Don’t even get me started about last night’s softball game. It was dreadful. Well, now that I’ve gotten myself started I suppose I can spend a paragraph writing about it. We lost, we sucked, but worst of all, the other team was a bunch of assholes. Their pitcher was the biggest fucking douchebag I’ve ever met, and if we meet again in the playoffs (and we will), it wouldn’t surprise me if a brawl occurs. There was no verbal or physical animosity towards the other team shown last night, but everyone on our team was steaming for the duration of our 7-inning game. The complete lack of respect that was shown to us, the stall tactics and non-chalance with which they played…it was nauseating. Joking between pitches, mocking one another when they didn’t get a hit, chit-chatting with the umpire…fuck, this is a softball league not a fireside chat. Play the game, have fun, but not at the expense of the other team, and don’t be such douches. I wanted to brain someone with a bat. I still might. I don’t know.
Fucking Woodstock. Why do people care about Woodstock? My mom was there, she doesn’t talk about it, but every fucking ‘boomer in the country has Woodstock-fever this weekend. It’s the 40th anniversary I guess. All the radio stations on Sirius/XM are talking about it and playing cuts from the new CD box set. Talk radio stations are interviewing folks involved with the production of the movie. People are all talking about what an amazing event it was, how it defined a generation, blah blah blah. Woodstock was total bullshit. It shouldn’t be present in the public and media consciousness. It should be forgotten, like the dumb baby boomers who won’t stop gloating about it until they’re all dead.
The Top Ten Reasons Why Woodstock Sucked
10. 5,162 Medical Cases – That amounts to about one out of 100 people in attendance required medical attention during the festival. Almost 800 of those cases were drug-related (so, in other words, they were completely avoidable, but the spoiled brats who went to Woodstock didn’t know any better). Two people died of heroin overdoses. One idiot was crushed by a tractor during the clean-up. Eight women miscarried at Woodstock. Maybe it had something to do with the horrible conditions, the preening assholes in the crowd, or the shitty music on stage.
09. It Was A Disaster Area – Martin Scorsese described the mood at Woodstock as “volatile” and “threatening” from start to finish. He’s also made allusions to war (ironic, of course, because all the kids there were opponents of war) when discussing what it felt like to survive Woodstock. The drugs sucked, the weather sucked, they ran out of food and the idea of sanitation was a joke. Sickness swept across the crowd. It was a filthy, ugly mess. But hey, it was a weekend of “peace and love” so none of that other shit matters I guess.
08. Fucking Traffic – So many idiot kids showed up that it created immense traffic james. Many of the acts who were supposed to perform on the first day were stranded and had to be flown in by army helicopters. Richie Havens had to perform for three hours — including seven encores — before someone else was flown in to take the stage. Jesus Christ.
07. It Was All About Money – The organizers described themselves as “young men with unlimited capital” in search of investment opportunities, and they would up creating an outdoor music festival as a money-making scheme, the film rights for which they sold to Warner Brothers for a cool six figures. Tickets cost the modern equivalent of $75, and who knows how much the organizers lost when half a million people showed up and started breaking into the event. The Who refused to play without being paid in advance, the dicks. Karma dicked The Who over when they consumed drinks they didn’t know were dosed with LSD. Roger Daltry called it “the worst performance we ever did.” The only redeeming factor of this colossal attempt to swindle the youth of America out of their cash is that it turned out to be a colossal failure as far as marketing albums and creating a tedious documentary film were concerned.
06. The Townspeople Hated It – Not only did they toss out their supervisor during the November 1969 elections specifically because he brought the festival to their town, the entirety of New York State joined Bethel in passing laws preventing mass gatherings and more festivals from occurring. To keep visitors from visiting the site, its owners spread chicken shit over the grounds. During one anniversary, state police formed roadblocks to stop people from gathering at the original site. I’ve spent a good deal of time in New York State, and the people that I’ve met there are all super nice. You’d have to be a real asshole to piss off those salt-of-the-earth people. Now imagine 500,000 real assholes descending on your peaceful town. Fuck ’em, right?
05. The Sound Sucked – For a music festival, the sound at Woodstock was dreadful. Forget trying to even see the stage or performers in a crowd of 500,000 stoned losers who were too high to move, try hearing the music when “sound equipment failed, amplifiers buzzed, guitar cables, cracked, and microphones cut out.” After playing an out-of-tune guitar for nearly ten minutes, Stephen Stills complained about his monitors. I can’t imagine how awful that sounded for the people who had to endure it. Even the folks at the Wall Street Journal think it sucked. That’s where I got that quote!
04. Nostalgia Sucks – The media’s canonization of Woodstock alone is enough to sully any rational person’s idea of what festival actually meant in terms of cultural, philosophical and political significance. It’s like Obama all over again, only it’s been going on for 40 years!
03. Food And Shit – Everyone knows there wasn’t anything to eat and the bathroom facilities were doomed after day one. There’s nothing new I’m going to add to this, just think about how foul the area was, and how you’d feel if you showed up to an outdoor festival and had to endure no food, drinkable water or places to piss and shit. You’d wish death upon every single person there, and you know it.
02. The Lineup – The Doors, Led Zeppelin, The Byrds, Bob Dylan and plenty of others declined invitations. What the hell does that say about the perceived importance of Woodstock? All of the importance has been heaped upon the event in hindsight. Sha-Na-Na, Blood Sweat & Tears, Country Joe and The Fish, Sweetwater, Bert Sommer, Melanie, Canned Heat, John Sebastian and Keef Heartley do not a memorable concert make. I already told you The Who sucked (or so says Daltry), Jimi Hendrix’s memorable solo that concludes the concert LPs was edited out of a long, rambling, ineffective piece. It was in no way a musical revolution. The “folk” first day was completely out of time considering Dylan himself went electric at Newport FOUR YEARS earlier. Folk music was pretty much dead already. They devoted an entire day to it. African-American music was nearly non-existent. Let’s face it, most of the artists involved sucked.
01. The People – Don’t even get me started on the spoiled children of elitist parents who attended Woodstock. While an equal number of their peers enlisted in the army and fought in a fucking war, these kids borrowed money from their parents, borrowed the family car, and went an danced around like a bunch of self-indulgent knaves. Every armed conflict has opponents. Listening to music and getting high does absolutely nothing to aid an effort to end a war. The people who fought Vietnam with “flower power” are now themselves mired in two overseas conflicts, and most have “sold out.” What possible reason do we have for celebrating this event and these cretins? I say let the ‘boomers in the media navel gaze a little while longer. Most of ’em lie about being there anyway. The good news is, we know the truth about Woodstock: The music sucked, the sound sucked, the people sucked, and it was organized by people who craved only money and cashed in on “free love,” “peace” and a generation of pampered dolts. The idea Woodstock is mythology, not fact. Remember that.
William Harris – Hot Time Blues
Mattie May Thomas – Workhouse Blues
Elvie Thomas – Motherless Child Blues
