The most common question visitors to the Woodstock field ask is “Where was the stage?”
It is a simply enough question to answer when standing at the top of the field or in the field’s corner near Wayne Saward‘s monument: at the bottom toward the gravelly northeast section of the field.
Bethel Woods Center for the Arts has plans to erect a permanent marking of the stage area and the 2019 special exhibit in the Museum used some of the original stage’s plywood.
Where’s the Woodstock wood been?
Not where you’d think.
Woodstock Stage Discovered
Money not nostalgia
In the afterglow of the most famous festival in American (the world?) history, Woodstock Ventures wanted to clean up and move on as quickly as possible. Money worries and lawsuits were upon them and warranted their time.
Woodstock Stage Discovered
Steve Gold
Steve Gold was 15 in 1969 and had attended the concert. Five weeks later he was visiting the Robi-Lane bungalow colony his girlfriend Robin’s father owned in nearby Woodbourne, NY. Dad asked him to help unload wood panels from his truck. No fool Steve and knowing how to keep on both Robin’s Dad and Robin’s good side, Steve said sure.
Dad also happened to mention that the wood had come from the Woodstock Music and Art Fair stage.
Luckily, the story only sort of ends there.
Woodstock Stage Discovered
Reminiscences
As with many Woodstock alum, the Fair’s upcoming golden anniversary spurred old memories. And Steve Gold remembered unloading wood.
Entertainment had become part of his life. His professional career included stints as a concert promoter, entertainment marketing executive, a managing executive of The Saint, home of the famed Fillmore East and what was once the largest dance club in New York City, and executive director of the Palladium.
Woodstock Stage Discovered
Upstate trip
He and a friend took a ride to the site of the now sold bungalow colony. He thought he remembered where the wood would be, but it wasn’t there.
After a search around, they found what they were looking for. A paddle ball court.
Yup. That’s what the Robin’s Dad had used the wood for. The outside of the plywood was well-worn, but after removing nails and getting to the unexposed sides, Steve became surer and surer he had hit gold.
“We removed several panels to look for stage markings we had seen in hundreds of festival pictures and the Woodstock movie to identify it was the real deal,” he recounts. “I knew it had to be because of the Weyerhaeuser (lumber company) logos etched into the stage floor panels and because of the distinctively-colored paint splatters.”
Woodstock Stage Discovered
Confirmation
Weyerhaeuser tested some samples, they reported that the age of the pieces matched those of 1969.
Gold also took some of the panels to Wood Science Consulting, a company specializing in the engineering uses of wood and wood-based products. And after much testing, the wood was authenticated as the original flooring of the Woodstock stage.
Woodstock Stage Discovered
Charitable help
Gold and his two partners, Dave Marks and Randy Garcia, are selling pieces of the stage and some of the proceeds will be donated to charities benefiting Vietnam veterans, the homeless and the hungry, and gun law reform efforts established by families of mass shooting victims.
No time in human history has lacked innovation, but some eras seem to have a plethora of new technology. Of course, technology feeds on itself: inventors spinning a new technology into several new items.
Here is a list of the many technological advances that happened during the social revolution of the 1960s. Of course both fed on each other.
1960s Technological Milestones
Sound
Rudy Van Gelder
Van Gelder studio
February 7, 1960: Hank Mobley recorded his “Soul Station” album in Van Gelder Studios of Rudy Van Gelder in Englewood Cliffs, NJ. After having gained a reputation in the mid-Fifties for the quality of the recordings he made in the living room at his parents’ house in Hackensack, New Jersey, Van Gelder moved to a new facility in Englewood Cliffs in 1959. The structure was inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and bore some resemblance to a chapel, with 39-foot ceilings and fine acoustics. Critic Ira Gitler described the studio in The Space Book (1964) liner notes:”In the high-domed, wooden-beamed, brick-tiled, spare modernity of Rudy Van Gelder’s studio, one can get a feeling akin to religion“.
Stereo singles
April 4, 1960: RCA Victor Records announces that it will release all pop singles in mono and stereo simultaneously, the first record company to do so. Elvis Presley’s single, “Stuck on You,” is RCA’s first mono/stereo release.
Enoch Light/Terry Snyder
May 2 – 8, 1960: Enoch Light/Terry Snyder and the All Stars’ Persuasive Percussion was Billboard’s #1 stereo album. EnochHenry Light was a classical violinist, bandleader, and recording engineer.
