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'On the Road' to Woodstock 40 Years After
Posted on August 14, 2009 by allenshadow
Make no mistake, the Woodstock festival has been viewed with rose-colored glasses, especially from a 40-year vantage point. The event was essentially a massive, disorganized mud pit with a stage-view the size of a dime for most concertgoers. It was as much downer as upper. But, despite its faults, Woodstock was special in ways that defy definition.
On the road to Woodstock
It sounds trite to say, "you had to be there." But you did, and I was. My journey there was part of a summer-long road trip in my 1948 Cadillac hearse. But before I put the sleek three-ton black beauty in gear, let me go back a few years – to the Summer of Love – to put Woodstock in perspective.
It's June 1967. I meet a college chum on Kingsbridge Road in the Bronx. "Did you hear about the festival? Are you going?," she says. The festival in question was Monterey (California), and my reply was that I wanted to go bad, but didn't think I could make it. That killed me. Music meant so much to us college kids back then. There weren't a million channels of music. You could actually keep up with all of rock: the groups, the movements. You were at the record store when the new Stones album came out, the new Dylan.
That decade there were seismic cultural shifts on the music front year after year. But one needs to understand that the music front of the '60's included a major social revolution, one that impacted politics, family dynamics and both personal and interpersonal development.
When The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album came out a month before Monterey, it hit music lovers like a number 9 on the Richter scale. In 1968, The Band debuted with "Music from Big Pink," blowing listeners minds. No one had envisioned such a sound: a literary gumbo of country, rock and Americana. Then, Bob Dylan, who had already remapped the music landscape in the early part of the decade, released "Nashville Skyline," in 1969, turning the scene on its head yet again. Seminal events all.
And that's just a brief snapshot of the '60's music-wise. Defined in chief by Elvis, the Beatles, Dylan, the Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and the Grateful Dead, the period was a turning point in the history of music, and culture overall. Let's face it, the first three in the list make up the Mount Rushmore of 20th century rock.
Monterey, which featured Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Janis Joplin, and the Mamas & the Papas, was the first of the big music festivals; some say the best. It had a huge pull for us kids back then. Besides the music, there was the romance of "California Dreaming." After all, it was the Summer of Love. Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair") beckoned from the radio. By July 1967, it was all too much to bear. I may have missed Monterey, but I wasn't going to miss San Francisco and the Summer of Love. I quit my summer cooking job at Lenox Hill Hospital and set out with friends in a 1947 Cadillac limousine, nearly the same vehicle of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road." We put 10,000 mile on the odometer that summer, which included a long stop in Haight-Ashbury.
My friend Richard, the limo's owner, was a collector of vintage Caddies, and, by 1969, I purchased a 1948 Cadillac hearse from him, my first car. The same year I married my first wife, Carol, and by the summer we had the behemoth packed for another cross-country adventure that included Richard, my sister, Alice and a brilliant folk singer named Ribsy.
Little did we know we were about to ride through history that July and August, with a strange experience in a beat northern California town during the Apollo 11 moon landing, a detention by the L.A. cops the morning after the Tate-LaBianca murders, and a momentous arrival in Woodstock as we rediscovered America. This post is the last of a triptych depicting those three notable dots on the map of the summer of 1969 (links to the previous two above).
When the L.A. cops released us on the morning of Aug. 11, we continued on our way to the festival. We already received our tickets while in California and hit the desert with great expectations. The collective pull of Woodstock was everywhere we went. Just outside of Needles, Calif., we encountered a converted mail truck full of freaks goin' our way. And the way was Route 66, the curvy dream road that took us first through the West to Texas and north toward Chicago.
It's probably difficult for today's youth to understand that being different was not tolerated in many parts of the country in the '60's. Hippies, if you will (and I use the term affectionately), in those days got a tiny taste of what it must have been like to be black in America. Of course nothing could begin to compare to the latter experience, but the longhairs plight of the day – so well chronicled in the classic 1969 film "Easy Rider" – was an interesting snapshot of an intolerant America. I'm not accustomed to giving away movie endings, but "Easy Rider" does end with the shotgunning of the lead characters – played by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper — on a rural southern road. And that very scene was to have an eerie resonance for us on our next stop.
With Richard staying on in L.A., the remaining four of us stopped in the small western Colorado town of Naturita, as we had left Route 66 for a time. Us two hippie-looking couples were having dinner in a local café in the no-traffick-ight mountain town. A handful of miners were located in a booth across from us. But for the staff, we were the only inhabitants. In short order, the comments came: "why don't you get a haircut, boy? Them boys really need a haircut, don't you think, Billy."
