Woodstock 1969, or 1967?

@bdp24

I always enjoy your deep dives into music and culture. And thanks for sharing the (very informative) video.

A comedian recently said that the purpose of entertainment is to create a common culture. This assumes, of course, that you accept the premise of music being "entertainment," But music certainly has the power to do just that. A half a dozen "kids" pounding on instruments in their garages with an audience made up of girl/boyfriends, the hosting parents inside with the TV turned up loud enough to drown out the music, and neighbors within an 8-home radius with their doors (and windows) shut to maintain some level of sanity. Fast forward a few years and those screaming neighbors are subordinate to tens of thousands of screaming fans. Something happened along the way. Their music, or their mere presence, resonated with a large number people -- and, they were adopted into their culture. They may have been a 3.4 on the "technical" scale, but a 9.8 on the "something grabbed a hold of me" scale. We remember the music. We remember what we were doing, where we were doing it, and who we were doing it with. And how we felt at the time. We may have "outgrown" the genre (or, not!!) but our reverence for the artists and contribution to our lives has not diminished. One iota.

The Band as a "Musician’s Band;"

I had the opportunity to do a lot of radio searches on my 4 1/2 commute between store locations in my former life and hit on a variety of music and information stations. I was a sales trainer, motivator and as a business owner, the occasional parole officer always looking something useful. Whether you agree, or disagree with the messaging, preachers are some of the best teachers, trainers and motivators on the planet. One sermon that stuck with me went something like this:

"We’re just ants on a Rembrandt, seeing textures and colors change under our feet, not knowing the masterpiece that’s been created below us."

To me, this helps differentiate between a band that finds itself heavily adopted into a culture and a "musicians band." As non-musicians (I tried unsuccessfully) there are probably things happening above our pay grades that we don’t fully understand, or appreciate. We may be reaching for ’shiny objects" in OUR music that just don’t jump out and grab us with some music or bands (or, both) even though there may be true genius at work here. We’re just "ants on a Rembrandt."

I’ll close with another result of poking around on the radio dial during a long commute. I landed on an old-time radio comedy broadcast.

Host: We’re going to do a math quiz.

Guest: "Okay"

Host: "What’s six plus six?"

Guest: (hesitates)

Host: "Well, it’s twelve!"

Guest: "NO!! Six plus six CAN’T be twelve. FOUR PLUS EIGHT IS TWELVE!!"

Conclusion:

There can be more than one "right" answer to a question/problem. Even with our music preferences.

Thank you @frogman I LIKE THE WAY YOU TALK. Enjoy the music

I’ve been deliberately avoiding this thread since my last post. A few days after responding to the first few comments from others that followed, it occurred to me that I should have pointed out to @zlone that I had NOT in actual fact "trashed a lot of great music and musicians." (not in the original post, that is). Go ahead if you wish and reread it. It was Ahmet Ertegun who characterized the Disraeli Gears album as "psychedelic horsesh*t", not I. I loved both Cream albums at the time of their release, playing a few songs from those albums in my high school garage band. Same with the first two Hendrix albums.

The impetus for this thread was coming upon the video I posted, which was made fairly recently. I find it funny that Dylan is so closely associated with Woodstock, yet wanted no part of the Woodstock Festival (he turned down the offer to perform at it). That’s why I entitled the thread "Woodstock 1969, or 1967?" For Dylan, Woodstock was all about 1967 (making music in the basement of Big Pink, and writing all of the John Wesley Harding album songs), while for the rest of the world (and most Rock music fans) it was (and is) the 1969 Festival, which wasn’t really held in Woodstock.

My motive for starting this thread was to bring the video to the attention of people who like the music that everyone is now calling Americana, but who are perhaps unaware of the role the recordings Dylan and The Hawks made in the basement of the pink house in West Saugerties in 1967 played in the creation of the Americana style of music.

While many comments made since my last post here are not without merit, I feel compelled to bring the discussion back on track with this quote from Clapton regarding Music From Big Pink:

"I listened to this album, and I thought this is it. This is where music has supposed to have gone for a long time, and it hasn’t really got there. And now it’s finally.....someone has finally gone and done it."

"It had all kinds of effects. I mean it stimulated me, it moved me, and it upset me and made me very discontent, all at the same time. And I think it had a similar effect on a lot of people."

"It had a similar effect on a lot of people." That it did, and continues to (look at all the young bands involved in projects related to The Band). I don’t cite Clapton’s story insisting (or even suggesting) everyone should share his (and my) opinion of MFBP or The Band, but rather to chronicle the "Big Bang" effect the album, The Band, and the Basement Tapes had on a large group of music makers whom many people love, but aren’t aware of the role The Band played in the musical direction those music makers chose to take. Richard Thompson, for instance.

I love lots of current and past musical artists just as much as I love The Band (Rodney Crowell, Buddy & Julie Miller, Iris DeMent, Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris, NRBQ, John Hiatt, Los Lobos, Dave Edmunds, and plenty of others. Plus I love AC/DC, The Ramones, and Weezer, so I'm no Americana purist/snob ), but they didn’t play the role The Band did in greatly influencing the direction music took. Well, not in the general field of Rock music---Led Zeppelin were much more influential---but in the music I at least care most about. As proof, look at the music Robert Plant has ended up making. Does it owe more to Led Zeppelin, or to The Band? I rest my case.

Further thoughts:

That year of 1967 spent in the basement of the Big Pink house was of as much consequence to the music Bob Dylan was to next record as it was to that of The Band. Dylan went to Nashville and recorded his John Wesley Harding album (released in December of ’67), and it is even more different from what was happening in Rock music than was The Band’s Music From Big Pink, which was released six months after Dylan’s album.

A friend brought over the JWH album, and we gave it a listen. I could not even remotely relate to what I heard. I was deep in my Cream/Hendrix/Vanilla Fudge (shudder) phase (while still loving my Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and Yardbirds albums), and the very quiet, "rural" nature of the music was absolutely foreign to me. Unlike most people, I got into Dylan through The Band, not visa versa.

A lot of time had passed since 1967 when two albums came out that were direct descendants of the music Dylan and The Band recorded in Big Pink:

1- The O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack, released in 2000. Produced by T Bone Burnett.

2- The various artists New Basement Tapes album, released in 2014. Again, produced by T Bone Burnett. A (largely) new generation of artists paying their respects to Dylan and The Band.

I have a drummer friend I new in L.A. who moved to Portland in the early-2000’s, and one year I was hauling a load of drums up to that city to exhibit at the vintage drum show put on by a mutual friend of ours (Jose Medeles, who has worked with The Breeders, Kim Deal, numerous others. He now owns Revival Drum Shop in Portland). I stayed with the friend, and on the weekend of the drum show he was performing in one of the bands who were appearing at Portland's annual tribute show to The Band, every artist/band performing one or two songs.

As I said, the effects The Basement Tapes and The Band had on music were deep and long lasting.

I dig The Band, the 60’s psychedelic horsesh*t, the British Invasion, etc. However, the band whose music makes me feel happy, every single time, is the Good ’Ole Grateful Dead (primarily from ’68-’77). I can’t explain it, particularly as I became a fan when I was a geezer in my late ’40s, had never seen them live, and hardly ever gave them a second thought in my younger days. Nonetheless, the GD (sans Donna) has had a profound and emotional musical effect on me in a way I find difficult to articulate. I guess everyone has a band that affects them deeply, so there’s really no reason to invalidate someone’s musical preferences in that regard.