December 2014

This is one case where the Beatles' original version definitely came out second best:


This performance by Joe Cocker and the Grease Band is also one of the moments that will always define Woodstock. The YouTube version up above isn't the best, but if you have the DVD of the movie, watch this song with the subtitles on (if you don't have the DVD version of Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music, what's wrong with you?).

Rest in Peace Joe.

~~~~~~~~~
To lighten the mood, someone pointed me to this version with the misheard lyrics:

Network News Sums Up Woodstock for the Nation on August 18, 1969

Here's Walter Cronkite and the CBS News team. Be sure to watch the John Laurence commentary after the commercials for Carnation Slender and Friskies dog food:


Here's Frank Reynolds' ABC broadcast, in which Howard K. Smith's commentary sees Woodstock as a precursor of future overpopulation:


And here's a young Lem Tucker reporting from the scene for NBC:

It's too bad that there was no such thing as cable news in August 1969 so that Fox News could tell us how awful it really was.

45 years ago this afternoon, this happened...

... Richie Havens was the first performer to take the stage at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, and he set the mood and theme for the next three days of peace and music.
Try to forget this summer's bad news for at least the next four minutes and fifty-two seconds as you watch this video:

Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone.

Richie Havens, January 21, 1941 – April 22, 2013

You Might Be A Republican If ...

... you look at this photograph I took yesterday and say:

"That would be even more beautiful if there were some fracking rigs installed there!"

From the Zena Cornfield looking toward Overlook in Woodstock, NY.

Levon Helm

On levonhelm.com tonight, there's a message from his family that  "Levon is in the final stages of his battle with cancer. Please send your prayers and love to him as he makes his way through this part of his journey."

Here's video of an interview with Levon Helm at his home in Woodstock, New York last month:

Watch Quick Hits: An Interview with Levon Helm on PBS. See more from Sound Tracks.

And here are Levon Helm and The Band performing The Weight at the Woodstock Festival (which, of course, was not in Woodstock, New York) in August 1969:

 

"... and it's 1,2,3, what are we fighting for? ..."

While some neocon chickenhawks like Bush and Rove and Cheney and Gingrich and Qualye will be happy to tell you exactly what great causes the US Government was fighting for in Indochina forty years ago, the only answer to the bipartisan American war that made any sense to anyone I knew was simple: FUCK IT.
Few people expressed that profound meditation on war and peace better than Country Joe McDonald with his "Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" (preceded with the Fish Cheer) as performed here at Woodstock in 1969. I didn't have the pleasure of singing along there, but I vividly remember chanting and singing along with Joe and another very large crowd on the National Mall on 4/24/1971.
Enjoy.
 "Gimme an F!"
"Gimme a U!"
 
And, of course, like all the best sixties protest music, there's a great tie-in here to the Occupy Wall Street movement:

Well, come on Wall Street, don't move slow
Why man, this is war a-go-go.
There's plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of the trade,
Just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong.

Have fun following the bouncing ball. And singing along.

If you don't know this song by heart already, the American educational system is to blame. This is as important a part of our common cultural legacy as knowing the words to The Star Spangled Banner or Take Me Out to the Ballgame.

Happy Sunday. Imagine your world without Republicans.

It's a beautiful Sunday morning in November in Woodstock, New York, and I'm about to go outside again.

Even though the song in this Jefferson Airplane segment from Woodstock (the movie, not the town) is "Won't You Try / Saturday Afternoon," I always think of it as a Sunday morning song, hanging out in the park on a beautiful Sunday morning (even without your fellow hippies, and with or without acid, incense, and balloons), because the Airplane opened the Sunday portion of the Woodstock concert very early with this "morning maniac music".

Please go outside today and imagine your world without Republicans for a few hours.

Saturday afternoon
Yellow clouds rising in the noon
Acid, incense, and balloons
Saturday afternoon
People dancing everywhere, loudly shouting I don't care
It's a time for growing and a time for knowing love
Saturday afternoon

I sense some of this joy in the Occupy movement that I haven't seen in politics for a long time. And I also can't watch this video without falling in love with Grace Slick all over again.