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Mel Lawrence Woodstock

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Mel Lawrence Woodstock

Remembering Mel
May 17, 1935 – November 5, 2016

Mel Lawrence already had a long list of credits to his name before Woodstock Ventures hired him to be its Director of Operations (or what he jokingly referred to as “Fences and Shitters”) for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.

Mel Lawrence Woodstock

From the top

After a stint in the Army and attending Long Island University (received a BS in Speech Pathology), he moved to Hawaii. While attending the University of Hawaii, he got involved in promotion with KPOI, a rock radio station. He helped produced many concerts there until 1966.

A friend became program director at the famed KFRC radio station in San Francisco and that friend offered Lawrence  the promotion director position.

That position gave him production experience.

Festivals

He helped create and produce the Magic Mountain Music Festival (in many ways the first rock festival).

In a 2014 Rolling Stone article, Mel said of Magic Mountain, “My M.O. was that I was as crazy as any hippie, but I had short hair so I could talk to corporations and cops.”

The attitude he and the others helped promote there, served them well down the road in 1969: “ I think the basic thing was a consideration for the audience and realizing that there were other options than just sitting them down in a seat and watching a show. And you had to care for their welfare because you’re the promoter.”

A week after Magic Mountain, he assisted with the much more famous Monterey Pop Festival.

In 1968, he co-produced the Miami Pop Festival. Michael Lang was slightly involved with that event and said of Lawrence in the RS article, “Mel was very practical and very creative and very well organized. He was just very unflappable, which was essential.”

He also helped do the Newport ’68 festival.

And many on the Miami crew worked at Woodstock as well.

Mel Lawrence Woodstock

Woodstock

After accepting the offer from Woodstock Ventures to be the festival’s Director of Operations [Lawrence grew up close to Michael Lang’s home and Michael had gone to high school with Lawrence’s younger brother], he left the west coast–with a girlfriend–and moved to New York City’s Greenwich Village. There they moved in with Arlo Guthrie because Lawrence’s girlfriend knew Arlo.

He knew that the biggest site challenge for Woodstock would be that it was a raw location. The festivals like Newport and Monterey and Miami had been at places that already had electricity, running water, sanitation facilities, the basics of a venue.

He says his checklist was six pages long. And keep it mind the festival’s name: the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Flags and banners were part of the equation, too.

Most Woodstock fans know that the festival’s original location was going to be in Wallkill, NY. Of that site, Lawrence says that it was wonderful in itself, but lousy in terms of surrounding area. No overflow. So the mid-July Wallkill eviction turned out to be a positive thing in terms of a site.

Though Max Yasgur‘s field and the area surrounding it may have been better for a large crowd’s overflowing needs, the fact that Woodstock Ventures had only three weeks to create the venue became a huge challenge: bring in more electricity, build the stage, put up utility poles for structural purposes, plumbing, paths, fences, sanitation needs, fielding phone calls from various authorities,

The weather those three weeks mostly cooperated. There was a doctor giving the crew B-12 shots.

He relates a “lucky” story about the sanitation inspector arriving to look at those facilities. The inspector had brought his teenage daughter, but when Mel and the inspector were about to take their walk, the inspector didn’t see her. The inspector spent the rest of his time their looking for his daughter.

After the festival, Lawrence was also in charge of the cleanup. He describes how workers, including Boy Scouts, collected items, piled them by type (shoes, blankets, sleeping bags, etc) and donated much of it in New York City.

Film

Woodstock was just one, albeit perhaps the most famous, of Lawrence’s many projects.

In 1977, he helped organize the first Jamboree In the Hills country festival which continues today.

