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Location: Blue Ridge Mountains | 40 years ago today, Woodstock began...I know some of the younger members were not around but quite a few of our older members were...
So where were you? Did you go?
I was in Gloucester, Virginia getting ready to start my senior year in High School, and disapointed with my father who absolutely (his words) would not let me go (I had planned to leave two days before the event and travel with my friend from Washington DC and my band mates from High School to the event)...we had no idea it would become the iconic event it became...we just wanted to hear the bands and hang out...But, alas, I was forced to remain at home and went fishing instead...to tell the truth, I think I had the better time of it as the mud, crowds, traffic jams, etc, made it really difficult. Still, watching the movie's out of the event, I seceretly wish I had gone...I'm sure I was not alone: my band mates weren't able to go either...
How about you? |
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Location: SoCal | 45 years ago today the Beatles were first on Ed Sullivan. Where were you? Bet more people were aware of that than Woodstock.... |
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Location: Blue Ridge Mountains | I was sitting in front of my TV watching: Mom and Dad let us stay up for the first half of the show...It was years later when I saw the rest of it... |
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Location: Marlton, NJ | Enjoying the summer before 2nd grade. |
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| Working. When they announced the concert and were promoting it, I figured it was gonna be a damn mess. When I saw the movie I realized I was right and I'm still glad I didn't go. |
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Location: big island | summer before 9th grade. saw it happening on the TV but decided to go play spin the bottle with some neighborhood girls in the basement of a home under construction. woodstock couldn't compete with that. |
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Location: Keepin' It Weird in Portland, OR | Falmouth, Mass... My brother and I had a ride to go, but my Mom said "No Way, Jose!"
(My brother's name is Joseph)
I was 12, and he was 15, but we were going with Adult Freaks.
And Yes, we were more upset once we discovered what we missed... |
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Location: Florida Central Gulf Coast | WS '69 - Teaching F-111 Electronic Counter-Measures at Lowry AFB, Denver and enjoying my third month of marital bliss. The only woodstock I knew of was on my treasured Marlin 336C .30-.30. 
ES '65 - Watched 'em at our church youth group meeting.  |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | there. |
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Location: Veedersburg, Indiana | RVN. |
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Location: SoCal | Originally posted by Beal:
there. Really? How cool is that. Was it fun being there, or more fun lookiing back and knowing you were there? Does that make sense? |
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Location: Vernon CT | I was probably on Cape Cod with my family. We use to rent a cottage for 1 month in July or August or 2 weeks each depending on Availability. I was also getting ready for 8th grade!
My Brother however was there!!! Never talks much about it as I doubt he remembers much Dru.... & Old age!! ;) |
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Location: South of most, North of few | I was supposed to go with a couple of friends, and my parents put the kybosh on it at the last minute. One of my friends was interviewed at the beginning of the movie. He got in trouble when it came out as his father was running for county office at the time. :D |
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Location: Tennessee | Originally posted by moody, p.i.:
45 years ago today the Beatles were first on Ed Sullivan. Where were you? Bet more people were aware of that than Woodstock.... Uh, Paul ... The Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. I was in kindergarten.
When Woodstock happened, I was still in grade school and my Mommy wouldn't let me go. The first I heard of it was from C,S,N&Y. |
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Location: SoCal | Well, it sounded good......
By the way, I was in junior high and didn't even hear of Woodstock until several years later.
I've led a sheltered life..... |
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Location: Florida Central Gulf Coast | Originally posted by stonebobbo:
1964 I should have caught that, in that a year later I was in basic training... 
Good 'Right Field' catch bobbo! |
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Location: Atlanta, GA. | 1969 was not a very good year... |
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Location: Cicero, NY | I was 9 and my mother's sister, all of 19 and very much aware of how much I loved music, wanted me to go with her and a few friends. Got it by Dad, who had NO idea what it was, but Mom was a rock. Said not even over her cold, dead body and, once she gave Dad the infamous "Mom Glare" (insert picture of a really teed off Grizzly here), even he backed down.
