Category Archives: Music et al

Festivals, FM Radio, Music et al

Radio Woodstock

3 Comments

Radio Woodstock

Radio Woodstock

Radio Woodstock

AM Radio

I grew up in the 50s and early 60s listening to New York City’s pop radio stations WINS-AM (Murray the K), WABC-AM (Cousin Brucie), and WMCA-AM (B Mitchel Reed). In the hope of avoiding another advertisement and finding a hit song,  my constant switching of stations drove my parents crazy.     

The birth of FM rock stations in the late ’60s rescued and weaned me from that non-stop barrage of advertising and rapid chatter. 

Radio Woodstock

FM Rock arrives

It may seem like FM’s wonderful days of diverse music and sensible DJ commentary are long gone, but like Mom’s adage that if we “go looking for trouble, we’ll find it,” if you go looking for radio stations that still provide that satisfying mix of old, new, borrowed, and blue, you’ll find them.

And with today’s access to the internet, that search is not limited to the 30-mile circumference around your ears.

During the early summer of 1966, I saw a billboard about a new station. An FM station. WOR-FM. I found it and thought I’d found radio heaven, particularly since for the first few months of its existence there were no DJs…union issues. Just song after song after song. Its setlist was a lot like AM, but I didn’t know what was coming. 

A year later WOR decided that their DJs didn’t need choice. One of them, Rosko, resigned on the air. Shortly later, he moved to WNEW-FM which had become the station of choice for most Boomers seeking radio nirvana.

WNEW-FM and its amazing family of DJs are gone, but Woodstock Radio (located in Bearsville, NY — why is it that so many “Woodstock” things aren’t actually in Woodstock?) is a great choice today.

Radio Woodstock

April 29, 1980

WDST first aired on April 29, 1980 and described itself as  “public radio with commercials“. Though CHET-5 Broadcasting bought the station in 1993, Radio Woodstock continues to provide a great mix of music with DJs who don’t get in the way, but still have a voice.

In keeping with its famously known name associated with the Woodstock Music and Art Fair (held in Bethel, NY, not Woodstock, NY), WDST celebrated its 25th anniversary with the first Mountain Jam. Held every year since the first festival in 2004. That festival was a single day with a single stage. Nowadays, the event typically has three stages and takes place over 4 days.

Radio Woodstock

Mountain Jam 2020…COVID’ed

In 2019 the festival moved from Hunter Mountain, to  Bethel Woods Center for the Arts and tried to return for 2020.

2025

And for 2025 it’s back! This time at Belleayre Mountain in Highmount, NY.

Here’s a link: https://mountainjamfestival.com/

The music you love is still out there. Like finding trouble, just go look for it!
Happy birthday Radio Woodstock!

Anniversary, Beatles, Music et al, Today in history

Beatles Shakespeare

Leave a comment

Beatles Shakespeare

April 28, 1963
Excerpt of Paul and John speaking parts of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” from the Around the Beatles TV special.

The many roads musicians travel are not necessarily the weed, whites,  and wine-filled ones that fans imagine. The key to breaking through is exposure. Performances night after night can fine tune a group’s show and songs, but small venues provide small audiences.

True in the 60s as it is today, electronic media can reach far more ears and eyes than those nightly gigs. Given the chance, a group will jump, however reluctantly, onto whatever opportunity presents itself.

So it was for the Beatles.

Being able to perform songs was the obvious and key part. John, Paul, George, and Ringo did not realize that dressing up and performing Shakespeare was also part of deal.

Beatles Shakespeare

Around the Beatles

The morning of  April 28, 1963 the soon-to-be-Fab Four showed up at Rediffusion’s Wembley Studios, London.  They rehearsed and did a radio interview before the show’s taping.

The “story” was supposed to be set in the Globe Theatre in the round, thus the show’s name.

Jack Good was the director. He would later give us the TV show Shindig!.

