Woodstock at AWT - 2018

Yes, that time of year is here.  It is time for Woodstock at AWT and it will be held this weekend, August 24, 25 and 26.  This has become something of a tradition at AWT and we do it every August now.  I have over 20 hours of the original concert and I play it in its historical order over the three days.  We also redo the club area to totally give you the Woodstock experience from 1969.

If you missed the original in 1969, this might just be your best chance to experience the original Woodstock in cyberspace with us at AWT.  A number of people who attended in the past have said that in a way they now felt like they were there.  Below, you will not only find the schedule and times, but I have printed the entire set lists for this weekend.  Furthermore, if you scroll past the massive set list, you will find interesting moments you will hear this weekend, like when the Dead blow their amplifiers or Pete Townsend of the Who hits Abbie Hoffman over the head with his guitar.  Each event is explain and an approximate to the minute time that you will hear it this weekend.

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.

Concert Times (all times in SL time) 

Friday, August 24 
5:30 - 9:00 PM 

Saturday, August 25
10:00 AM - 9:00 PM 

Sunday, August 26
2:00-9:00 PM

Here are the set lists for this weekend.  Bands and artists with an asterisk (*) in front of their name denote that we have their complete set.  No song is missing.

Friday, August 24, 5:30-9:00 PM 

Richie Havens 
High Flying Bird 
I Can't Make It Anymore
With a Little Help From My Friends 
Handsome Johnny 
Strawberry Fields/Hey Jude
Freedom (Motherless Child) 

His Holiness Sri Swami Satchidananda 
Festival Blessing 

Sweetwater 
Motherless Child
Look Out
What’s Wrong
Two Worlds
Why Oh Why 

*Bert Sommer 
Jennifer
The Road to Travel
I Wonder Where You Be
She’s Gone
Things Are Going My Way
And When It's Over
Jeanette
America
A Note That Read
Smile 

Tim Hardin 
How Can We Hang On to a Dream?
If I Were a Carpenter
Simple Song of Freedom 

*Ravi Shankar 
Raga Puriya-Dhanashri/Gat In Sawarital
Tabla Solo in Jhaptal
Raga Majh Khamaj 

Melanie 
Momma Momma
Beautiful People
Birthday of the Sun 

Arlo Guthrie 
Coming into Los Angeles
Wheel of Fortune
Walkin' Down the Line
Every Hand in the Land 

Joan Baez 
Joe Hill
Sweet Sir Galahad
Hickory Wind
Drug Store Truck Driving Man (duet with Jeffrey Shurtleff )
I Live One Day at a Time (duet with Jeffrey Shurtleff )
Swing Low Sweet Chariot
We Shall Overcome

Saturday, August 25, 10:00 - 9:00 PM

Quill 
They Live the Life
That's How I Eat
Driftin’ 

Country Joe McDonald 
Donovan's Reef
Flying High
The "Fish" Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag 

*Santana 
Waiting
Evil Ways
You Just Don't Care
Savor
Jingo
Persuasion
Soul Sacrifice
Fried Neckbones and Some Home Fries 

*John B. Sebastian 
How Have You Been
Rainbows All Over Your Blues
I Had a Dream
Darlin' Be Home Soon
Younger Generation 

The Keef Harley Band 
Spanish Fly 

The Incredible String Band 
The Letter
This Moment
When You Find Out Who You Are 

*Canned Heat 
I’m Her Man
Going Up the Country
Leaving This Town 
Too Many Drivers at the Wheel
I Know My Baby 
Woodstock Boogie
On the Road Again 

Mountain 
Blood of the Sun
Theme for an Imaginary Western
For Yasgur's Farm
Beside the Sea
Southbound Train 

The Grateful Dead 
Mama Tried
Dark Star
Turn on Your Love Light

*Creedence Clearwater Revival 
Born on the Bayou
Green River
Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won't Do)
Commotion
Bootleg
Bad Moon Rising
Proud Mary
I Put a Spell on You
Night Time Is the Right Time
Keep on Chooglin’
Susie Q 

*Janis Joplin 
Raise Your Hand
As Good As You've Been to This World
To Love Somebody
Summertime
Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)
Kozmic Blues
Can't Turn You Loose
Work Me, Lord
Piece of My Heart
Ball 'n' Chain 

*Sly & the Family Stone 
M'Lady
Sing a Simple Song
You Can Make It If You Try
Everyday People
Dance to The Music
Music Lover
I Want to Take You Higher
Love City
Stand! 

