June 2019 Static Live Magazine

If you can remember Woodstock, then you weren’t
there,” goes the old Zen koan, which was sort of
funny the first 23,789 times you heard it.
The phrase was first uttered by the Chinese sage
Yuquan Shenxiu, who lived in the 7th century and
was one of the founders of the Buddhist school
that would come to be known as Zen. Shenxiu was
certainly wise enough to know that 1200 years after
his death, original hippies would gather on Yasgur’s
farm in upstate New York in 1969 for three days of
peace and music and no decent place to take a shit.
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But even Shenxiu wasn’t smart enough to
foresee the looming truth of another Zen
koan: Old hippies never die, they just keep
reconstituting Woodstock.
A half-century after the original “Aquarian Exposition,”
Woodstock 50 is set to happen August 16-18, 2019, in
Watkins Glen, N.Y. . . . Or is it going to happen? A shit
storm struck in early May, when one of the companies
investing in the festival announced it had pulled out
and Woodstock 50 was cancelled. Not so fast, said
Michael Lang, one of the organizers of both the original
festival and the 50th anniversary edition. The investor
that pulled out had no legal right to cancel Woodstock
50 or even to say Woodstock 50 was cancelled, Lang
said, adding that in fact the show was still on.
he 50 edition is scheduled to include performances by
such original Woodstockers as Santana, Country Joe
McDonald (known as Country Joe and the Fish back
then), John Sebastian, John Fogerty (with Creedence
Clearwater Revival the first time around), Dead and
Company (Bob Weir and other members of the original
Grateful Dead) and Canned Heat.
Jay-Z, Robert Plant, Miley Cyrus, Chance the Rapper,
Greta Van Fleet, Pussy Riot and dozens of other artists
both ancient and young are also on the bill.
The status of Woodstock 50 as of press time of this
issue of Static Live is . . . well, just be sure to check
your Google alerts before you begin hitchhiking to
western New York in August.
What are we music consumers to make of this
upcoming “three days of peace, love and music”?
(Yes, this time Lang and company snuck in the “L”
word in the festival’s official subtitle.)
No doubt Country Joe will once again change “The
Fish Cheer” to “The Fuck Cheer” before segueing
into his anti-Vietnam War ditty, “I-Feel-Like-I’m-
Fixin’-to-Die Rag.” But will anyone of Generation X,
Y or Z give a shit, given that they’ve already heard the
“F” word 23,788 times in movies and music tracks,
and given that they can download free porn on their
smartphones? Will old man Robert Plant, who can
be a right snide bastard in dismissing bands who
have followed too closely in Led Zeppelin’s wake,
be provoked into yelling “Squeeze my lemon ’til
the juice runs down my leg” at Greta Van Fleet and
their Zep fetishisms? Never mind that Zeppelin’s
“The Lemon Song” was “inspired” by Howlin’ Wolf’s
“Killing Floor,” while the “squeeze my lemon line”
was used by Robert Johnson in his 1937 recording
of “Travelling Riverside Blues.” So, it’ll be a bit
sardonically funny to see if Plant gets pissed over
someone appropriating someone else’s music.
Will Carlos Santana have a “spiritual orgasm”
playing Woodstock 50? After all, that was how he
described his experience performing at Woodstock
’94. (This I know because I was in the press tent at
that festival when Santana made that proclamation.
You’re reading it here for the first time because the
daily newspaper where I worked then was a nospiritual-orgasm
zone.)
If Jay-Z resuscitates his 1998 hit “Jigga What,
Jigga Who (Originator 99),” will the old hippies in
the Woodstock 50 crowd wonder “What did he just
say?”
To anyone begrudging the old hippies for hanging
on to Woodstock memories and attempting to
regurgitate its vibe ad infinitum, I say this: Let
them have their fun. Let the old hippie guys have
their jollies as they ogle at the naked tits, search
for a place to shit, and advise you to “Don’t take
the brown sugar” over and over. Just refrain from
replying “I think you mean the brown acid.”
Just smile in the months ahead when they say,
“If you can remember Woodstock 50, then you
weren’t there.” They likely won’t still be
on this planet when Michael Lang stages
Woodstock 100.
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