From the Beatles Bible site: The Beatles took part in two segments in the show: a musical set and a spoof of Act V Scene I of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison also mimed a trumpet fanfare at the start of the show, before Ringo Starr appeared with a flag to set off a cannon ball. The group also introduced PJ Proby’s performance.

For the Shakespeare spoof, Lennon took the female role of Thisbe, McCartney played Pyramus, Harrison was Moonshine and Starr played Lion. Incidentally, McCartney later owned a cat he named Thisbe.

Beatles Shakespeare
Ringo setting off the cannon at the show’s start

The Beatles lip-synced Twist And Shout, Roll Over Beethoven, I Wanna Be Your Man, Long Tall Sally, Can’t Buy Me Love, and did a medley that included: Love Me Do, Please Please Me, From Me To You, She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand. They closed with their cover of the The Isley Brothers’ Shout, the only time their performance  of the song was recorded.

The show aired on May 6, 1964.

Beatles Shakespeare

PJ Proby

Ironically, the person who got the biggest immediate media bump was American singer PJ Proby who performed “Walking the Dog” and “Cumberland Gap.”  

Birthdays, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

CCR Stuart Stu Cook

Leave a comment

CCR Stuart Stu Cook

Woodstock alum
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee
April 25–Happy birthday!
CCR Stuart Alden Stu Cook
Stu Cook at Woodstock
CCR Stuart Stu Cook

Stuart’s Start

Stuart Alden Cook was born on April 25, 1945. His first instrument was the trumpet, but when he, John Fogerty, and Doug Clifford formed the Blue Velvets in high school, Cook switched to rhythm guitar.

At a point he bought a bass and decided that was the instrument for him. In a 2014 interview in Bassplayer, Cook said, “I liked bass—you played one note at a time, and you got paid as much as everybody else!”

CCR Stuart Stu Cook

Creedence Clearwater Revival

Creedence Clearwater Revival’s success was not an overnight one, but once it arrived the four members rode a tsunami of hits which included a performance at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969.

Internal personnel issues arose and Creedence broke up in 1972. Stu Cook and Doug Clifford, friends since high school, formed a production company. They also joined the Don Harrison Band, which released two albums (1976, The Don Harrison Band  and Red Hot in 1977).

The performance of Creedence’s music had gone away. John Fogerty didn’t perform the music until the end of the 1980s and his estranged brother Tom died in 1990. 

Creedence Clearwater Revival was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, but “leader” John Fogerty in an unusual move did not invite Stu Cook or Cosmo Clifford to join him playing. John explained in a 2015 Rolling Stone article, “at the end, when everybody’s onstage, jamming, if we all happen to be onstage, that’s fine. I’m just not going to stand on a stage with those people, three in a row, play our songs, and be presented as a band — particularly because these guys just sold their rights in that band to my worst enemy. I also made it very clear that if I didn’t play at all, that was fine too.”

CCR Stuart Stu Cook

CCR forms

CCR Stuart Alden Stu Cook

In 1995 Stu Cook and Doug Clifford formed Creedence Clearwater Revisited and after a court battle regarding the name continues as such today, a testament to the power and popularity of the music.

From AllMusic: Suffice it to say that these guys are singularly unlikely to ever be a major creative force (or even part of one) in rock music the way they were…, and the chance of anything new or fresh issuing forth from them is practically nil. But that’s also true of Chuck Berry and a lot of other names bigger than Cook or Clifford, and CCRevisited does put on a good show, and crowds looking for good-time rock & roll music enjoy them, the same way that Rob Grill & the Grass Roots or whatever version of “Herman’s Hermits” Peter Noone is fronting can pull 15,000 to an outdoor venue on a decent summer night. At least CCRevisited doesn’t pretend to be anything more than what it is, even if they’re not too much more than a flesh-and-blood jukebox.” 

CCR Stuart Stu Cook

Nowadays

From the CCR site, “About the current state of affairs Stu says, “There’s still some meat on the bone, baby.””

CCR Stuart Stu Cook