I was SOOOO close... |
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Location: NJ | in 69 I was 13 and was reading all about the music scene in circus magazine.
really wanted to go but was obviously not old enough.
funny side note. I bought the mad magazine which had the parody "I remember, i remember the wonderful woodstock faire" and it was conviscated by a nun and burned in an incinerator....
those were good times ..... |
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| Well, I was probably watching "Sesame Street" or something like that, since I was 5.
But I do like to go to the town of Woodstock quite a bit.
Michelle |
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| In 69 I was 13 and living in a South Ontario farm town so I wasn't going anywhere except maybe hitching a ride with a .22 over my shoulder to go shoot gophers for some local farmer at $4 a day.
I was always interested in music but I never bought into that hippie counter culture thing as even when I was very young they always seemed extremely naive to me and their whole deal turned on someone else paying the freight so that they could have a secure country to hang out in plus criticize everything and squack about how "the man" was holding them back. Never had much time for dopers either. |
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Location: Wichita, KS | In '69 I was 21 and I called the road my home...
No, wait. That was Jackson Browne. I was nine years old. My brother, Jon, was sixteen. I think I spent the summer watching him tie dye T-shirts in a tub out in the back yard. Not quite Woodstock, but we had the spirit. |
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Location: Budd Lake, NJ | I was 16, working in the snack bar at a summer camp; I remember hearing about its' happening, but I was trying to earn money for college.
(And forget even considering going--my folks were pretty strict and I'd never have gotten permission to go, anyway.)
--Karen |
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Posts: 4832
Location: Campbell River, British Columbia | I was 14, on the other side of the continent, and didn't hear anything much about it until the movie came out.
Saw it in Tokyo while on a school trip to Expo 70; with English and Japanese subtitles. The subtitles were 'suspect'. They had Sly & the Family Stone singing "I wanna, I wanna, I wanna buy a Honda!" |
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Location: Nashville TN. | I was 5 |
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| Originally posted by alpep:
it was conviscated by a nun and burned in an incinerator....
So you went to Catholic schools too? It was great preparation. When I got to boot camp there was NOTHIN' those guys could do to me that topped the nuns. |
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Location: Brisbane Australia | I was sixteen and on the wrong freaking continent!!
So bloody cool, amazing time!!
AJ |
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Location: Location Location Location | I was in the Navy in Boot Camp in Great Lakes, Ill. My friends were at Woodstock. |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | I was 12 years old and too young to attend. But I certainly knew about it. I was big into radio and WNEW-FM from NY had been talking it up for about a month. It started out sounding like an "Arts and Crafts" fair, but then as the dates grew closer folks like Rosko and Jonathon Schwartz were talking it up as some kind of "love and peace happening" and the performer list kept changing almost every day. You could call the station and get free tickets.
There wasn't any kind of live feed broadcast or anything like that of the event, but the station kept giving updates throughout the weekend what was going on and who was on stage at that time. But how did they know? There were no cell phones or pay phones at the site. Well, what they did was very clever - the performers were shuttled in and out of the grounds by helicopter and the station had a guy on the ground at the local staging area where they flew from. So when an act would depart on the copter he would phone WNEW and give a report, so the air guys would keep the listeners informed. They made playlists to align approximately with who was on stage, so if Janis for example had just left on the copter for the site, around 30 minutes later WNEW-FM would play a set of Janis music.
Physically I was in Bellmar New Jersey, but my ear was glued to the radio and I could get a sense of what must be going on. My minds-eye pictured a field of well organized Art's and Crafts booths with a stage at one end and everything quite civil (remember, the only reports on the radio were from the heli staging area, not the venue itself). Only later when I saw the movie, and by that time was getting high myself, did I know the sheer magnitude of the whole thing. I was luckly to have experienced it, if only from 150 miles away. |
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Location: east coast usa | Playing my first guitar, a cheapy yamaha, playin stick ball, riding dirt bikes, flippin baseball cards, remember flipping baseball cards? really a lost art. lol getting ready for the 6th grade!. Starting to grow my hair over my ears, and thinkin that was cool ! |
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Location: Tuscany, Italy | Wrong age (11) and wrong place for that .... |
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Location: Right now? | I was a freshman in high school. |
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Location: NJ | Originally posted by Losov:
Originally posted by alpep:
it was conviscated by a nun and burned in an incinerator....