As A & R chief and vice-president of Grand Award Records, he founded Command Records in 1959. Light’s name was prominent on many albums both as musician and producer. He is credited with being one of the first musicians to go to extreme lengths to create high-quality recordings that took full advantage of the technical capabilities of home audio equipment of the late 1950s and early 1960s, particularly stereo effects that bounced the sounds between the right and left channels (often described as “ping-pong”).
He also was the first to use the “gate fold” style album cover that became well-known with the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s album in 1967.
Compact cassette
August 30 – September 3, 1963: Dutch electronics company Philips introduced the compact cassette at the Berlin Radio Show (also known as the German Radio Exhibition or Internationale Funkausstellung). Its initial function was as a recording device; only later did prerecorded music become available.
Synthesizer
October 12 – 16, 1964: Robert A. Moog and Herbert A. Deutsch introduce and demonstrate their music synthesizer at the convention of the Audio Engineering Society in NYC.
Dolby noise reduction
August 20, 1967: The New York Times reported about a noise reduction system for album and tape recording developed by technicians Rayand D.W. Dolby. Elektra Records subsidiary, Checkmate Records became the first label to use the new Dolby process in its recordings.
1960s Technological Milestones
Space
Navigational satellite
April 13, 1960: the US launched the first U.S. navigational satellite, the Transit-1B on a Thor-Ablestar rocket. The Ablestar carried out the first engine restart in space to refine the orbit.. The payload, weighing 265 pounds, included 2 ultrastable oscillators, 2 telemetry transmitters and receivers, batteries and solar cells. The Transit system was designed to meet Navy’s need for accurately locating ballistic missile submarines and other ships. It achieved initial operational capability in 1964 and full capability in Oct 1968. Its navigational broadcasts were switched off deliberately on 31 Dec 1996. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had decided to rely on GPS alone for navigation and positioning, retired after more than 32 years of continuous, successful service to the U.S. Navy.
Relay 1
November 22, 1963: the Relay 1 first broadcast. It was to be a prerecorded address from the President Kennedy to the Japanese people, but was instead the announcement of the Kennedy’s assassination. Later that day, satellite carried a broadcast titled Record, Life of the Late John F. Kennedy, the first television program broadcast simultaneously in the U.S. and Japan.
Armstrong, Aldrin, & Collins
July 20, 1969: Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first men to walk on the moon. They then rendezvous with Michael Collins in the command module for the return to Earth.
1960s Technological Milestones
Communication
Push-button phone
November 18, 1963: the advent of the push-button phone, officially introduced in two Pennsylvania communities, Carnegie and Greensburg.
Instant replay
December 7, 1963: CBS Sports Director Tony Verna used a system he’d invented to enable a standard videotape machine to instantly replay during the Army-Navy game. It was used only once for a touchdown with TV commentator Lindsey Nelson advising viewers “Ladies and gentlemen, Army did not score again!”
TTY
In 1964: in California, deaf orthodontist Dr. James C. Marstersof Pasadena sent a teletype machine to deaf scientist Robert Weitbrecht, asking him to find a way to attach the TTY to the telephone system. Weitbrecht modified an acoustic coupler and birth to “Baudot,” a code that is still used in TTY communication.
April 30, 1964: TV sets would be drastically different after a ruling by the FCC stating that all TV receivers should be equipped to receive both VHF (channels 2-13) and the new UHF(channels 14-83). As a result, TV dealers scrambled to unload their VHF-only models as fast as possible. Antenna manufacturers were kept busy, as the new UHF receivers required new antennas too.
October 29, 1969: the Internet had its beginnings when the first host-to-host connection was made on the Arpanet – Advanced Research Projects Agency Network – an experimental military computer network – between UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, Calif.