He also became involved in film:

Year Title Credit
1982 Koyaanisqatsi Associate Producer
1987 Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation Producer
1988 Without Borders Associate Producer
1989 Île Aye Line Producer
1994 Paha Sapa – The Struggle for the Black Hills Producer/Director
1995 Biker Women Producer
1996 The Amazon Warrior Producer/Director
1997 Legends of the Bushmen Executive Producer
1997 Soul in the Hole Executive Producer
2002 Naqoyqatsi: Life as War Co-producer
2005 Un Retrato De Diego Producer
2013 The Ambassador of Tequila Producer
2013 Visitors Consulting Producer
Mel Lawrence Woodstock

Television

  • Recovery Network (1997-2000) (Producer, Program Director)
  • Iditarod (Original Productions) (2008) (story producer)
  • Shark U (Original Productions) (2008) (story producer)
  • Deadliest Catch (Original Productions) (2008 – 2010) (story producer)
  • Black Gold (Original Productions)(2011-2012) (story producer)

Mel Lawrence died on November 6, 2016. An obituary from the LA Times read: “Big spirit, huge heart and beautiful soul Mel Lawrence left us to soar with the eagles early Saturday morning, November 5th at his home in Santa Monica. He lived a life full of adventurous travel, creativity, and self exploration. The twinkle in his eye and his passionate connection to life will be missed by all of us who knew and loved him. “

Thank you, Mel.

Mel Lawrence Woodstock
Music et al, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Ustad Alla Rakha

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Ustad Alla Rakha

April 29, 1919 – February 3, 2000

Docents on a Bethel Woods Museum tours  are sometimes asked: “Who was the youngest performer?” Country Joe talks about how Santana drummer Michael Shrieve was only 17–but Shrieve had turned 20 in July. The likely answer is Sha Na Na’s Henry Gross who was 18, but if Greg Reeves birthday is actually April 7, 1955 (uncertain), then he is the answer for sure.

No one has ever asked me, “Who was the oldest performer?” That distinction goes to Ustad Alla Rakha. He’s nearly the oldest person associated with the festival on site that weekend. And that person wasn’t Max Yasgur (born December 15, 1919), but likely cameraman David Myers  born on May 8, 1914.

Ustad Alla Rakha

Indian youth

Alla Rakha was born in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. He was the oldest of seven sons and his father opposed Alla’s desire to learn music.

When he was 12 Alla ran away and studied at the Punjab school of classical music. While he did have many years of training as a vocalist, he never lost his love of the tabla.

As a young adult, he worked for a theatre company and later at a radio station. In 1940 he moved to Mumbai and worked with Pandit Ravi Shankar.

He also began to compose music for some Hindi films.  Alla had five children in his first marriage, two daughters and three sons. His daughter Razia remained close to him throughout his life.

Ustad Alla Rakha

West Influenced

As the Beatles–particularly George Harrison–became interested in Indian philosophy and music, so did thousands of young westerners. Both Ravi Shankar and Alla Hakha had played in the United States before the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, but the fame, film, and soundtrack of their performance there set up many other invitations to play at other non-traditional concert venues. Of course the most famous was Woodstock.

Ustad Alla Rakha

Woodstock

Shankar was disappointed with Woodstock. He eschewed the use of drugs and felt that they got in the way of truly becoming one with music.

He said in a 1999 NPR interview with Terry Gross’s “Fresh Air”: Monterey was something which I liked because it was still new, fresh. And there was some – in spite of the drugs and everything, when these young girls and boys, they showed these two fingers like that, like a V, and said peace and love and offered you a flower, there was some innocence. There was some beauty which touched me so much. But Woodstock was a time which was almost two, three years later. And believe me, by then I thought that this thing is not going to live anymore because it was far gone. Music was just an incidental music to them. They were having fun. It was a fun place, picnic party. They were all stoned. It was raining. It was in mud. And as I said in my book, it reminded me of these water buffaloes we see in India who are, you know, they feel very hot and they sit there, get so – so dirty, but they enjoy it. So I mean that was the thing I felt. But because it was a contractual thing, I couldn’t get out of it. I had to go through it. But I was very unhappy.