Ribsy and I both had shoulder-length hair, and I had a full beard. The girls wore summer tops, no bras. To the miners we were heathens. It was becoming clear that they wanted to do harm to the men at our table and likely rape the women, who they viewed as loose, because of their dress.
One of the miners picked up a table knife, stroking it gently, provocatively with his right forefinger. "You do need a haircut, hippie. And you need to shave that beard. I'm just gonna have to do that for you, ain't I boys?"
The staff could have cared less. It was clear we were alone and in the wilderness. We were just about trapped and we were in trouble, big trouble. I told my table we had to leave now, but that we should move naturally, slowly, then enter the hearse without dawdling. "But don't run, don't look panicked," I told them.
The hearse was parked at the curb right outside the restaurant. We got into the car, and by the time I reached the driver's door, I heard the screen door slam a second time. I made sure not to look back. I climbed behind the wheel and started the car, all in one balletic motion. The instigator of the group stood before the hearse revealing an open switchblade. The scene looked like the cover of a pulp fiction novel.
For some reason, in emergencies I can see and process dozens of things at once, and I keep my head. I had figured that I needed to pull the car out fast, nearly grazing the knife wielder, knocking him off balance without actually hitting him. It would be like Roger Clemens brushing back a batter. My brush-back worked perfectly, and no one was able to jump on the running boards. But there was just one problem. We were nowhere, literally. There was nothing and no one for miles. The nearest real town was Grand Junction, more than a hundred miles away on winding mountain roads, and it would be dark in an hour. I expected to see a pickup truck of shotgun-toting roughriders in my rearview mirror anytime soon. So I drove 90 on straightaways and pressed the curves best I could. It didn't hurt that I was a professional driver: four years as a New York cabby while going to college. A cabby eventually becomes one with his car, and it came in handy that night.
Somehow, it didn't happen. Somehow they never caught up with us. Somehow, we escaped a horrible "Easy Rider"-style fate. Late that night in Grand Junction we found a cheap hotel room and crashed, still scared but also high on freedom.
My sister often reminds me of one memorable stretch when we left Colorado. Apparently, I drove 1,200 miles without stopping, all so we could make the Woodstock festival on opening night. I pushed that car like a streamliner train. Since I was the only one who drove shift, I was the sole driver.
When we pulled into White Lake, were were jubilant. First of all, we didn't hit any of the awful traffic reported on the radio, because we came in from Route 6 in Pennsylvania. Most concertgoers were on the New York State Thruway. And when we came in that back door, the festival pilgrims, seeing the big black beauty, jumped on the hood, the roof, stood on the running boards and bumpers. We entered Woodstock like a sultan coming into Babylon.
That was the high point. From there it was mostly downhill. The fences were down, our tickets were rendered unnecessary. Food was scarce. Vendors were selling single bananas for $3. The hearse was parked in a field almost a mile from the natural amphitheater. By the time we made the long trek to the concert site, the place was jammed and we were forced to take up residence on the top of the hillside. The stage looked like a matchbox. The performers were specs. Then, it started to rain.
The balding aisles turned in to mudslides, with folks slipping, falling. A group of knuckleheads from New Jersey decided it would be fun to piss in the aisle and have a hoot watching people take headers in their private cesspool. It was sickening, disturbing. This wasn't peace and love.
Look, Woodstock was a city, and everyone on every block, so to speak, had a different experience. Some were tripping their brains out, some were grooving on the music. Richie Havens was great that first day, but it was hard for us to let go of the bummer scene and challenging conditions in our locale.
We did enjoy some of the festival. Besides the music, we had a great experience meeting our Bronx neighbors in the absolute pitch dark on the way back to the car that night. Jack and Barbara had a full supply of bacon and eggs back in their VW van, and we made plans to rendezvous for breakfast. Jack was our cool English professor from Berkeley, and Carol and I rented an attic apartment from he and his wife. Hearing their distinct, friendly voices made our night and helped raise our enjoyment.
I'm not going to review the music, since this piece is more about the big picture of Woodstock. Essentially, the fest was a gathering of a generation that was also a culmination of all we were and everything we had been.
My generation was always about gatherings, sometimes for activism, sometimes for no reason at all. The latter-style assemblages were called be-ins, and they took place in New York, San Francisco and other urban centers and college campuses throughout the mid-'60's. We were celebrating life and our sense of freedom, openness and experimentation. Sure, some were smug about it, like we had all the answers. Hippies were about being hip. There were us and them, the freaks and the straights. But find any young generation that doesn't feel the same way.
