YMMV / Wood Stock

• Awesome Music: Look at this list.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Sha Na Na's appearance. Not only were they an obscure, campy doo-wop cover band amid all the rock heavyweights, but they didn't even have a recording contract at the time. What's more, they were the second-to-last act on Monday morning, wedged between the electric Blues of Paul Butterfield and a searing Jimi Hendrix finale.^note They were supposed to play Saturday, but the rain forced some reorganizing of the schedule Even crazier still: it was Hendrix who recommended them to the festival organizers!
  • The New York Times ran an article called "Nightmare in the Catskills," calling the festival a filthy, mud-soaked "social catastrophe in the making," and the participants having "little more sanity than lemmings", featuring injuries, illnesses, drug overdoses, blah blah. The on-the-scene Times reporters had sent in much more positive, even glowing reports. When they realized that their paper was going to ignore their story and that editor Arthur Sulzberger had ordered all articles about Woodstock to focus on "civilization is doomed," they marched into his office and announced, "We quit!" When they explained, another article was written with a more upbeat tone cancelling out the previous one. It is called "Morning After at Bethel".
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Lighting and stage designer Edward "Chip" Monck was asked to be The Host of the '69 festival after the show started, when the organizers realized they needed someone to serve as emcee. Monck's calm, authoritative, almost Mid-Atlantic accented voice (he was from Massachusetts, and his father was English), plus his mustache, made him a memorable presence in the audio and film material, giving announcements about food and medical supplies, paging people, warning festivalgoers to stop climbing the lighting towers, and giving advisories about hazardous strains of LSD circulating among the crowd. Production manager John Morris ("It's a free concert from now on") and Hugh "Wavy Gravy" Romney ("What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000") of the Hog Farm Commune also helped with announcements and had some quotable moments as well.
• First Installment Wins:
  • Two very loosely-organized 10th anniversary shows in New York in 1979 (one at Madison Square Garden, the other at an equestrian track on Long Island) reunited a handful of the original participants (some played both shows) but got a very lukewarm reception.
  • The officially sanctioned Woodstock '94 had great sets from such acts as Metallica, Aerosmith, Bob Dylan (a huge get for the festival, since he had famously shunned the original), Green Day, Primus, and a career-making performance by Nine Inch Nails, but it's usually considered to be far inferior to the original, and as for Woodstock '99, well... (and that's not counting Woodstock 50 not even happening!)
  • Critics only praised Woodstock '99's less aggressive/non-metal acts, but all of these performances were both less remembered than 1994's and were completely overshadowed by the violence at the end of the festival. The more fondly remembered sets included Parliament-Funkadelic, The Tragically Hip, Jamiroquai, Los Lobos, G. Love & Special Sauce and one of James Brown's last great performances. The '99 festival was also notable as the first major American concert by Muse...who played on the "Emerging Artists Stage" to almost no attention.
• Franchise Original Sin: Woodstock '99 was widely criticized for excessive commercialization. The original was also driven by pure capitalism, as the organizers were seeking to raise money to open a recording studio. It was just forced into being a free concert after so many more people than usual showed up and tore down the fences to get in (potentially starting a riot if faced with a paywall), while 30 years later exorbitant prices up-front made the commercialist nature obvious (which did start a riot, as people not willing to be price-gouged for food and drinks became a Powder Keg Crowd).
  • In a cross-festival example, the conventional wisdom that Woodstock represented the zenith of the dream of The '60s, while the Altamont concert four months later represented the collapse of that dream, ignores that many of the problems in Altamont were also on Woodstock - a larger-than-expected crowd that became a logistical nightmare, a major traffic jam, people suffering bad LSD trips and even deaths. The question is, Woodstock's organizers did well in key areas like medical facilities that prevented a big disaster, while Altamont lacked on support facilities and the cost-cutting corner of hiring Hell's Angels as security ^note The San Francisco chapter had a history of doing that well... only the Oakland chapter was hired, who were known to be more violent and not as in to the music being performed wound up leading to disgruntled and angry bikers becoming aggressive towards both the audience and the performers, culminating in a man being stabbed to death right in front of the stage.
• Heartwarming Moments: Any scene in the movie where people are enjoying themselves, really.
  • The couple hugging each other wrapped in a blanket on the official album cover of the 1969 festival? Bartender/student Nick Ercoline and his fiancee, bank teller Bobbi Kelly, and as of 2019 on the 50th anniversary of the festival they are still Happily Married.
  • Various interviews of the locals who volunteered their time to help with food and supplies.
  • The Port-O-San maintenance worker (later identified in legal papers as Thomas Taggart^note His family sued the film producers for defamation, because they were not expecting his interview to appear in the movie), getting interviewed towards the end of the movie. The interviewer tells him "You're doing a good job." Taggart answers back "Thank you very much. Glad to do it for these kids. My son's here too and I got one over in Vietnam too. He's up in the DMZ right now with all the flying helicopters." In that answer, Taggart spoke to the experience of millions of American families who had kids in Vietnam (and kids at Woodstock). David Crosby would ask in the 20th Anniversary issue of Rolling Stone if Taggart's sons both got out okay.
  • In a meta sense, how the 1969 concert turned out. Due to every bad thing that could go wrong - the unexpected turnout of 500000 people overwhelming the gate, lack of food, lack of shelter for the bad weather, acts not showing up, half of everything getting covered in mud, the traffic jam that literally shut down most of the state, bad drugs, what have you - there was every likelihood this could have turned into a riot... and indeed Governor Nelson Rockefeller was this close to declaring an official emergency and calling in the National Guard.^note Some radio reports, going on rumors only, announced that he had. Instead, cooler heads on the ground prevailed^note The local police decided to not enforce drug laws, knowing full well they'd be overwhelmed and cause a riot if they did, a lot of locals pitched in to help, a lot of concert attendees helped where they could, and the festival ended with few deaths (most of them accidental) and with a general sense from all involved that they had survived an incredible, uplifting event. In hindsight, the "Woodstock Nation" moment was considered - happening at the end of a very chaotic decade - one of the few shining moments in modern American history.
  • Wavy Gravy: We must be in heaven, man.
  • Around 2 and a half hours in, John Sebastian sings a song about children (fittingly titled "Younger Generation") set to B-roll of kids being kids around the festival - and it sounds like he breaks down partway through - he asks for some Audience Participation or at least some moral support to see him through.
• Moment of Awesome: The Who's "See Me, Feel Me" scoring the sunrise!
  Listening to you I get the music
  Gazing at you I get the heat
  Following you I climb the mountain
  I get excitement at your feet
  Right behind you I see the millions
  On you I see the glory
  From you I get opinions
  From you I get the story...
• Signature Scene: Jimi Hendrix playing "The Star-Spangled Banner", not just for the festival or the movie, but, in some people's eyes, the entire decade of The '60s.
  • Also, the nun flashing the peace sign in the documentary. Barely one second of a freeze frame, and yet the most remembered moment of the film.

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