Ustad Alla Rakha

Bangladesh Concert

Ustad Alla Rakha

Alla Rakha also played with Shankar at the famous (filmed and recorded) Concert for Bangladesh that Shankar and George Harrison had organized for the relief for the refugees of then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

Ustad Alla Rakha

Teacher

Ustad is an honorific given to a master musician and teacher. From Britannica: Alla Rakha…was also a devoted teacher. In 1985 he founded the Alla Rakha Institute of Music in Bombay, which further helped to elevate and popularize the tabla. Alla Rakha’s three sons—Zakir Hussain, Fazal Qureshi, and Taufiq Qureshi—all became tabla players, Zakir acquiring the most international recognition and Fazal eventually managing and expanding the work of their father’s institute. In honour of his contribution in the field of performing arts, Alla Rakha received two of India’s most prestigious awards: the Padma Shri (1977) and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1982).

Ustad Alla Rakha

Death

On February 3, 2000 a spokesman for Moment Records and Zakir Hussain Management announced that Rakah had a heart attack when he learned of the death of his daughter, Razia, during cataract surgery. [NYT obit]

Chandrashekhar Nair directed this 12-minute documentary on Rakha in 1970.

Ustad Alla Rakha
Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Norman Rogers Quill

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Norman Rogers Quill

April 21, 1943 – July 9, 2011

The band Quill was the opening band of day 2 for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. The opening band. Nowadays, when people go to a concert, are in the parking lot tailgating, and someone says, “The first band will be on soon. Should we get going?”

“Nah. Never heard of them. Have another beer.”

Opening bands are often the scapegoats. Some of the crowd is actually in so might as well get things going with what is sometimes a good local band, or a band good enough to tour with the big names but not big enough to stand alone.

Norman Rogers Quill

Quill the Opening Band

That was Quill, but at Woodstock the big difference is that even though there may still have been thousands of people still streaming onto Max Yasgur‘s field, there were hundreds of thousands already there.

Woodstock Ventures had hired the Boston-based band to play at the festival, of course, but to also be in the area a week or so early as good will ambassadors to local institutions. “See us? We have long hair and big sideburns and play this rock and roll, but we smile and are good people.”

Brothers Dan and Jon Cole had begun Quill in 1967. Norm was a guitarist, Roger North a drummer, and Phil Thayer a keyboardist.  Rogers had grown up in Brattleboro, VT. He had been in the Morning Start Blues Band.

At noon that sunny Saturday in Bethel, Quill did four songs in a 30 minute set:

  1. They Live the Life
  2. That’s How I Eat
  3. Driftin’
  4. Waiting for You

Norman Rogers Quill

No Woodstock Bump

Cotillion Records did sign them and the band did release an album. Cotillion was the same company that released the famed Woodstock album, but Quill was not on it.

Jon Cole would soon leave the band. Norm Rogers also left, but came back to record a second album. When Cotillion did not release it, the band broke up. Norm returned to Brattleboro.

Norman Rogers Quill

2011

He died in 2011 and the Brattleboro Reformer’s obituary read as follows:

Norman Page Rogers, 68, passed away unexpectedly at home, July 9, 2011. Norman was a loving husband, father, friend, artist, illustrator, musician and student of life. Son of Hubert and Helen Rogers, born April 21, 1943, Ottawa Canada, grew up in Brattleboro. Graduate of High Mowing School, N.H., 1961, studied at St. Lawrence University, Marlboro College and The Arts Students League, New York City. Traveled worldwide with colleague and friend Hugh Swift to Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Nepal and into the Himalayas. Inspired by Never Cry Wolfe, Norman traveled to Newfoundland to find author Farley Mowat. Served in the Merchant Marines and spent time long line fishing off The Grand Banks of Newfoundland and Georges Bank. Norman celebrated the bicentennial by riding his bicycle from Vermont to Washington, D.C. He had an extensive musical career, his band, Quill, was the first band to play at Woodstock, Saturday, Aug. 16, 1969. As a string bass player and vocalist Norman’s career included playing with: Arwen Mountain Band, The Filthy Rich, Jeff Potter and The Rhythm Agents, and The Bill Strecker Band. Past 20 years was a musician with Andy Avery of Normandy. A singer in The Blanche Moyse Chorale. Most recently enjoyed playing with the Windham Orchestra.

Article on entire band from Boston dot com

Norman Rogers Quill