So you went to Catholic schools too? It was great preparation. When I got to boot camp there was NOTHIN' those guys could do to me that topped the nuns. |
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Location: Midland, MI | I was kicking around Lake St. Croix Beach, east of the Cities. I was two and don't remember it at all. Must have been the drugs. |
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Location: Madison, Wisconsin | I was 16 and my parents wouldn't let me go. They wouldn't let me go the Democratic National Convention in Chicago either. How unfair was that? Good thing somebody was thinking |
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Location: ms | I was a child of God walking along the road. But it was a dirt road down in Mississippi. |
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Location: Hot Springs, S.D. | I remember sitting in the den watching the news with Mom and Dad. I was a freshman in high school, and Daddy asked me if I would have liked to be there. I said yes of course. When he asked me why I'd want to put up with the crowds and the mud, I simply said, "Jimi Hendrix". |
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Location: Chicago | An 11-year old SF Bay Area (Los Altos Hills) kid who had recently discovered guitar and was obsessively studying it. Read the San Francisco Chronicle account of the festival, yes, and Circus mag. Bought the TRIPLE LP hot off the rack and gotta say: "I'm Goin' Home" Alvin Lee and 10 Yrs. After blew my little mind: Santana, Hendrix, the Airplane, Who..... Holy Sh*t! I was never the same. |
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Location: SoCal | At Shaw AFB, Sumpter, SC...coming out of flight school with a stop-over at the Air Force's primary training base for the recon version of the F-4. Five bases in seven weeks, everything we didn't have in storage was in a Fiat 124 Spyder (including a D-18 Martin 12-string).
Wouldn't have been far but not appropriate for someone about to be promoted to 1st Lt.
For the Sullivan show, sophomore in high school (Mt. Angel, OR), at a friends house. |
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Location: Texas | 10 years old in Mexico City.
Learning guitar and into the Beatles, Monkees and Hendrix but wanting to learn about bluegrass, banjos, mandolins and as much acoustic stuff I could.
Heard about it on the news but really not interested since according to my Mom it was just a bunch of hippies on drugs listening to loud rock and roll.
Of course now I feel like it is part of me since I have seen the movie so many times and listened to those artists all my life.
Plus had a chance to meet many people and artists that were there.
I love the whole Woodstock vibe and era.
Peace, love and rock and roll. |
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Location: Texas | ...and I had a '65 Strat, my first electric.
used to take it to bed with me.
...wish I'd still have it... |
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December 2006
Posts: 6268
Location: Florida Central Gulf Coast | Originally posted by Tony Calman:
F-4 You're the man...
I maintained ECM 'tronics on the C, D and E. The ol' kerosene burner... awesome bird! |
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Location: Central Massachusetts | I was in the fetal position at the time. In utero. And on the wrong coast at that. :p |
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Location: Boise, Idaho | 16 and had just moved from North Dakota to Kansas to start my junior year in a new State and new high school. I made the stupid decision to wait until I moved to get my driver's license and then found out it was too late for driver's ed. All that was way more important than Woodstock. That was a bad year. |
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Posts: 4619
Location: SoCal | About the time I got to my 1st squadron (VMCJ-3) in El Toro, they were transitioning from the EF-10 to the EA6A (two seat, later became the 4-seat B). It was a composite squadron so had both the RF-4B and the EA6A. Years later, Wing Electronic Warfare Officer, VP of Old Crows (San Diego), and VP of IEEE (San Diego). Funny, wasn't an engineer. Course (when I was eleven), I did build a 12-foot wind tunnel with my mom's vacuum cleaner motor...she didn't think it was funny as that just left her with a broom. After replacing her motor, I eventually found another one.
