Okay, this is a two part question: How many people have seen the movie Woodstock (the original festival in 1969, not any of the remakes)? Part two is how many of you actually remember any of it? For those of you were able to answer in the affirmative to both questions, I'm sure this memory will be relevant to you. Those who can't – well there is a really great director's cut out now you can watch and hopefully remember.
The scene in Woodstock that always has and always will send a little bit of a shiver up my spine is near the beginning. People are starting to arrive and the music swells up underneath the activity. The opening bars of Canned Heat's "Goin' Up The Country" have been permanently etched into my brain ever since I first watched the movie in its entirety somewhere back in the mid 1970s.
From the whistle of the flute to the almost falsetto sound of the lead vocalist as he sings of going somewhere where the water tastes like wine and jumping in the river and staying drunk all the time will live with me forever. Which makes it all the more surprising I've never really searched out more of their music before now.
It was almost like I didn't want to spoil that one moment by hearing any of their other music, in case I found something in it that would ruin my one pure image of them. I needn't have worried because now that I've heard them in more depth, I realize, although that first song will remain indelibly burnt into my memory banks, there was plenty of room left for more of their music.
A new double disc put out by the Belgium label Music Avenue called Canned, Labelled, and Shelved contains re-issues of two albums from the period of their earliest incarnation. Since their formation in 1965, the band has seen its share of the usual rock and roll sadness and madness that took the lives of too many talented people. By 1977 when Human Condition, the second disc in this set, was recorded, they had already had some major reshufflings in the line up.
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