Dismissiveness regarding Woodstock and, for that matter, the counterculture of the '60's irks me. In revised versions of his 1961 book "The Image," historian Daniel Boorstin, termed the three-day fest the quintessential "pseudo event."
But one has to look a little deeper, a little further into the context of the festival and its attendees to understand the far-reaching significance of both. Let's face it, the media debased that generation. At the time, it was easy for an uneasy establishment to term the counterculture hippies. It was easy to view hippies as goofy, bizarre, lazy, drug-hazed, shallow and self-absorbed.
But let's put hippies in context. Born of the repressive Eisenhower era, so-called hippies spawned several revolutions. The first involved a self-awareness and discovery that changed the entire dynamics of families and interpersonal relationships. The second spawned a rich culture of music that culminated in the statement that was Woodstock. The third, tied to the first two, helped change the course of American politics and turn the tide of the Vietnam War. And, surely, their accomplishments began the culture wars that blaze on to this day.
Of course there was a down side as there is to any disruptive invention. Extraneous parts need shedding, and, certainly, most hippies shed the excesses of their heyday and eventually — after some bumps along the way — founded strong families and careers by their middle years.
I got some great perspective on the Woodstock generation last night from an interview by one of the times' most respected FM disc jockeys, Pete Fornatale. I mentioned before that there weren't a million bands and niches as there are today, and that there weren't many channels. WNEW-FM in New York was headquarters for the music, and to some extent, the culture of those times. Fornatale had just joined the station a month before Woodstock. Last night, WFAN's Mike Francesa interviewed Fornatale, who just came out with a book on the history of Woodstock, "Back to the Garden." It's a great interview, and brings out background for much of what I've discussed here.
Posted in 1969, Allen Shadow's Songs, essays, indie music artist, journalism, lifestyle, literature, media, movies, music, news, poetry, Politics, travel	| Tagged 1960s, 1969, 20th century, 40th anniversary, 60s, allen shadow, Americana, apollo 11, baby boomers, back to the garden, bob dylan, Daniel Boorstin, Dennis Hopper, drugs, Easy Rider, Elvis, film noir, hippie generation, hippies, history, Jack Kerouac, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kerouac, Manson, manson murders, media, Mike Francesa, Miss America, Monterey, movies, music, new york times, news, on the road, Pete Fornatale, Peter Fonda, poetry, pop culture, Richie Havens, rock, rock music, Route 66, sociology, summer of 1969, Tate-LaBianca, the band, the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, The Image, The Who, video, Vietnam, wfan, Woodstock, Woodstock 40th anniversary, Woodstock festival, youtube	| 2 Replies
Manson Family: Still Evil After All These Years
Posted on August 9, 2009 by allenshadow
Like Forrest Gump, I seem to be placed in historic moments. In the wee hours of the morning of Aug. 11, 1969, the Los Angeles Police stopped my travel companions and me. We were on our way out of town in my 1948 Cadillac hearse. It was the morning after the LaBianca murders, and just two days beyond the Sharon Tate massacre.
They searched the 22-foot-long vehicle and checked out its hirsute occupants. At the time, we had no idea why they had stopped us. They released us, to continue on our way to, oh yeah, Woodstock.
Our path through history had also taken us through Eureka, California the morning the Apollo 11 crew took their first giant step for mankind just a month earlier. My post "Moon Landing is Backdrop to Song" captures the irony of that moment.
Actually, we all seem to be reliving these events as 40th anniversaries abound. But this post isn't my "On the Road" chronicle. It's about the Manson clan and their quest for freedom.
My take is simple: no. No parole. No freedom. No leniency. Not for Susan Atkins. Not for Leslie Van Houten.
I've never been big on the death penalty, but I'm sorry the Manson team wasn't fried. Their original death sentences were commuted to life behind bars, when the Supreme Court struck down death penalty laws in 1972. Consequently, now the families of Sharon Tate, her murdered friends and the LaBiancas must suffer the pain of further hearings, of impassioned pleas for mercy from the famous and the infamous, and of the possibility that one or more of the clan — specifically Atkins and Van Houten — could be set free.
True, Atkins, 61, is paralyzed and has terminal brain cancer. According to CNN, in her 1993 parole board hearing, Atkins said Tate:
asked me to let her baby live. … I told her I didn't have any mercy on her.
But, according to Time.com (Time Warner owns CNN), Atkins really said:
Look bitch, I don't care about you. I don't care if you are having a baby. You are going to die and I don't feel a thing about it.
