-By Jake T. Snake
Tired to death and beyond of all the Woodstock retrospective pieces and nostalgia bubbling up all over the place. I feel queasy. I was three in 1969 and following that huge demographic blip known colloquially as the "Baby Boomers" has made life interesting for those of us left in its wake. Take music (since we are discussing a music festival) as an example. Can anyone explain to me why "Classic Rock" stations have been playing the same 15 songs that came out from 1968-1973 since about 1978. Doesn't anything else become classic at some point along the line? I mean really, you don't think maybe the Clash might qualify what with "London Calling" being 30 years old this year or many other equally talented groups that have come and gone. Great music is being made all the time, why the cultural brainwashing that good music stopped being made sometime in the early 1970s? Why in God's name do teenagers still listen to Led Zeppelin and I swear to God if anyone writes in the comments section that it is because they rule, I will hunt you down and kill you.
I would like to suggest that the reason we remain saturated in the music of that era 40 years later boils down to demographics, while the musicians of that period were certainly talented I don't buy that they were any more or less talented than those who came after them. To reiterate, they were good , but they weren't and aren't any better than a lot of other bands and performers that have come along and quietly disappeared since then. Music is a business, the largest number of customers drives radio playlists, advertising, who is allowed to make another record and also allows really old guys and girls to continue doddering around on stage (at exorbitant ticket prices!) well into their declining years when whatever else they are doing they are not rocking. Two words-Paul McCartney. Without a huge nostalgic demographic he would have been history 20 years ago. In a similar vein, many incredible talents have flashed and died out quickly barely being noticed-criminal. Does anyone doubt that you should be able to turn on your radio anywhere in this fine country and hear Guided By Voices night or day, but you won't. The business model isn't about quality, it is about what sells. I ponder this as my 7 year old asks me to tune in a dance station where I hear a snippet of lyric about the young lady singing wanting to dance on someone's "Disco Stick". Oy!
My other question of course is what happened to all that peace and love we were going to bring about. Was that just drug induced chatter? Was it just swallowed in a sea of marketing? Being a child of the 1980s and watching my elders teach me that greed was good it was difficult to follow the peace and love thread through to whatever conclusion it might have arrived at. Somewhere along the way the people interested in progress lost to the more corporate, conservative and self interested factions.
Were the ideals of Woodstock realized or was it just dabbling in the pool of possibilities until it was time to begin working for the clampdown and buying a BMW? I look around and I am unsure that things have changed or improved much. We are still waging unnecessary wars, still being raped by corporations, middle class still struggling, still no universal healthcare, still overfunding the pentagon, still punishing poor people, still making sure life is miserable for you if your skin is brown, still a theocracy and still ignorant and proud of it.
What fruit of a positive variety ripened, because of Woodstock and the cultural shift it represented. I wonder how far we have traveled and how much farther we have to go. Still, at the end of the day I suppose I have to say thanks for trying, I don't believe my generation ever even tried. The Reagan Revolution was a time of simply trying to survive for many of us. I am hoping that those younger than me will move the world forward as they have recently. I hope that they will retain their idealism and aspire to something higher than the crass ends those currently in power all over this country seem to be pursuing.