All posts by Woodstock Whisperer

Attended the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969, became an educator for 35 years after graduation from college, and am retired now and often volunteer at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts which is on the site of that 1969 festival.
Festivals, Music et al, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Almost Woodstock

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Almost Woodstock

Almost Woodstock

Woodstock Ventures was on the gasping last lap of getting their festival set up whether they liked it or not Having to physically move what they could from Wallkill to Bethel and  having to redo much of what they had already done there took patience, fortitude, and good fortune.

Almost Woodstock

Monday 11 August 1969

  • John Roberts was one of the four partners of Woodstock Ventures. His family owned Block Pharmaceutical and his trust fund financed the festival.  As of that afternoon’s accounting, Woodstock Ventures had posted receipt of advance ticket sales totaling $1,107,936. Woodstock Ventures (i.e., John Roberts) had spent nearly twice that sum
  • workers bolted telephone poles into place around stage. Some poles were split or rotten.
  • Woodstock Ventures came to agreement with William Filippini for use of Filippini Pond. The agreement may have been $5000.
Almost Woodstock Music Art Fair

Tuesday 12 August 1969

Continued legal challenges
  • festival representatives met with the state supreme court justice regarding complaints by local businesses about the festival’s impact on them.  After reassurances and explanations, local businesses dropped all complaints.
  • the main concession providing food was Food for Love was not yet ready.
Almost Woodstock

Wednesday 13 August 1969

More issues
  • nearly 30,000 people had shown up for festival and were in the “bowl.” Bill Hanley,  sound-man extraordinaire [see also Last Seat],  pulled his sound truck into the service road behind the stage, plugged in some equipment to a portable amplifier, and piped prerecorded music for the crowd.
  • staff technicians noticed a drop in water pressure throughout site. Audience members had accidentally stepped on and cracked plastic pipes. Staff made repairs.
  • John Roberts, with his father and brother, arrived on site to discover that there were no ticket booths for the 30,000 people already on-site.
  • the suit against the festival was withdrawn after a promise of police protection for the residents was agreed to.
  • construction of the pedestrian bridge over West Shore Road trapped the $200 an hour crane. 
  • NYC Police Commissioner Howard Leary reminded all NYC police officers: no  “moonlighting.”
  • NY State Police “randomly” stopped and frisked young people in cars at the Harriman interchange on NY State Thruway. Drivers, passengers, and cars were checked for anything illegal.
Almost Woodstock

Thursday 14 August 1969

The day before
  • NY State Police continue to randomly stop and frisk young drivers at the Harriman interchange. 150 arrests made.
  • Bill Hanley’s sound system erected. “According to one expert’s eye, the hi-fi equipment in the bowl represented the most expensive sound system ever assembled at one time in any given location.”
  • Bill Abruzzi, doctor hired to take care of medical issues at the festival, told festival to triple his supply order.
  • although warned not to, about 270 NYC police arrived but insisted Woodstock Ventures pay cash. They worked using aliases.
  • Food For Love demanded all profits after repaying the initial $75,00 fee. Woodstock Ventures agreed.
  • film deal reached: 50% split. Warner Brothers and Woodstock Ventures after negative costs. On Friday, Michael Wadleigh signed on as director.
  • the Diamond Horseshoe, where nearly 200 Woodstock staff had been staying, caught fire.  Hotel staff extinguished the fire because the fire department couldn’t get through.

Is there gas in the car?

Yes there’s gas in the car!

You are still an outlaw in their eyes

Almost Woodstock

Music et al, Today in history

Rickenbacker Electro String Instrument

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Rickenbacker Electro String Instrument

Patented August 10, 1937
Tom Morillo demonstrating some electric guitar techniques
Rickenbacker Electro String Instrument
Rickenbacker Frying Pan
Rickenbacker Electro String Instrument

Acoustic guitar fine, but…

An acoustic guitar has many advantages. It is lightweight. It is portable. Manufacturers can make them inexpensively.

For centuries string-instruments held a high place among musicians.

Big bands…

In the early 20th century, big brass band became more popular and its powerful sound simply overpowered the acoustic guitar.

