In April 1962: Ray Charles successfully combined country music with soul and crosses into the pop realm with the album “Modern Sounds In Country & Western Music” – the #1 album of 1962.
April Music et al
LSD
In April, 1966: Sandoz Pharmaceutical recalled the LSD it had previously distributed and withdrew its sponsorship for work with LSD. (see September 1966)
April Music et al
Future Woodstock Performers
In April 1967: Country Joe (age 25 ) and the Fish released first album, Electric Music for the Mind and Body. (see May 12)
April Music et al
Ken Kesey
In April 1967: Ken Kesey re-tried. Hung jury. Pled guilty to a lesser charge. Given 6 months on work farm. (2015 San Francisco Chronical article) (see June 1967)
The Road to Bethel
In April 1969: Allan Mann met with Elliot Tiber who offered a barn for a theater from free if Mann would rent a nearby 6-room Victorian for the summer for $800. Paul Johnson, a friend of Mann, agreed to put the down payment of $200 for the house in exchange for a room there for the summer. [keep in mind, this agreement was made before Wallkill evicted the festival.
From theWoodstock Preservation site: By this time it was April and I was broke and was looking through the Village Voice for a job when I saw Elliot Tiber’s ad for a summer barn theater for free. If I was going to develop a world class theater company on the level of The Open Theater, The Living Theater and The Polish Mime Theater it certainly would be beneficial to get the performers out of the city to a place where we could work intensively together with minimum distractions and form a communal theater company that eventually would be the basis for an entire tribal arts complex. So I called Elliot to make an appointment to go up to White Lake and got my friend Paul Johnson to drive me and Jane up there.
The agreement would result in the Earthlight Theatre Troupe who would be in the right place at the right time when Wallkill evicted Woodstock Ventures and Ventures relocated to Bethel. (see Apr 1)
If you look around his web page, you’d never know that Richard Festinger played guitar with Joan Baez at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.
You would find out that on April 8, 2017 the Boston Musica Viva performed his A Serenade for Six at 8:00 pm, Edward Pickman Hall, Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA.
Composer Richard Festinger
World-renowned
You would also find that “Richard Festinger’s music has been performed throughout the United States, and in Europe and Asia. His works have been composed for numerous ensembles, including Parnassus, Earplay, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Alexander String Quartet, the City Winds, the Laurel Trio, the Left Coast Ensemble, the Alter Ego Ensemble,…”
The list continues on for several more lines.
Composer Richard Festinger
Uptown circles
How does one go from Woodstock to there? Not all historic events are personally historic and perhaps Woodstock wasn’t so much a turning point, as simply a stop along the way.
Restinger was born on March 1, 1948 in Newton, Massachusetts. Josh Levin in a 2010 article in Journal of he Society for American Music wrote that Restinger “has been a well-respected figure on the American contemporary music scene for three decades, especially in the ‘uptown’ circles of New York City and in his native San Francisco Bay area.”
Composer Richard Festinger
Post Woodstock
After Woodstock, according to Wikipedia, “intent on pursuing a performing career in jazz, he attended the Berklee School of Music in Boston, where he studied composition with Herb Pomeroy and improvisation with Gary Burton.”
He was there between 1970 and 1972.
He returned to California in 1972 where he had previously studied at Stanford University between 1965 and 1968 and in 1976 received a BM from San Francisco University.
Composer Richard Festinger
More degrees
He continued his studies and received an MA in Music Composition from the University of California, Berkeley in June 1978 and five years later his Ph.D in Music Composition also from Berkeley.
Composer Richard Festinger
Full CV
His complete CV is at his site. It is an amazing listing of outstanding accomplishments: administrative positions, positions held, a list of works (dozens), published music, recordings, grants, awards, honors, and residencies.
He was the Composer in Residence, Bogliasco Foundation, Liguria Study Center for Arts and Letters, Bogliasco, Italy, October-November 2016.
And on October 22, 2018, the Fromm Music Foundation announced that it had awarded a 2018 Fromm Commission to Richard Festinger to compose a work for chorus and orchestra for the Boston based Cantata Singers.
My Woodstock story is a straightforward one. High school friend Tony and I left NJ and got close to the site on Friday night, walked in on Saturday morning, and hitch-hiked back to the car on Sunday afternoon.