The latter account is just a tad bit different in the evil department. Maybe Atkins' reinvented, kind persona just "can't handle the truth."
Sharon's sister, Debra Tate told CNN this spring that Manson family members convicted of murder should remain behind bars. She said the slayings were:
so vicious, so inhumane, so depraved, that there is no turning back. The 'Manson Family' murderers are sociopaths, and from that, they can never be rehabilitated. They should all stay right where they are — in prison — until they die. There will never be true justice for my sister Sharon and the other victims of the 'Manson Family.' Keeping the murderers in prison is the least we, as a society who values justice, can do.
Meanwhile, Van Houten continues her request for release. Her latest supporter is filmmaker John Waters. In a recent piece on Huffpost, he says, believe it or not:
I have a really good friend who was convicted of killing two innocent people when she was nineteen years old on a horrible night of 1969 cult madness. Her name is Leslie Van Houten and I think you would like her as much as I do.
CNN's Erica Hill featured Waters on a show earlier this week. He pitched his latest book, "Crackpot," and attempted to explain his friendship with Van Houten. CNN's AC360 is doing a weeklong special on the Manson murders.
Water's sense of justice is misplaced at best. Maybe he's just trying to reclaim his past celebrity. He's always courted the outrageous, so why should his appeal hold, uh, water.
So I'll think of the victims of the Tate-LaBianca murders on this anniversary and forget once again the evil clan who took their lives in such cruel fashion. Then, I'll move on to celebrate Woodstock as I did when I pulled away from the Los Angeles police back in 1969.
Posted in essays, indie music artist, journalism, media, music, news, poetry, Politics	| Tagged 1969, 40th anniversary, AC360, America, Anderson Cooper, apollo 11, astronauts, charles manson, CNN, Crackpot, cults, death penalty, Debra Tate, Erica Hill, film noir, Forrest Gump, helter skelter, Huffington Post, HuffPost, John Waters, Leslie Van Houten, Manson, manson family, manson murders, media, moon, moon landing, movies, music video, nasa, neil armstrong, news, parole hearings, poetry, rock, rock music, Sharon Tate, Supreme Court, Susan Atkins, Tate LaBianca murders, Time Magazine, Time Warner, Time.com, video, Woodstock	| 2 Replies
Moon Landing is Backdrop to Song
Posted on July 19, 2009 by allenshadow
To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the moon landing on July 20, 1969, I'm releasing the video of a song I wrote that includes that very scene as backdrop. The song is called "Miss America," a raw tableau.
And how strange it is that the venerable Walter Cronkite, who defined that very moment, should pass right now. It's as if he and Neil Armstrong will somehow launch into eternity together, in a fitting orbit.
I was in a second-rate hotel in Eureka, California the day the Apollo 11 crew landed. I was with my own merry band of pranksters on a cross country trip in my 1948 Cadillac hearse. As we descended into the hotel lobby, Cronkite's voice crackled from a TV, saying something like, "What a great county…I just don't understand these hippies…" The TV was a table model that sat on a broken Sylvania console. Behind these proceedings, a broken American Indian lumbered in the hot California sun. What an ironic scene. Could have been out of an Antonioni film.
The "Miss America" video is as raw as the song, which will be released on a forthcoming album. Here are the lyrics:
Her cherry red lights in Tulane
her white fences in Springfield
her black gloves around your neck
dancing to "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White"
her white panties always only
a twirl away on the silver screen
her darker dreams always only
a thrill away on the back streets
Oh, Miss America
Her John Garfield Joan Crawford face
in the clutches of industrial light
her cocktail lie under the nightclub table
her tires kissing always kissing the feremoned pavement
her cowboy stand on the drifting plains
her palaces of corn and artichoke queens
her dumb fuck Brooklyn hallways
stinging of Pampers and malt liquor dreams
We hung our balls from a Cadillac hearse
we were young and full of cream
we screwed a waitress in Barstow
to see her dessert hunger breath
we sang the Lord's Prayer on Market Street
"Uncle John's Band" in Birmingham
we blew our guts in a Eureka Hotel
the day they took a giant leap for mankind
Copyright Allen Shadow
Posted in Allen Shadow's Songs, essays, indie music artist, journalism, lifestyle, literature, media, movies, music, news, poetry, Politics	| Tagged America, antonioni, apollo 11, astronauts, cronkite, film noir, grateful dead, highway 66, John Garfield, media, moon, moon landing, movies, music, music video, nasa, neil armstrong, news, poetry, Politics, roadside attractions, rock, rock music, video	| 3 Replies
Time to pitch
Posted on April 20, 2009 by allenshadow
With the "We're America" song video breaching 2,000 views now on YouTube and various social media play in progress, the next phase of my release strategy is the issuance of a press release. I'm using two services to distribute the release: Beat Wire and PRWeb.
