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.
Alan Wilson, the falsetto voice behind "Goin' Up The Country," died in 1970 from a combination of depression over his near blindness and a heroin overdose. Bob Hite, the Bear, the other primary vocalist of the band, died in 1981 from a massive heart attack brought on by drugs. And finally, Henry Vestine died in 1997 from respiratory failure while on tour in Belgium.
But through it all, they have remained true to their dedication of updating traditional blues songs and making them into boogie/rock and roll classics. Unlike other bands that have fished into the past to find their music, these guys went out of their way to ensure the men who wrote the tunes they performed got the recognition they deserve. They searched out and found folk like Albert Collins, Skip James, Memphis Slim, and Clarence Gatemouth Brown and either negotiated recording contracts for them, toured with them, or arranged for them to have their own solo concerts.
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