Had my dealings with nuns in grade school, then Benedictine Monks for the first 2 years of High School. When the high school transitioned to coed, we had the Benedictine nuns and monks.
Definitely prepared me for when I went to MCRD (boot camp in San Diego) and then OCS five months later.
What I remember is the TV coverage of the horrible traffic jams...course, in most of Southern California, that is the normal commute. |
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Location: south east Michigan | So... Beal was there.
Makes sense. A man deep into the music industry with access to a helicopter factory.
It's a slam dunk. |
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Posts: 3410
Location: GA USA | Originally posted by cholloway:
1969 was not a very good year... Okay, Colin is always an upbeat guy. I've been around him enough to know that if something was "not very good" it probably has to do with his ex-wife. Am I close? |
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Location: Location Location Location | Nuns, Jesuit priests, boot camp...those were my big 3 training areas for the BIG one...Marriage. |
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Location: Colorado Rocky Mountains | August of 1969 . . . I was in boot camp. A group of us took a motorcycle ride from L.A. to Victoria and north on Vancouver Island during the month of July before I went in. When I turned around and rode back to L.A., they headed east to Woodstock. Lucky bums. |
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Location: Blue Ridge Mountains | "Woodstock: Now and Then" Tonight 8pm EST; The History Channel; 120 min. |
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Location: Capital District, NY, USA Minor Outlying Islands | Let's see ...
I was 8, a neighbor kid had just been drafted, and the rest of the big kids were going. I asked my Mom if we could go and she said it would be too buggy. That answer made sense to me.
Since we lived near the thruway, I remember my Dad commenting that the thruway was backed up. He didn't seem too impressed by the people going.
When the big kids came back, I remember they had a good time, and I wished I had gone. But realistically, for an 8 year-old, my Mom was right. It would've been too Buggy. |
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Location: Reisterstown, Maryland | I was 13, 2 yrs into teaching myself to play the guitar, and didn't hear about it til later. I didn't listen to the radio that much altho I loved music. I would listen to records that my brother would buy since he was older he knew best.
Anita |
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Location: south east Michigan | Did you know that Martin Scorsese was stationed stage right giving directions to the camera guys?
And the he edited it?
I did not know that.
________________________
When the movie came out our Boy Scout troop went downtown to see it.
Out troop leader was quite the rebel. |
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Posts: 1851
Location: Newington, CT | Interestingly, like several others here, I was 13 in '69 (well, I turned 13 in late Nov., but it still counts) and my feelings were much like those of the plainspoken Joe Rotax, several posts back, when he said: "I was always interested in music but I never bought into that hippie counter culture thing as even when I was very young they always seemed extremely naive to me and their whole deal turned on someone else paying the freight so that they could have a secure country to hang out in plus criticize everything and squack about how "the man" was holding them back. Never had much time for dopers either." |
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Location: Newington, CT | Joe Rotax said: "I was always interested in music but I never bought into that hippie counter culture thing as even when I was very young they always seemed extremely naive to me and their whole deal turned on someone else paying the freight so that they could have a secure country to hang out in plus criticize everything and squack about how "the man" was holding them back. Never had much time for dopers either."
Strikes me there's a song somewhere in there...someone want to write it? Kind of a reverse hobo/hippie ballad or something. |
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Location: Florida Central Gulf Coast | Originally posted by AlanM:
there's a song somewhere in there "Change" |
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Posts: 2246
Location: Yucaipa, California | 1969? Graduated High School, enlisted into the Navy (due to a very low draft number) and spent the summer getting ready to leave for boot camp in January. Woodstock? Missed the whole thing except by recordings...... |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | with your hat you would have fit right in!! |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | I was 5 and remember nothing... the "brown acid" was indeed bad. |
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Location: Yucaipa, California | ...Beal, it wasn't until AFTER I was in the Navy that I heard the Voices.... might have been the Orange Barrel Acid on Guam though..... |
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Woodstock: Where were You?