What the Hell is the Hog Farm? (And Other Useful Tidbits of Info to You Help Enjoy Woodstock)

This weekend, we will relive much of the Woodstock concert from 1969 at a Woman’s Touch, in Second Life.  We will be listening to almost 18 hours of the concert and there are many interesting references and events in these recordings.  I’d like to explain some of these things, starting with the Hog Farm, and then continue by giving you a bunch of interesting things to listen for; including the approximate time and day in SL you can expect to hear them this weekend.

There are numerous references to the Hog Farm, such as when a small child was lost and stage manager, John Morris, instructs the child, wherever he may be, to go up the hill and find a hog farmer.  The “farmer” would reunite him with his mother, interestingly named “Sunshine.” (You can hear this incident Friday night during our set at about 5:27-5:28 PM SL time.)  So, who are these hog farmers?

The Hog Farm was a west coast hippie commune that was recruited to help with running the festival.  It would obviously take a lot of people to work the event and that was where the Hog Farm came in.  They set up a lot of the grounds that were not part of the stage and also ran a “free kitchen” to feed festival goers.  They were also charged with the task of providing security, which hit them completely by surprise.  They decided on a friendly approach and dubbed themselves the “Please Force.”  Their approach to security was to ask people nicely, “Please don’t do that.”

The picture at the top shows some of the hog farmers arriving in their psychedelic school bus.  Looking at the front grill, it seems to be late a 1930s or early 1940s model.  Today it might be considered a valuable antique, but in 1969 it was just a 25-30 year old clunker.  In many ways, the Hog Farm bus has become a Woodstock icon in its own right.

Their leader was a man named “Hugh Romney,” who is better known as “Wavy Gravy.”  His part in the concert, and his subsequent appearance in the Woodstock film, made him something of a hippie celebrity, so much so that Ben & Jerry even named an Ice Cream flavor after him.  He actually did not get his famous nickname until shortly after the Woodstock concert.  The moniker was given to him by the one and only B.B. King at a concert later that year.

It Happened 44 Years Ago This Week...

It happened forty-four years ago this week.  It was the magical summer of 1969 and three men had just completed a historic journey and became the first people to set foot on the moon.  A couple of days before they left, a US senator changed the course of history at a small bridge on an island off of Cape Cod.  The following month there would be the concert to end all concerts, the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair would take place just outside of Bethel, NY.  It was an event that helped define a generation, probably even more than the moon landing the month before.

The concert was the brain child of promoter, Michael Lang, and was named for the town that was originally planned as the site.  Tickets were priced at $18 ($6 a day) and made available only by mail and in record stores in the Northeast.  The venue had to be changed only weeks before the concert due to the town refusing to grant a permit for the concert.  When dairy farmer, Max Yasgur, made his 600 acre property available, the upcoming concert was not popular among locals.  The thought of 50,000 hippies descending on the community upset the local people.  Yes, the original planned number was that small, one tenth the size of what was to become reality.

The last minute change in location assured that they would not be ready for even the expected number, let alone the 500,000 that would show up.  There would not be enough food, water, toilets or anything to handle the crowds.  It was Friday night that Arlo Guthrie, a musician, declared:

“Well, the New York Thruway's closed.  Isn't that far out?”

People were driving as far as they could and then just abandoning their cars to hike the rest of the way in to be part of the scene.  It became apparent that there was no way to collect tickets and keep people out, so it was declared a “free concert.”  Those three days in the summer of 1969 (August 15-17) were seminal ones in the history of rock music and defined a generation.  The acts included some of the greatest names among Rock & Roll royalty.  So great was the event that 500,000 people attended, but it is estimated that close to ten million people claim they were there, a testament to how defining the event was.

It can’t be denied that the festival goers and performers were protesting the war in Vietnam as one of their issues.  It is interesting to learn that it was the US Army who came in to save Woodstock.  Richie Havens was the first performer to take the stage because he was the only performer available.  Joan Baez, the scheduled opener, along with other acts, was unable to get to the concert from nearby accommodations due to the jams.  Havens was told that he would have to stall until other performers could get there.  His song, Freedom (Motherless Child), was really an impromptu performance as he was continuing to be told to stall for time.  Finally, it was a US Army helicopter, according to Havens, that landed with additional acts.  The Army and the helicopters continued to assist through the weekend by bringing in supplies, airlifting medical cases and other needed services.  The Army and the hippies worked hand in hand all weekend without incident.