Enter electricity

As electricity increasingly became more accessible and a part of everyday life, inventors increasingly designed devices to use that power.

Electro String Instrument

On August 10, 1937, the United States Patent Office awarded Patent #2,089.171 to G.D. Beauchamp for an instrument known as the Rickenbacker Frying Pan.

Rickenbacker Electro String Instrument

Inventor G.D. Beauchamp, partnered with Adolph Rickenbacher in the Electro String Instrument Corporation of Los Angeles, California. They had spent more than five years pursuing his patent on the Frying Pan.

A telephone or a guitar?

The idea was a simple one. Simple to understand. Complicated to design. An electro-magnet placed near a vibrating string will pick up and amplify that vibration.

A problem that Beauchamp and Rickenbacker faced was the telephone worked in a very similar manner. They had to revise the guitar’s design several times before the Patent Office accepted their guitar as a guitar and not a telephone.

Their design resembled a circular magnet that surrounded the strings. That design is no longer used.

The same, but different

All the things that a guitarist could do with an acoustic guitar to vary its sound could, of course, be done with an electric guitar, such as bending the strings.

What an acoustic guitar could not do (at least not at first and not without magnetic pickups) was color the sound.

The simple current set up by the vibrating string within the magnetic field is not enough to make a loud sound. An amplifier is necessary. Put some other electronics between the guitar and the amp and a rainbow of sounds is produced.

Here is additional information about the earliest days of the electric guitar.

Rickenbacker Electro String Instrument

Bob Dylan, Music et al, Music of the 60s

Another Side Bob Dylan

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Another Side Bob Dylan

Recorded in one session, June 9, 1964
Released on August 8, 1964

Another Side Bob Dylan

Another Side Bob Dylan

Bob’s other side

By 1964, Columbia realized that Bob Dylan was a star. Although his first album, the eponymous Bob Dylan, had barely sold in it’s first year (2,500 copies), Dylan’s song writing skills and reputation among fellow folk artists grew quickly.

Another Side of Bob Dylan was his fourth album and each one had been a step further in his development. That first album was not really “his” album, he having written only two of the thirteen songs.

This album was all his.

Another Side Bob Dylan

The tracks

Side one

  1. All I Really Want to Do
  2. Black Crow Blues
  3. Spanish Harlem Incident
  4. Chimes of Freedom
  5. I Shall Be Free No. 10
  6. To Romona

Side two

  1. Motorpsycho Nitemare
  2. My Back Pages
  3. I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)
  4. Ballad in Plain D
  5. It Ain’t Me Babe

Dylan was changing his tone. He said of this album that “there aren’t any finger-pointing songs.” His style was more poetic than previous works.

He served as pop music’s turn signal. A musician could be much more personal.

Another Side Bob Dylan

Maggie’s Farm

It will be at the 1965 Newport Folk that Dylan will take his public step away from folk-protest and go electric. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band will accompany him as well as the Newport boos.

He “…ain’t gonna’ work on Maggie’s Farm no more.”

And I thought the song was about some guy tired of farm work.

Another Side Bob Dylan

1965

Think of 1965. By December the Beatles will have released Rubber Soul and when the Beatles changed, bands and record companies followed. The bands perhaps as much as in self-expression as their search for success; the record companies in search of a better bottom line.

1964 Another Side Bob Dylan

To Ramona

When Dylan sang “To Ramona” at Newport in 1965 he introduced the song, he said, “This is called ‘To Ramona.’ Ramona. It’s just a name.”

Today we realize its much more than “just a name.”

Dylan’s relationship with New York City girlfriend and political muse Suzy Rotolo (see Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) had ended with a 1963 abortion. His ongoing relationship with Joan Baez, who had brought him to the attention of the Newport crowd in 1963, was fading was fading and she was much more than “just a name.”

All Music said the album was, “…one of his very best records, a lovely intimate affair.”

Everything passes

Everything changes

Just do what you think you should do

And someday, maybe

Who knows, baby

I’ll come and be cryin’ to you.

Another Side Bob Dylan