*The Who 
Heaven and Hell
I Can't Explain
It's a Boy
1921
Amazing Journey
Sparks
Eyesight to the Blind
Christmas
Acid Queen
Pinball Wizard w/ Abbie Hoffman incident
Do You Think It's Alright?
Fiddle About
There's a Doctor
Go to the Mirror
Smash the Mirror
I'm Free
Tommy's Holiday Camp
We're Not Gonna Take It
See Me, Feel Me
Summertime Blues
Shakin' All Over
My Generation

Here is where Saturday ended during the weekend back in 1969.  We are continuing tonight with the first bit of Sunday in order to fit everything in within our schedule this year.

*Jefferson Airplane 
The Other Side of This Life
Somebody to Love
3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds
Won't You Try/Saturday Afternoon
Eskimo Blue Day
Plastic Fantastic Lover
Wooden Ships
Uncle Sam Blues
Volunteers
The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil
Come Back Baby
White Rabbit
The House at Pooneil Corners

*Joe Cocker
Dear Landlord
Something Comin' On
Do I Still Figure in Your Life
Feelin' Alright
Just Like a Woman
Let's Go Get Stoned

Sunday, August 26, 2:00 – 9:00 PM

*Joe Cocker (continued)
I Don't Need a Doctor
I Shall Be Released
Hitchcock Railway
Something to Say
With a Little Help from My Friends

Country Joe and the Fish
Rock & Soul Music
(Thing Called) Love
Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine
Summer Dresses
Silver and Gold
Love Machine
Rock & Soul Music (Reprise)

Ten Years After
I’m Going Home

*The Band
Chest Fever
Don’t Do It
Tears of Rage
We Can Talk
Long Black Veil
Don’t Ya Tell Henry
Ain’t No More Cane
This Wheel’s on Fire
I Shall Be Released
The Weight
Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever

*Johnny Winter
Mama, Talk to Your Daughter
Leland Mississippi Blues
Mean Town Blues
You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now / Mean Mistreater
Can't Stand It (with Edgar Winter)
Tobacco Road (with Edgar Winter)
Tell the Truth (with Edgar Winter)
Johnny B. Goode

Blood, Sweat & Tears
More and More
Something Comin On
Spinning Wheel
You've Made Me So Very Happy

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
Suite: Judy Blue Eyes
Blackbird
Guinnevere
Marrakesh Express
4 + 20
Sea of Madness
Wooden Ships
Find the Cost of Freedom

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
No Amount of Loving
Driftin'
Morning Sunrise
Love March
Everything's Gonna Be Alright

Sha-Na-Na
Get a Job
Teen Angel
Wipe Out
(Who Wrote) The Book of Love
Duke of Earl
At the Hop
Get a Job (reprise)

Jimi Hendrix
Message to Love
Hear My Train A Comin'
Spanish Castle Magic
Red House
Lover Man
Foxy Lady
Jam Back at the House
Izabella
Fire
Voodoo Child (Slight Return)/Stepping Stone
The Star-Spangled Banner
Purple Haze
Woodstock Improvisation/Villanova Junction
Hey Joe

Notable Incidents You Will Hear This Weekend (All times are in SL time this weekend.) 

Arlo Guthrie’s Microphone (Friday, 8:17 PM)
Arlo Guthrie starts off his set with Coming Into Los Angeles but there is just one problem.  You can’t hear the vocals.  There was trouble with his microphone and it wasn’t until about a minute into his first song that the engineers fixed the problem.  You can barely hear him singing, probably through the microphone set up to pick up his guitar.  Despite the problem, this song did make the movie and the first soundtrack album released in 1970.  The song was begun in the middle, after the solo, going into the refrain.  Thus, the flawed part was edited out and only the second half of the song is used.  We will hear it in its entirety, failure and all.

Country Joe McDonald Stalls for Time (Saturday, 10:17 PM)
Joe McDonald was the front man for the band, Country Joe and the Fish.  After Quill finished their set, Santana was not ready to take the stage for theirs.  McDonald was reluctantly recruited to go on stage and do a few songs solo to placate the crowd.  He was not prepared to go on alone so he used the excuse that he had no guitar.  One was located backstage, so he then used the excuse that he had no guitar strap.  A piece of rope was tied to the guitar and he had run out of excuses.  Joe McDonald improvised a solo set and it included one of the most memorable moments of the weekend.  He got the crowd worked up.  “Give me an F…  Give me a U…  Give me a C… Give me a K…  What’s that spell? [FUCK] What’s that spell? [FUCK]…

Yeah, c’mon on all you big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He’s got himself in a terrible jam
way down yonder in Vietnam,
so put down your books and pick up a gun.
We’re gonna have a whole lot of fun.
And it’s 1, 2, 3, what’re we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn;
next stop is Vietnam.