1960s Technological Milestones
Miscellaneous
Astrodome
April 9, 1965: (from the AP) HOUSTON, Tex. — There was a bomb scare but President Johnson showed no concern Friday night as he and 47,876 other fans watched air conditioned baseball. An anonymous report that a bomb had been placed in the $31.6 million Harris County Domed Stadium proved false but it caused the President and the first lady to be late for the opening of the all-weather structure. They saw 7 1/2 innings as the Houston Astros opened their astrodome by beating the New York Yankees 2-1 in 12 innings. The President told newsmen he was impressed with the stadium, which permits professional baseball to move indoors for the first time. Because of the bomb scare, the presidential party watched the game from the private suite of Roy Hofheinz and R.E. (Bob) Smith, owner of the Astros. The suite is 30 feet above the right field pavilion and the crowd saw the President and Mrs. Johnson only through its windows. They did not go down on the playing field.
Pampers
April 27, 1965: R. C. Duncan was granted a patent for ‘Pampers’ disposable diapers.
Super 8 film
May 1, 1965: after press releases in April, Eastman Kodak Co. introduces its Super 8 film format at a public debut at the International Photography Exposition in New York. One of the main selling points: the plastic cartridge that made loading the film much easier.
Artificial Heart
December 3, 1967: surgeons in Cape Town, South Africa led by Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky, who lived 18 days with the new heart.
ATM
September 2, 1969: America’s first automatic teller machine (ATM) makes its public debut, dispensing cash to customers at Chemical Bank in Rockville Center, New York.
Old milestone on a sunny and lush green meadow at the shore of a small river near Freiburg, Germany
What makes something a “Cultural Milestone” is a subjective decision. I have collected those below, though I’m sure there are many others. Most of these are not technical milestones, the difference being that a technical milestone involves a thing that changes the way we live, whereas a cultural one signals an event that does the same.
Having said that, I do have examples that are both.
I have limited the list to the 1960s, because that is the star around which this blog about Peace, Love, Art, and Activism revolves.
1960s Cultural Milestones
Commerce
Etch-A-Sketch
July 12, 1960: the Etch A Sketch toy went on sale, using electrostatic charge and aluminum powder.
Hula-Hoop
March 5, 1963: the Hula-Hoop, the toy that became a huge fad across America when it was first marketed by Wham-O in 1958, was patented by the company’s co-founder, Arthur “Spud” Melin.
An estimated 25 million Hula-Hoops were sold in its first four months of production alone.
Walmart
July 2, 1962: Sam Walton opened the first Walmart store in Rogers, Ark.
Compact cassette
August 30 – September 3, 1963: Dutch electronics company Philips introduced the compact cassette at the Berlin Radio Show (also known as the German Radio Exhibition or Internationale Funkausstellung).
Its initial function was as a recording device; only later did prerecorded music become available.
Pampers
April 27, 1965: R. C. Duncan was granted a patent for ‘Pampers’ disposable diapers.
Super 8 film
May 1, 1965: after press releases in April, Eastman Kodak Co. introduces its Super 8 film format at a public debut at the International Photography Exposition in New York. One of the main selling points: the plastic cartridge that made loading the film much easier.
Bell-bottoms
March 11, 1969: Levi-Strauss started selling bell-bottomed jeans.
1960s Cultural Milestones
Media
Stereo FM
April 19, 1961: the Federal Communications Commission authorized regular FM stereo broadcasting starting on June 1, 1961.
Evening News
September 2, 1963: “The CBS Evening News” was lengthened from 15 to 30 minutes.
Jeopardy!
March 30, 1964: premiering in a daytime slot on NBC, “Jeopardy!” was one of the first quiz shows to reintroduce factual knowledge, including knowledge of sports and entertainment trivia as well as the arts, literature, and science, as the main source of questions. Seemingly reversing the logic of the big money quiz shows of the 1950s (e.g., “The 64,000 Question,” “Twenty-One”), producer Merv Griffin introduced a format in which the answers for questions are revealed and the contestants must phrase their response in the form of a question.
FM/AM
In July, 1964: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted a non-duplication rule prohibiting FM radio stations in cities of more than 100,000 people from merely running a simulcast of the programming from their AM counterparts. Stations fought the rule and delayed implementation.
Music synthesizer
October 12 – 16, 1964: Robert A. Moog and Herbert A. Deutsch introduce and demonstrate their music synthesizer at the convention of the Audio Engineering Society in NYC.
Star Trek
September 8, 1966: the TV series “Star Trek” premiered on NBC.
Smothers Brothers
February 5, 1967: the first episode of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour airs on CBS. The show pushed the boundaries of what was typically acceptable on television at that time.
