The Rockologist: Woodstock Forty Years After - Page 3

The extras are also pretty cool. You've got your original ticket stubs for starters (eight bucks a day if you can fathom that).

But what I liked best here was the recreation (albeit in a more pocket-sized version) of Life Magazine's original commemorative Woodstock issue. I remember buying this as a thirteen year old boy and cutting out all of the cool pictures of Grace Slick, Sly Stone, and Roger Daltrey and taping them up on my bedroom wall. So for me, that brought back some pretty cool, if slightly bittersweet memories as a thirteen year old, long haired hippie wannabe rock star.

But the real meat of this thing lies in the previously unseen footage of all those great (well, mostly great, anyway) musical performances. Not only are some of these added to the original film here (stuff like Janis Joplin for example), but there is also an entire second disc of this stuff. Sweet.

Nonetheless, much of what you get here is really kind of a mixed bag.

Given the fact that the movie producers had to edit down three days of the world's greatest bands doing their thing into a three hour movie, you can see why bands like Mountain, for example, with all due respect, didn't make the final cut.

If I'm being one hundred percent honest here, I also could have probably lived without the nearly half hour or so devoted here to the Grateful Dead doing "Turn On Your Love Light," — Pigpen (God rest his soul) and all. In fairness though, Dead fans will probably dig this a lot.

Not so with Creedence Clearwater Revival however. John Fogerty and company simply play their asses off here on songs like "Born On The Bayou" and particularly "Keep On Chooglin'" where Doug Clifford beats the living crap out of his drums (did you get that Doug? — the former CCR drummer has been known to e-mail me on occasion).

Watching this, you gotta' wonder if CCR wouldn't have made it even bigger than they eventually did anyway had "Chooglin'" been included in the original film. The Johnny Winter spot also kicks several degrees of blues slide guitar ass.

The new additions made to the film itself, however, are a bit more curious. In a particular "WTF" moment, Jefferson Airplane's set doesn't even include the incendiary Woodstock version of their protest anthem "Volunteers," opting somewhat oddly instead for the lower key "Won't You Try/Saturday Afternoon." Still, you gotta love those closeup shots of Grace Slick (love those eyes) and the always amazing Jack Casady (love those eyebrows, and really love that bass, Jack).

Article Author: Glen Boyd

You'll find Blogcritics assistant music editor Glen Boyd sharing his Thoughtmares on his personal blogs The World Wide Glen, and The Rockologist. In a previous life, Glen was a music professional and journalist whose work has appeared in The Rocket, SPIN, Pulse!, and The Source. …

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