I had borrowed my girlfriend’s father’s 35mm camera and his binoculars. I bought one roll of Kodachrome slide film and loaded it into the camera.
As Tony and I walked toward Bethel and the site on Saturday morning I took a few pictures. On Saturday I took several more. Once during the night I took a picture. I finished the roll on Sunday before we left. A few times I experimented and put the binoculars up to the camera’s lens and improvised a telephoto lens.
Tony and I hardly moved the time we were there. We staked out our 8-foot square and only left a few times in an unsuccessful search for food and to use the porta-johns.
Here are those pictures. Click on the picture to “open” it up and see a larger size.
It was a foggy misty Sullivan County, NY morning. It is interesting today when I show these Rt 17B pictures to friends and guest at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts Museum, what they see. Many love looking at the cars and tell me how they had that model or how their neighbor had one like it.
More parked cars. Traffic was literally at a standstill. The time was approximately 7 AM
We would ask people, “How much farther?” and their answer always was, “Just up ahead.”
We do not have one picture of ourselves that weekend other than this picture which includes the back of Tony (blue shirt carrying a sleeping bag). We were getting closer, but we didn’t realize it.
While most locals were unhappy with the traffic and idea of a rock festival, these enterprising people set up a hot dog and soda stand. $1 a dog; $1 a soda. We decided to wait than pay such a high price.
We found a spot a hundred yards + from the stage toward the left, spread out our sleeping bags, and sat down. This guy was in front of us. His hat and umbrella were unusual to me, so I took his picture. The umbrella was a parasol for the sunny afternoon. Saturday was a beautiful day.
Most of my pictures, as you’ll see, were simply of the crowd.
Two lighting towers and the still unfinished artists tent in the background. Enlarge this picture and count the number of rugby (wide-striped) shirts. Now see if you can find any tie-dyed shirts.
Quill. Saturday’s opening act. This is one of the shots through my binoculars.
When you get tired of group shots, you take a picture of a balloon. In the distance you can see one of the large tent areas that another farmers rented space for.
I often ask people to “look for the hippies” in these pictures. You won’t see many.
After Santana finished “Soul Sacrifice” 500,000 people stood to cheer, applaud, stomp, shout, and whistle. It was a physical event. I stood and took two pictures. This one and the next.
The pink and white tent in the background is the hospital tent. Ask people what the most common medical issue was that weekend and most will answer, “Drug-related.” While that was an issue, the fact that soda and beer cans had pop tops that came off completely and often were thrown on the ground meant that many bare-footed people cut their feet. That was the most common medical issue.
Not a crowd shot, but simple a pack of Marlboro and peace pillow on top of the typical sleeping bag many of us brought. Notice the bare feet.
Another crowd shot. Perhaps there was a reason why, but it’s lost in my memory.When I try to explain who was at the festival, I sometimes half-jokingly say, “White kids getting sunburned.”
Everyone was high? Not quite, but these friendly people offered a hit to Tony and me. We politely declined.
This lucky guy scored a can of soda. Now he has to find his way back.
Yet another crowd shot. Check again for the rugby shirts v any tie-dyed shirts.
Evening. Hungry. We meandered to the Food for Love tents. Empty. Neither food nor love.
The one night shot. Pretty sure it’s Mountain playing. Note the lighting on the left along the wooden walkway built for staff and musicians to get from the other side of the road to the staging area.
The Who had finished, the misty Sunday sunrise appeared, and the Jefferson Airplane would close Saturdays 22-hour marathon of music.
Some Sunday risers while some still sleep in their blow-up tents. Striped shirt @ 1 o’clock!
More Sunday morning risers with an abandoned tee-pee framework. And can you see the bubble? It’s why I took the picture.
Waiting for Sunday’s music to begin. A Hare Krishna person in the middle.
Click for sure to enlarge and read the sign of this guy who walked around with his banner–“Love Your Animal Friends, Don’t Eat Them.” His name was Moonfire.
Sunday music began with Joe Cocker. One of those binocular shots.
My last shot. This woman had the largest afro I’d ever seen and it was bleached white besides. Nope. I later found out it’s a wig. Note the kid (headband) sitting on his Jeep seat. I call him the smartest person at Woodstock because he was the only one with a seat!
Woodstock Music Art Fair Pictures
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