Ozzie and Harriet
September 3, 1967: last episode of the TV show The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet airs on ABC. The show is still the longest running live-action (non-animated like The Simpsons) American sitcom in television history (14 Seasons, 435 Episodes).
The Smothers Brothers
September 10, 1967: the second season of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Show begins with Pete Seeger appearing for the first time in 17 years since his 1950s blacklisting. He sang Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, but CBS dropped the performance when Seeger refused to edit the obviously anti-Vietnam sentiments the old song presented.
Mr Rogers
February 19, 1968: Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood premiered on National Educational Television.
Host Fred Rogerscreated the half-hour educational children’s television series. It had originated in 1963 as Mister Rogers on CBC Television, and was later re-branded in 1966 as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and later Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on the regional Eastern Educational Network.
2001: A Space Odyssey
April 2, 1968: the science-fiction film “2001: A Space Odyssey” had its world premiere in Washington, D.C.
Laugh-In
January 22, 1968: “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” premiered on NBC. Thanks to an ever-changing cast of regulars including the likes of Dan Rowan, Dick Martin, Arte Johnson, Goldie Hawn, Ruth Buzzi, JoAnne Worley, Gary Owens, Alan Sues, Henry Gibson, Lily Tomlin, Richard Dawson, Judy Carne, the show became the highest-rated comedy series in TV history.
Hee Haw
June 15, 1969: the variety show “Hee Haw” premiered on CBS.
Sesame Street
November 10, 1969: “Sesame Street” made its broadcast debut. The show was the brainchild of Joan Ganz Cooney, a former documentary producer for public television. Cooney’s goal was to create programming for preschoolers that was both entertaining and educational. She also wanted to use TV as a way to help underprivileged 3- to 5- year-olds prepare for kindergarten.
1960s Cultural Milestones
Miscellaneous
National Fallout Shelter Sign
December 1, 1961: a press release by the Department of Defense stated: The National Fallout Shelter Sign will be a familiar sight in communities all over the United States next year. It will mark buildings and other facilities as areas where 50 or more persons can be sheltered from radioactive fallout resulting from a nuclear attack. The sign will be used only to mark Federally-approved buildings surveyed by architect-engineer firms under contract to the Department of Defense. The color combination, yellow and black, is considered as the most easily identified attention getter by psychologists in the graphic arts industry. The sign can be seen and recognized at distances up to 200 feet. The shelter symbol on the sign is a black circle set against a yellow rectangular background. Inside the circle, three yellow triangles are arranged in geometric pattern with the apex of the triangles pointing down. Below the fallout symbol, lettered in yellow against black, are the words FALLOUT SHELTER in plain block letters. Yellow directional arrows are located directly underneath the lettering which will indicate the location of the shelter.
Students for a Democratic Society
June 15, 1962: Students for a Democratic Society issued the Port Huron Statement at the conclusion of a five-day convention in Michigan. The 25,700-word statement “articulated the fundamental problems of American society and laid out a radical vision for a better future“. It issued a nonideological call for participatory democracy, “both as a means and an end“, based on non-violent civil disobedience and the idea that individual citizens could help make “those social decisions determining the quality and direction” of their lives. Also known as the “Agenda for a Generation”, it “brought the term ‘participatory democracy’ into the common parlance”
Manual Enterprises v. Day
June 25, 1962: Manual Enterprises v. Day: The United States Supreme Court ruled that photographs of nude men are not obscene, decriminalizing nude male pornographic magazines.
Zoning Improvement Plan
July 1, 1963: designed to help speed mail deliveries, the US Post Office put into effect its program to give every mailing address a number. The new system was called “zip code” (Zoning Improvement Plan).. The department mailed 72 million cards to every mailbox in the country. The card informed the addressee of their five-digit “zip code” number and provided a brief explanation of the system.
DWI
February 4, 1964: “The Role of the Drinking Driver in Traffic Accidents,” also known as the Grand Rapids Study, was published by Robert F. Borkenstein et al. for Indiana University’s Department of Police Administration. It stated that the probability of accident involvement increased rapidly at alcohol levels over .08 percent and became extremely high at levels over .15 percent. … Drivers with an alcohol level of .06 percent have an estimated probability of causing an accident double that of a sober driver. Drivers with .10 percent B.A.L. are from six to seven times as likely to cause an accident as one with .00 percent alcohol level. When the .15 percent alcohol level is reached, the probability of causing an accident is estimated at more than 25 times the probability for that of a sober driver.
