At first I couldn't tell if this was about cigarettes or diddling priests and child sex abusers. "Who's next?" chilled my blood. He stole some dance moves from Tom Waits, who was one of the biggest 'spiders' on stage. Anyway, anyone who does anything untoward to a child should be executed. I don't give a shit what anyone says in response to that. At the expense of getting too personal, it stays with you forever and it's OK to not forgive.
It is about cancer, well I always believed that to be the case, never considered anything else tbh but it is a chilling song video all the same.
I’m reading the book Back to the Garden by Pete Fornatale, so naturally I am listening to the remastered four-CD Woodstock: Three Days of Peace & Music album. Sly and the Family Stone on now, The Who and Jefferson Airplane on deck. That was one hell of a concert.
I'm now at a computer, so I thought I would add a few videos of the most legendary performances at Woodstock for those of you who are too young to know about them. The performances by Santana and Hendrix (next message) are particularly amazing.
A great great song, but IMO the original is vastly vastly better. The Temps from 1968-1970 (with backing by The Funk Brothers) were the kings of psychedelic soul.
Two of my biological Uncles are in the opening scenes of the 'Woodstock' festival film. Their 7 seconds - not 15 minutes - of fame, haha.
My wife and I were up at Bethel Woods for the 45th anniversary of the festival, where they showed the director's cut of the movie on a big screen on the field that used to be Max Yasgur's farm. The organizers made a point of noting that among the people in the audience were Nick and Bobbi Ercoline, the couple that were on the cover of the album and movie poster. They were sitting quite close to us, in fact, and I stopped by and said hi. They're still together, married 47 years.
^Bio father was in Vietnam during the original festival. He was a tactical photographer in the Navy, and later became a finish carpenter by occupation (has his own wood shop, does incredibly beautiful work, but still does photography). Mild correction: it was all three of my Uncles. Two of my Uncles were still too young to be drafted, and my other Uncle is legally deaf, so he obviously didn't get conscripted. Anyway, almost all of my paternal bio family is from that area. Bio father built all of the scaffolding and some other stuff for the 25th Anniversary in '94. I was up visiting for a family gathering, and Bio father asked me if I wanted to go see the site out of morbid curiosity (it was a day after the concert concluded). "Morbid curiosity?" "You'll see what I mean when we get there." One of my Uncles who is at the beginning of the film was trying to explain stuff like, "We were parked over there. Such and such happened over here . . . (as to the original concert). I was trying really hard to pay attention, but I kept dry-heaving. If you remember, at one point, there was a torrential downpour during the '94 revival. Needless to say, I had never seen such disgusting human filth in my entire life. Porta-johns tipped over (you can bet on purpose), clothes and garbage strewn absolutely everywhere, beer bottles, soda cans, dirty baby diapers, blood, urine, used sanitary napkins, pants and underwear that people crapped themselves in, tons of used condoms, used tampons, vomit, you name it, it was there, in an inglorious fetid soup of unbelievable piggery. You know those shots of the slums of India? Yeah, it was like that. There had also been a bunch of drug overdoses, and I think one person died. I guess the crowd in '94 was devoted to making it as 'authentic' as possible. :/ Maybe it's just me, but as important as the '60s were - MOSTLY due to the Civil Rights Movement, IMO - the whole hippie yippie commie pinko thing really grates on me at this point. 75 year olds in ponytails and tie-dyed shirts still waking and baking, get over it already. It's going to be a very unpopular thing to say, but I think many people involved in "the movement", it just gave them an excuse to be slackers and get high, and you can damn well bet a ton of them thought they were far more important than they really were. The 60s left an indelible mark on American history, and there are so many great, incendiary, radical, and highly f'd up things that happened, but I often feel it isn't put in the proper perspective for nostalgia's sake. Abbie Hoffman died broke and alone, just sayin'.