Part way through the song he addresses the crowd. “Listen people, I don't know how you expect to ever stop the war if you can't sing any better than that. There's about 300,000 of you fuckers out there…”

Joe McDonald with a rope guitar strap, improvises and stalls for time

Bob Hite of Canned Heat has to Pee (Saturday, 12:01 PM)
Canned Heat took the stage and lead singer, Bob Hite, announced to the crowd, “…There is only one thing I wish, I sure gotta pee!”  It was a direct reference to the lack of adequate sanitary facilities at the concert.  It should also be noted that just before introducing them, Chip Monck, the emcee, remarked about how well they were holding up with the help of the US Army. 

The Grateful Dead are Delayed (Saturday, 1:34 PM)
The Grateful Dead were supposed to take the stage after Mountain.  Well, several things kept that from happening. First, the switching between bands was supposed to be facilitated by a turntable type stage.  While one band was on stage (in front), they could be setting up the next one backstage.  The mechanism failed and they had to manual set up the Grateful Dead’s stage.  Furthermore, the stage had flooded due to rain and this was causing all sorts of grounding issues and there were safety concerns.  While there was time to kill on stage, Jerry Garcia, along with Joe McDonald, addressed the crowd and gave their advice about the bad acid that was going around.

The Dead at Woodstock

The Grateful Dead End Early (Saturday, 2:34 PM)
The fear about the water and electrical systems may have been well founded. As they ended a monster rendition (over 37 minutes long) of Turn on Your Love Light, a loud bang can be heard as they blew their stage amplifiers and had to end their set early. 

Abbie Hoffman Crashes the Stage on the Who (Saturday, 5:44 PM)
Abbie Hoffman was a notable 60’s activist and radical who was always controversial and often in trouble with the law.  Between Sly and the Family Stone and the Who, Hoffman had addressed the “politics of the situation” with an angry rant (6:11 PM) about the plight of John Sinclair, manager of Detroit rock band, the MC5.  Sinclair was serving a ten year prison term in Michigan for possessing two joints of marijuana.  After the Who was part of the way through their set and tuning their instruments, Hoffman crashed the stage, taking the microphone from Roger Daltry.  He began another stoned rant about Sinclair saying, “I think this is a pile of shit while John Sinclair rots in prison.”  Pete Townsend then attacked Hoffman, hitting him over the head with his guitar.  Townsend can plainly be heard saying, “Fuck! Off my fucking stage!” The Who then went on to Pinball Wizard. 

Breakfast in Bed for 400,000 (Saturday, 6:34 PM)
Sunday morning, after Jefferson Airplane had finished their set, Hog Farm leader, Wavy Gravy (Hugh Romney), took to the stage and addressed the crowd.  “What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000.” (To fit the schedule this year, we are present the first act of Sunday in 1969 at the End of our Saturday Set.)

Max Yasgur Addresses the Crowd (Saturday, 8:16 PM)
When the original location for the festival fell through, weeks before the concert, Max Yasgur, a local dairy farmer, made his 600 acre farm available.  It was only fitting that he got his few minutes of fame and got to address the crowd.  An older looking man, who looked very out of place, wearing black plastic rimmed glasses, took the stage.  There was no less hip person in the place, yet he sang the praises of the concert attendees.  It was another wonderful Woodstock moment.  Joe Cocker took the stage after him and dedicated his first song to him. “And we’re going to do this um this little number to start off with, the title suggests that farming guy who just came out, did you see that nice little bloke…"

Max Yasgur

Yasgur would later be immortalized in Joni Mitchell’s classic song, made famous by CSNY, Woodstock.

I came upon a child of God,
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, "Where are you going?"
And this he told me...

I'm going on down to Yasgur's Farm,
I'm gonna join in a rock and roll band.
I'm gonna camp out on the land.
I'm gonna get my soul free.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young are Scared Shitless (Sunday, 6:00 PM)
Although all four were seasoned concert performers with other bands, this was only the second time that CSNY had played in front of people and the crowd happened to be 400,000.  After finishing their opening number, Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Stephen Stills admits, “Thank you, we needed that.  This is the second time we've ever played in front of people, man. We're scared shitless."