At Woodstock, 500,000 people came together under some of the most taxing conditions.  There was not a single reported act of violence the entire weekend.  There were three deaths at the concert, a ruptured appendix, a heroin overdose and a tractor accident.  On the upside, two babies were born at the Festival.

Twenty-five years later, there was the first of several reprisals, Woodstock 94.  I was at this event for all three days and got a taste of what it must have been like at the original concert.  There was one moment that weekend that I swear we were back at the original in 1969.  Joe Cocker had been announced, “Would you please welcome, for a return engagement, live on stage, the one, the only, Mr. Joe Cocker!”  He was back for a “return engagement” because he had played the original concert twenty-five years earlier.  That magic moment where time slipped back came during his set.  I was seated in the field, maybe eighty yards/meters from the stage in the sunlight.  The opening notes for With a Little help from My Friends filled the air and the crowd went wild.  We all stood and swayed back and forth singing along with Joe Cocker.  No one was sure if it was 1994 or 1969.

During my set at AWT today I will play two hours of highlights from the 1994 concert and maybe share some of my memories.

So, were you at Woodstock in August of 1969?  Wish you were?  While we can’t turn back time, maybe in the virtual world of Second Life we can do the next best thing. Through the decades, I have collected much of the concert in recordings.  This weekend, on the 44th anniversary of the concert, my daughter, Destiny, and I are going to host 17 hours’ worth of the original Woodstock.  While it is not the entire concert, it is a lot of it, as much as you will probably ever hear and it will be presented in its historically correct order.

So pack up your car or micro-bus.  Drive as far as you can down the SL Thruway, then abandon your car and hike the rest of the way to a Woman’s Touch.  When you get here, the chain link fence is down on the west side of the concert field.  It’s a free concert.  Roll out your sleeping bag and enjoy the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, an Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music.

The Sidewalk Skipper Band

It was almost two years ago that I posted here about the music that I most like to listen to.  At that time I admitted to being a psych-head and that late 60s psychedelic acid rock is my greatest musical love.  (See What Does Sue Listen to: Pt. 1 Farfisa and Fuzz, July 31, 2011)  At the end of that post I announced a mini set that I planned to play at an upcoming show, to spotlight some examples of the type of music I love.  The first song listed was a gem called “Strawberry Tuesday” by the Sidewalk Skipper Band.  It is a great tune and a personal favorite of mine from that genre.

The Sidewalk Skipper band was from Milwaukee and they began their career doing college gigs at Marquette University.  The band consisted of David McDowell on lead guitar and vocals, Rick Novak on guitar, Brian Ballestrieri on keyboards, Joe Ballestrieri on bass and Tom Jukem on drums.

By February 1968, they were signed with Capitol Records and in the studio recording in Chicago.  Soon they had released their first single, Strawberry Tuesday/Cynthia at the Garden.  This was followed by a second single in May 1968, It's Raining Flowers in My House/Seventeenth Summer.

So why did they never catch on?  It might have had something to do with the way Capitol marketed them.  It could be easily argued that the Psychedelic Movement originated in the United States, but it was British bands like the Beatles, the Bee Gees, the Stones and Cream who were taking it to a whole new level.  It was all part of a larger movement called the “British Invasion,” and America was always looking for its next “response” to the invasion.  It was quite overt with some bands, like Paul Revere and the Raiders.  During this time, various psych bands in the UK were able to thrive by releasing 45 RPM singles, but this wasn’t the case in America.  The American psych-head wanted to smoke a joint, or drop acid, and listen to an entire LP album side, without having to change the record after each song.

Maybe if they had released a full album, they might have become a psychedelic household name like the Strawberry Alarm Clock or the Electric Prunes.  A while back, a 12” acetate surfaced with more material, so obviously they did record more songs.  By 1969, they had left Capitol and recorded one more single with a label called “Teen Town,” Jeanne at the Circus/Sidewalk Skipper.  They disbanded shortly after that and the Ballestrieri brothers went on to open a club called the “Stone Toad.”  Brian Ballestrieri would also go on and record as a solo artist, with limited success, in the 1970s.

Tomorrow (Tuesday, June 4) I will do a mini set of the Sidewalk Skipper Band and play the following songs:

Strawberry Tuesday
Flowers in my House
Seventeenth Summer
Cynthia at the Garden

Those make up the both sides of the two Capitol singles recorded and released in 1968.  I have never seen a copy of the Teen Town single released in 1969.  As their 1968 promotional material put it, “America is ready for the SSB!”

