Saturday August 15,2020 Woodstock 1969, Day One

"It was twenty years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play", many more years actually at this point, but it was fifty one years ago today that the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival opened and changed the musical and social world as we knew it.

 I thought that we should celebrate the event by enjoying one artist from each of the days of this historic concert weekend but when reviewing Day One I found it impossible to find one likeable set.  Richie Havens opened the festival with an amazing,  but thoroughly overexposed song set as a fill in for the original opening act Sweetwater who was delayed in the insane traffic, and probably should have stayed delayed.  Never heard of Sweetwater?  There you go.

 Other Day One acts included Bert Sommer (?), Ravi Shankar, Melanie, Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez.  OK hands up who wants to listen to any one of their songs?  Yep, that’s what I thought.  So what shall we do?

 Those of you who know me realize the answer is quite obvious. Not a Day One act or even an artist scheduled to perform, John Sebastain, a spectator at the concert, was called upon to grab an acoustic guitar after the historic rainfall on Day Two to entertain the drenched crowd because the use of electric instruments in the water on the stage would have risked electrocution at that time.

 So here we have John Sebastian with his ode to the challenges of parenthood in what he has called his worst performance possible in front of the largest audience imaginable.

 Stay safe and well...and why must every generation think their folks are square.

Why must every generation think their folks are square

And no matter where their heads are they know mom's ain't there

'Cause I swore when I was small that I'd remember when

I knew what's wrong with them that I was smaller then

 Determined to remember all the cardinal rules

Like sun showers are legal grounds for cutting school

I know I have forgotten maybe one or two

And I hope that I recall them all before the baby's due

And I know he'll have a question or two

 Like "hey Pop, can I go ride my zoom

It goes two hundred miles an hour suspended on balloons

And can I put a droplet of this new stuff on my tongue

And imagine frothing dragons while you sit and wreck your lungs"

And I must be permissive, understanding of the younger generation

 Then I'll know that all I've learned my kid assumes

And all my deepest worries must be his cartoons

And still I'll try to tell them him all the things I've done

Relating to what he can do when he becomes a man

And still he'll stick his fingers in the fan

 And "Hey, Pop, my girlfriend's only three

She's got her own videophone and she's taking L.S.D.

And now that we're best friends she wants to give a bit to me

But what's the matter Daddy, how come you're turning green?

Can it be that you can't live up to your dreams?"