Emcee, Chip Monck, Closes the Festival (Sunday, 8:56 PM)
Chip Monck was the voice of Woodstock.  His voice filled the void between sets with announcements, messages, directions and warnings about the brown acid.  He worked relentlessly all three days.  The thing is that he was hired to build and operate the stage lighting for the event.  After he designed and built it, the location of the concert changed and the stage was built to different specifications to accommodate the new space.  The new roof over the stage was not compatible with the lighting design Monck had worked ten weeks building.  There was actually no stage lighting at Woodstock.  Only follow spots, operated from those towers that ironically Monck kept warning people about all weekend long.

Michael Lang realized at the last minute that he never hired an emcee, but there was Chip Monck, a man he had already paid $7000 and who no longer had a function.  Thus, Woodstock became the only concert in history to have the lighting director supplying some of the most famous quotes.

What the Hell is the Hog Farm?

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 8:32 PM SL time.)  So, who are these hog farmers?

Hog Farmers ride their psychedelic bus at Woodstock back in  1969

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.

Aretha Franklin (1942-2018)

In Loving Memory...

Aretha Louise Franklin

(March 25, 1942 - August 16, 2018)

The Queen of Soul  

Johnny Lunchbreak

One day, back in 2004, I was cruising through one of the online bulletin boards I was a member of.  This particular board catered to those who had a love of psychedelic music or “psych heads” as we were beginning to be called.  One particular post caught my attention for some reason that day.  It was a cry for help.  The author had come across an old record labeled “Johnny Lunchbreak, Acetate: 1974/1975.”  Included in the jacket was a photo (shown above), presumably of the band, and a psychedelic drawing.  The poster had no further information on Johnny Lunchbreak and he wanted our help in finding out more, maybe even locating one of them. 

For the record (pun fully intended), an acetate is a type of record that can be easily made, one at a time, from any audio source.   This gave record companies the ability to release one or two copies of something without having to set up the vinyl process involving plates to be used in pressing, etc.  The acetate material was placed on a round aluminum disk and a lathe, looking like a phonograph, would cut the groves into the material.  It would then be lacquered to preserve it.  The downside was that these records didn’t last and were temporary at best.

The author of the post also included a download of an mp3 he had made from one of the songs on the acetate, Tinsel Days.  I listened to this mp3 file and it was a bit crackly but not too bad for a 30 year old acetate.  Despite the noise, I could hear the music of two guitars, one acoustic and one electric.  The bass and drums were tight and the singer had a very pleasant voice.  The distorted guitar solo in the middle was very reminiscent of the psychedelic 60’s.  I was hooked.

So who were these guys who left behind nothing but a photo, one temporary record and an almost embarrassingly silly name, “Johnny Lunchbreak?”  The author of the post had come to the right place.  I posted the story to my blog at the time and another DJ friend I knew did so too.  This guy had unknowingly called up a beast, as this massive network of radio DJ’s, recording engineers, record producers and musicians put the word out.  Who is Johnny Lunchbreak?  Does anyone know anything about them?

It didn’t take long to get an answer and it came from a rather unexpected place, Sweden.  It was a guy there, looking closely at the psychedelic drawing.  He noticed that the artist had signed it and was able to make out the name.  Believe it or not, with a bit of detective work, he contacted the artist who in turn was able to contact at least one of the band members to let them know that their acetate had been found 30 years later.  Johnny Lunchbreak had been found in just a couple of days thanks to a global effort of music industry professionals and groupies.

Johnny Lunchbreak had been a band from Connecticut that only existed for less than two years back in 1974-1975.  They had only played on gig outside of the city of Hartford but were obviously serious about pursuing a recording contract or why cut the acetate?  The bigger question, I think, is why didn’t these talented young men make it?  Why hadn’t we heard of them over the previous 30 years?  Maybe it was that silly name that destined them not to be taken too seriously.

In about 2007, a record label, Zero Street Records, would take the acetate and release a limited edition, just 300 copies, of a Johnny Lunchbreak LP.  As time when on, the music industry network would locate the original master tapes and the Numero Group would officially release Appetizer/Soup’s On by Johnny Lunchbreak on CD and now as an mp3 download on places like Amazon.  Johnny Lunchbreak finally made it and have their recording contract.

We would also learn that the look and sound they were going for was the Bee Gees.  Looking at that picture, I can see that and listening to the music, I can hear the influence there too.  Join me tomorrow at a Woman’s Touch from 2-4 PM and you can judge for yourself.  I will play the original mp3 of the acetate that I downloaded in 2004 and then I’ll play the whole album as it has been released.

Fun Fact

It has come to light that the band had Johnny Lunchbreak lunchboxes made.  They never made their record back in the 70’s but their faces were on lunchboxes, one of which has turned up.  You can’t make this shit up.