Beatwire is a musician-centric service that distributes multimedia releases to some 10,000 music journalists and reviewers, including both mainstream press and the blogosphere. PRWeb, which is owned by PR-industry leader Vocus, also distributes a multimedia release to the main news desks of mainstream press and social media sites. PRWeb gets thumbs up from the likes of PR guru Annie Jennings, among others.
Both these services are reasonably priced, with advanced packages in the three- to four-hundred dollar range. PR Newswire is another good mainstream media service, but their packages start at $680.
In both cases, the release includes an embedded video and an audio stream of the song as well as artist photos and album cover. I've used both services before and had fair to good results.
In addition, I will personally send pitches of the story to key journalists, including newspaper, TV and the blogosphere. You can't depend solely on press-release services. Pitching journalists is an art in itself, but I'll go into that another time.
I'll report results in a future post.
Posted in Allen Shadow's Songs, indie music artist, indie music workshop, journalism, music	| Tagged annie jennings, beat wire, indie music, music, music Blogs, music business, pr newswire, prweb, rock music, youtube	| Leave a reply
Release of "We're America" video
Posted on April 9, 2009 by allenshadow
I've released the video for my song "We're America." As posted earlier here, I'll be making a case study of the song's release.
About the song: There's nothing so powerful as self-fulfilling prophesy, and, if we can defer excessive hand-wringing and rally behind the President, we just may pull out of this economic nosedive. That's the spirit behind "We're America."
On the music biz side of this project, the strategy for getting the song out there begins with a pre-release via such social media sites as youtube and myspace as well as blogging.
I'll cover youtube today, since that's my primary focus. Why? Because in recent times that may be the primary breeding ground for the social media virus coveted by indie and major label artists alike. Today, "We're America" breached the 1,000-view mark after a week's time. Promotion so far has included: 1) very limited notice to my personal network of friends and fans, perhaps a dozen (by design); 2) limited promotion via Google's AdWords; and 3) posts and direct messaging on related youtube channels.
A brief note here on Google AdWords. I've used AdWords for more than six years to: 1) promote my artist Web site and 2) promote a college Web site (another hat I wear — PR director), with decent results for both. Google recently sent me a complimentary apron and other goodies, an honor, I suppose, as a longtime user. That said, I'd rate my level of expertise at intermediate. AdWords is a complex Darwinian system that engenders a love-hate relationship. I'll say more about its workings another time.
In future posts, I'll cover more details on strategy and tactics and cite other articles on the indie artist and the viral campaign, including some success stories. All these posts will be listed under my "indie music workshop" category.
I'll try to keep the reportage concise and relevant. And, of course, I invite readers to join the conversation with useful comments.
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Posted in Allen Shadow's Songs, indie music artist, indie music workshop, music, news, Obama	| Tagged indie music, music, music Blogs, music business, Obama, Politics, rock music, springsteen, youtube	| 1 Reply
SXSW Live
Posted on March 21, 2009 by allenshadow
It's SWSW time, and if you want to keep up with the action, there's excellent coverage from some leading music journalists. New York Times writers Jon Pareles, Ben Sisario and David Carr report through the weekend from Austin in the Time's Topics page devoted to the festival. Pareles, who is the Gray Lady's chief pop critic, is a veteran whose coverage goes back to the glory days of Rolling Stone. He has a keen, well-rounded ear. In his coverage today, Pareles also adds a keen observation on the state of today's music artist:
…musicians draw their audiences from people who chase down music in the news media, in blogs and on noncommercial radio stations — or maybe from a friend's recommendation or a giveaway on a music downloading site.
Yes, the biz has been leveled via the Internet. That, of course, is the good news for the music artist. The bad, or at least difficult, news lies in making money. I'll cite a few cases, both good and bad, in future posts that exemplify the money issue.
Back to SXSW coverage, try WIRE's Underwire blog, with jottings from Eliot Van Buskirk and others. Today, he discusses band Choo Choo's take on Twitter as a tool to connect with fans.
For an authentic view from the ground, try popwreckoning's blog. Their writers will transport you, with reviews, band details and photos.
Posted in music	| Tagged Ben Sisario, David Carr, indie music, Jon Pareles, music, music Blogs, music business, new york times, rock music, sxsw, underwire, wire	| Leave a reply
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