Woodstock Music Festival

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Woodstock

In 1970 a two-hundred and thirty minute documentary was released entitled "Woodstock." This documentary has set the standard for other documentaries to come. This documentary covers a three day festival that was held in August of 1969. The festival symbolized the ideas of the late 1960’s in terms of music, politics, and society in general. The documentary depicted the event as a major love and drug fest.

Woodstock was a historic event that was the idea of four men by the names of Michael Lang, John Roberts, Joel Roseman, and Artie Kornfeld. Two of the men, Roberts and Roseman, placed an ad in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal stating "Young men with unlimited capital looking for interesting, legitimate investment opportunities and business propositions" (Spitz, 1979, 13). This ad resulted in the four men getting together and discussing the possibility of a retreat-like recording studio in Woodstock, New York. As we all know now, the idea blew up into a festival that was portrayed in the Academy Award winning documentary "Woodstock."

The concept of a documentary arose when the men made an offer to Warner Brothers to make a movie about the upcoming event. Kornfeld asked Warner Brothers for $100,000 to allow them to do the movie. Warner Brothers took them up on the offer because they felt "it could have either sold millions or, if there were riots, be one of the best documentaries ever made" (How Woodstock happened, 1994).

The Woodstock rock concert was described as "a symptomatic event of our time that showed the tremendous hunger, need, yearning for community on the part of the youth" (Big Woodstock, 1969, 17). If you really want to understand why "Woodstock" happened, you must know more...

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...re so prevalent during this era.

Woodstock was a landmark documentary that is of genuine historical and social importance. It truly captured the spirit of America in a very transitional time. The documentary illustrated the counterculture of the 1960’s hippie era. This Academy Award winning documentary is still considered a stunning achievement to this day.

References

“Big Woodstock Rock Trip.” (1969, August). Time, 14b-22.

Hertsgard, M. (1995). A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles. New

York: Dell Publishing Groups Inc.

How Woodstock happened. (1994). Retrieved April 5, 2008, from http://www.geocities.com/~music-festival/how-w2.htm

Spitz, R. (1979). Barefoot in Babylon. New York: The Viking Press.

“Tired Rock Fans Begin Exodus from Music Fair.” (1969, August 20). New York Times.

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