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Woodstock Decoded

This week’s magical mystery tour is all about Woodstock 69. Woodstock was for wusses and pussies and tie-dyed toe suckers. Real men, like yours truly, went to Altamont. (More about that at a future date.) In this outtake from the Woodstock mudpie we see that most mysterious of 60s stars, Joe (Who the hell let him sing?) Cocker exhibiting his trademark seizures and gibberish for the assembled faithful. It helpfully supplies a full translation. Do try to keep up.

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Walter Sobchak August 18, 2019, 9:01 AM

    Painful.

  • pbird August 18, 2019, 10:01 AM

    The Sky River Rock Festival and Lighter Than Air Fair was a historic rock festival held on a raspberry farm on the Skykomish River outside Sultan, Washington. It was first held between August 31 to September 2, 1968. It was the first multi-day outdoor hippie rock festival at an undeveloped site.[citation needed]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_River_Rock_Festival

    was definitely there and not square

  • Terry August 18, 2019, 10:57 AM

    Altamont. Yes, lets talk about the tough guy and gal play ground! I drove past Altamont several days a week. Attended races there as well. Much fun. Thankfully I was not in attendance during the “bad day”.

    Woodstock is a dead rat. Bury it deep. It stinks.

  • Doug August 18, 2019, 12:01 PM

    Sorry, but no attempt at inside humor is going to redeem Boomers of the guilt of downright destroying civilization. Now pass the bong, bro.

  • Stargazer August 18, 2019, 12:40 PM

    Insanity gone mad!

  • Auntie Analogue August 18, 2019, 12:53 PM

    “Civilisation can survive dictatorship, but it cannot survive rock music.” – Theodore Dalrymple

    The older I grow, the more I consider that sentence to be accurate.

  • Sam L. August 18, 2019, 2:30 PM

    I didn’t go to Woodstock, but I did see the movie. First time I saw Cocker was on Saturday Night Live with John Belushi doing his take-off on Cocker, Looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo those many years ago.

  • ASM826 August 18, 2019, 5:08 PM

    What would you think if I sang out of tune?
    Would you stand up and walk out on me?
    Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song
    And I’ll try not to sing out of key
    Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
    Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
    Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends
    What do I do when my love is away?
    Does it worry you to be alone?
    How do I feel by the end of the day?
    Are you sad because you’re on your own?
    No, I get by with a little help from my friends
    Mm, get high with a little help from my friends
    Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends
    Do you need anybody?
    I need somebody to love
    Could it be anybody?
    I want somebody to love
    Would you believe in a love at first sight?
    Yes, I’m…

  • Auntie Analogue August 18, 2019, 6:06 PM

    @ Sam L.:

    Before there was a Saturday Night Live, in April 1973 there was the National Lampoon’s live show Lemmings, whose ticket stub I still have, in which to close the show’s first half John Belushi performed his Cocker routine, spewing faux-spastic mouthfuls of beer all over the cabaret-seated audience whose members he’d made laugh so hard that people were indeed falling off of their chairs. His antics cracked me up so hard that my stomach hurt awfully, yet I still couldn’t stop laughing.

    The second half of Lemmings featured Alice Playten doing a fine send-up impression of Joan Baez becoming so passionately carried away with her social justice performance that she flung the baby (a doll prop) from her arms off the stage & into the audience. (Playten played the wife in the 1969 Alka-Seltzer “Our first home-cooked meal” TV spot in which her morose, suffering husband’s face lurked in the bathroom preparing himself a doze of the sparkling tablets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JApntq_fB48

  • Rob De Witt August 19, 2019, 12:15 AM

    Ms. A,

    (1) Dalrymple put it perfectly.

    (2) Somebody played a tape for me of the Joan Baez parody about 15 years ago – else I wouldn’t have believed it. Absolutely pitch perfect in voice and inflection and attitude, and still one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. Rumor has it that Baez sued.

    https://youtu.be/tuBhwEgi8qU?t=2160

  • Terry August 19, 2019, 7:17 AM

    I still have one or two of Joe Cocker’s albums from the sixties and they are keepers. Also, add in Lee Michaels for some fun.

  • Anonymous August 19, 2019, 1:02 PM

    Real men went to Altamont.
    If you put that on a t-shirt I’d buy it.

  • H August 20, 2019, 5:12 AM

    Baez herself needed to be sued for what she did to the lyrics of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”.

    “so much cavalry” indeed.

  • BJM August 21, 2019, 6:19 PM

    Oh I dunno…like most of us he grew up. His “One Night of Sin” album is pretty good and his rendition of Keb Mo’s “Dangerous Mood” on BB’s “Deuces Wild” album is probably his best.

    https://youtu.be/t4_SpFgbwY4

  • Dirk Williams August 24, 2019, 4:59 PM

    Say the movie the day it came out, Tower Theater, Roseville California. Was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I still own many early Joe Cocker Albums, Woodstock on Cassette, CD and an origional copy of the Albums. It’s where I go for a walk down memory lane.

    My fav, at WS was Ten Years After. Still play their music weeks. In fact Ten Years After Live at Filmore West, 1969 is on right now. Walk Like A Man. Rip Alvin Lee.

    Dirk