Space Race
July 20, 1969: Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first men to walk on the moon. They then rendezvous with Michael Collins in the command module for the return to Earth.
1960s Cultural Milestones
Artists
Marilyn Monroe
May 19, 1962: Marilyn Monroe performed a sultry rendition of “Happy Birthday” for President John F. Kennedy during a fundraiser at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Andy Warhol
July 9, 1962: the first one-man exhibition for artist Andy Warhol opens at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, consisting of 32 silk-screened portraits of Campbell’s soup cans.
Woody Guthrie
October 3, 1967: Woody Guthrie died of complications of Huntington’s disease.
1960s Cultural Milestones
Counterculture
The Beatles
February 7, 1964: the Beatles arrive in the US and are greeted by thousands of screaming fans at NYC’s Kennedy Airport.
Youthquake
January 1, 1965: Diane Vreeland, Vogue magazine’s editor-in-chief, declared “The year’s in its youth, the youth in its year. Under 24 and over 90,000,000 strong in the U.S. alone. More dreamers. More doers. Here. Now. Youthquake 1965.”
Youthquake became the new fashion style replacing what seemed the staid and traditional syles that Boomer parents had worn.
Hippies
September 5, 1965: San Francisco writer Michael Fallon applied the term “hippie” to the SF counterculture in an article about the Blue Unicorn coffeehouse, where LEMAR (Legalize Marijuana) & the Sexual Freedom League met.
Summer of Love
In July 1967: the Summer of Love in San Francisco.
Doors
September 17, 1967: The Doors appear on The Ed Sullivan Show and perform “Light My Fire”. Sullivan had requested that the line “Girl we couldn’t get much higher” be changed for the show. Jim Morrison agreed, but ended up performing it the way it was written and The Doors are banned from the show.
The Who
September 17, 1966: The Who appeared on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. They played 2 songs, “I Can See For Miles” and “My Generation”. At the end of “My Generation”, Pete Townshend started smashing his amp and Keith Moon had his drum set rigged to explode which did cut Moon’s leg & singed Pete Townshend’s hair, along with doing damage to Townshend’s hearing.
Rosko
October 2, 1967: DJ Rosko of WOR-FM, the first NYC FM station to play rock music, resigned over corporate interference with his choices of music. (”When are we going to learn that controlling something does not take it out of the minds of people?” and declaring, ”In no way can I feel that I can continue my radio career by being dishonest with you.” He added that he would rather return to being a men’s-room attendant.
The Death of the Hippie
October 6, 1967: after many young people left the Haight-Ashbury at the end of a tumultuous, those remaining in the Haight wanted to commemorate the conclusion of the event. A mock funeral entitled “The Death of the Hippie” ceremony was staged on October 6, 1967, and organizer Mary Kasper explained: We wanted to signal that this was the end of it, to stay where you are, bring the revolution to where you live and don’t come here because it’s over and done with. [images]
October 17, 1967: the play, Hair premiered off-Broadway at the Public Theatre and ran for a limited engagement of six weeks. Although the production had a “tepid critical reception”, it was popular with audiences.
Hair/Cheetah
December 22, 1967: Chicago businessman Michael Butler was planning to run for the U.S. Senate on an anti-war platform. He watched the Public Theatre’s production of Hair several times and joined forces with Joe Papp to reproduce the show at another New York venue after the close of its run at the Public.
Papp and Butler first moved the show to The Cheetah, a discothèque at 53rd Street and Broadway. It ran for 45 performances.
Hair/Broadway
April 29, 1968: the rock musical Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical opened at the Biltmore Theater on Broadway. The inspiration to include nudity came when the authors saw an anti-war demonstration in Central Park where two men stripped naked as an expression of defiance and freedom, and they decided to incorporate the idea into the show. The show featured the songs ‘Aquarius / Let the Sunshine In’, ‘Good Morning Starshine’ and the title song. The production ran for 1,729 performances, closing on July 1st, 1972.
Rolling Stone magazine
October 18, 1967: the first issue of Rolling Stone magazine released with a cover dated Nov 9 and featuring a photograph of John Lennon in the film How I Won the War.
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What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?