Ray Manzarek (1939-2013)

I know that I haven’t written in this blog in a long time, but like Jim Morrison wrote in his 1969 book of poetry, the Lords and the New Creatures…

It takes large murder to turn the rocks in the shade and expose the strange worms beneath.  The lives of our discontented madmen are revealed.*

Okay, maybe there was no murder, but we had a large tragedy last week and it has turned the stones and I find myself writing once again in this blog.  Whenever anyone asks me for my favorite band, I list several, but when pressed for one name, it is the Doors.  Last week Ray Mazarek passed away at the age of 74 and the world lost a magnificent and versatile musician.  Ray lost his battle with cancer and died in Rosenheim, Germany, with his family at his side.

Ray was born on February 12, 1939, in Chicago Illinois.  He learned to play piano at an early age and it became his passion, along with basketball.  The two passions competed for his attention and, gratefully for my generation, music eventually won.  He went to college to study law but soon learned that he was not cut out for it.  He enlisted in the army in 1961 and served as a concert pianist stationed in Okinawa.  When he finished his enlistment, he returned to the states and college, attending UCLA in 1965.  It was there, studying film, that he met another film student, Jim Morrison.

Morrison saw himself as a poet and had written quite a bit of poetry.  Ray had played in a band, Rick and the Ravens, with his two brothers, but he mostly played classical, jazz and blues.  It seems unlikely that a rock band would evolve from these two artists, but L.A. in the late 60s was a magic time and psychedelia was all the rave.  Morrison suggested they start a rock band on what seemed to be almost a lark.  Morrison had been writing song lyrics alongside his poetry and with the addition of John Densmore and Robby Krieger, the Doors were born.

1967 was an amazing time.  The hippie movement had come of age and the “Summer of Love” brought it all into full swing.  There were four albums that were released in 1967 and most baby boomers had them in their collection. They were Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles, Surrealistic Pillow by the Jefferson Airplane, Are You Experienced by the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the Doors self-titled debut album.  These four albums became the soundtrack for the Summer of Love.

Ray Manzarek was in many ways the architect for that captivating Doors sound.  He was both their keyboardist and their bass player.  Ray had a Fender Rhodes keyboard bass that he placed on top of his main keyboard, a Vox Continental organ.  It was small, only two octaves, and he placed it on the left side so he could play bass with his left hand.  (See picture below.)  He would play the organ with his right and that is why most Doors’ keyboard parts can be played with just one hand.  I used to relish the response I’d get in symphonic band in high school when I was playing the chimes/tubular bells.  With just a single hammer in one hand, I used to bang out the opening to "Light My Fire" when there was down time.

The Doors went on to release seven albums before Morrison died on July 3, 1971.  Ray and the other surviving members held together and released two more albums without Jim.  These were Other Voices in 1971 and Full Circle in 1972.  In 1973 they broke up and went their separate ways.

Ray played in a number of bands after the Doors including Nite City, Manzarek-Krieger and the Manzarek-Rogers Band.  He collaborated, or provided keyboards for Iggy Pop, Michael C. Ford, Echo and the Bunnymen, Michael McClure, X, Darryl Read, Bal and "Weird Al" Yankovic.  Ray released his last album, Translucent Blues, in 2011.  It was a blues record he recorded with guitarist Roy Rogers (not the cowboy star).

In my opinion, his greatest post-Doors work was his version of the Carmina Burana in 1983.  The Carmina Burana was written by Carl Orff in 1935.  He took verses written by medieval monks in Latin and put them to music.  The music has since been a favorite of TV and movie soundtracks of the medieval and fantasy genres.  Ray took this work and redid it with a Rock and Roll feel, including electric guitars, but retained the Latin versus.

Ray wrote two books.  The first was his memoir, Light My Fire: My Life with the Doors.  He also wrote a Civil War ghost story, Snake Moon, in 2006.

This death has hit me harder than most.  Tonight, I’m dedicating my entire set to Ray Manzarek.  I will dig deep in the vault and put together a two hour retrospect on Ray and the Doors.  I will include snippets of interviews with Ray, extreme rarities and I even completed a tribute remix of Peace Frog/Blue Sunday this morning that I will debut.  Join me tonight at 7 PM SL time at a Woman’s Touch.

"There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception."

Aldous Huxley, 1954

*James Douglas Morrison, The Lords and the New Creatures (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969), page 16.