And here is the introductory material not relating to the 1970 film.
Woodstock was the swan song for The '60s. It showed the dream of peace and understanding as working, combined with great music. But not long after, an attempt at a West Coast equivalent, a free concert at the Altamont Speedway headed up by The Rolling Stones, would end in tragedy — a man wound up getting killed by the Hells Angels, who had been hired as security. (This concert and its cruel outcome were chronicled the documentary Gimme Shelter.) The innocence that was the height of Woodstock would die and later attempts to recapture its spirit were all failures, including two Woodstock "sequels" in 1994 and 1999. The 1999 Woodstock became legendary for its audience rioting on the final night, which went completely against the spirit of the first, and showcased just how much society had moved to the other end of the Sliding Scale since the idealistic '60s.
In media depictions of Woodstock, fictional or otherwise, the Nostalgia Filter will be operating at full power. Characters flashing back to Woodstock will have all been Bohemian hippies, despite a large number of ordinary joes (many of them college students) and returning Vietnam vets. Traffic jams and overpriced concessions (while they lasted) will be replaced by camping out in vans and everybody sharing out of a sense of peace and love. The filthy conditions will be either ignored or romanticized as free-spirited youth playing in the mud. The music will be Nothing but Hits, despite the lineup consisting of five or six headliners and dozens of forgettable and not-yet-famous bands.note
Despite all this, however, such depictions still capture the most important thing about the festival: its transformative effect on all who were there. To this day the original is regarded as a Crowning Moment Of Awesome among people, showing them living happy and in peace among each other.
The page for Woodstock seems to have been used for both the 1970 film and the three different festivals. This is not correct: the article is in the Film namespace. I am including the tropes below should they need to be placed in a possible Useful Notes page.
- Artifact Title: The event was originally going to take place in the actual town of Woodstock, but the landowner where they hoped to host it refused to rent the land. It then moved to another farmnote , who eventually backed out, forcing the event to be moved to Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel (a 90 minute drive from Woodstock). The legacy of the concert has been a mixed blessing for Woodstock proper, which has to put up with misinformed tourists flooding the town looking for the concert site, but at least they're willing to buy lots of tie-dye and posters before they head down to Bethel.
- Inverted in 1994, when it was held in Saugerties, directly east of Woodstock. But invoked harder in 1999: it was staged in Rome, New York, hundreds of miles from Woodstock and Bethel.
- Berserk Button: Yes, even the original Woodstock had an incident of this: Trying to keep things political and relevant, Abbie Hoffman leaped onto the stage during The Who's set to make a short speech
about poet John Sinclair
's imprisonment for marijuana and got booted off the stage by (and received a Precision F-Strike from) Pete Townshend.
- Another Precision F-Strike came from Neil Young toward the camera crew which he felt was intrusive. Feeling he was there to play, not to show off the way Stephen Stills was doing, Young threatened to smash his guitar over the head of anyone who came near him with a camera. note He can be heard on the album singing "Sea of Madness", but this actually wasn't recorded at Woodstock! It is from a concert at the Fillmore East dance hall a few days earlier.
- Darker and Edgier: Woodstock 1999 compared to the original Woodstock.
- Erudite Stoner: Quite a few show up in the crew.
- From Bad to Worse: The legendarily horrific Woodstock '99: overbooked, overpriced and poorly planned, all taking place in record heat. The setlist of bands known for aggressive music only encouraged the bad mood and by the middle of the second day, the crowd's anger exploded into bonfires (with, ironically, candles intended for a vigil), vandalism, gang rape and brutality.
- Happily Married: The young couple in the foreground in the iconic photo decorating the album cover are Nick Ercoline and his fiancee Bobbi Kelley. They married two months later... and they are
still together.
- Long Title: The festival's full name was The Woodstock Music & Art Fair Presents An Aquarian Exposition.
- New-Age Retro Hippie: Yeah, there were a few who went. They wouldn't have been "retro" at the time, though. What the festival did inspire was a vast amount of hippie style merchandise — clothing, jewelry, accessories, incense and essential oils, sandals and shoes, posters, black lights, smoking paraphernalia, underground comix, books by poets like Richard Brautigan, The Whole Earth Catalog, and on and on. These things were already available at head shops and college bookstores, but for a few years they were actually mainstream. This lasted into the mid-70s — the true "retro" era — and can still be found in hippie emporiums online and off, for today's retro or "boho" hippies.
- Precision F-Strike: Probably the most famous one of all time, on the level of Crowning F-Strike of Awesome, from Country Joe McDonald "GIMME AN F!!! GIMME A U!!! GIMME A C!!! GIMME A K!!! WHAT'S THAT SPELL!!!" And the audience cheerily telling him what it spells.
- The '60s: Some of the most noted events and it really sums up the spirit of the decade.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Compare the original Woodstock to the 1999 version, and you should have a grasp of the hippie idealism of The '60s versus the grunge cynicism of The '90s.
- The '99 version also fell victim to bad logistics in terms of setting,note necessary supplies, etc.
- War Is Hell: A lot of protesting against the Vietnam War can be heard.
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