Woodstock at Forty
Planting the Seeds
by Paul Krassner

"Along with 499,999 others on a countercultural pilgrimage 40 years ago, I was heading for the Woodstock Festival of Music & Love. I was wearing my yellow leather fringe jacket for the first time. In one of the pockets there was a nice little stash of LSD. If you happen to be brand-name conscious, then you’ll want to know that it was Owsley White Lightning.

"The CIA originally envisioned using LSD as a means of control, but, without anybody’s permission, millions of young people had already become explorers of their own inner space. Acid was serving as a vehicle for deprogramming themselves from a civilization of sadomasochistic priorities. A mass awakening was in process. There was an evolutionary jump in consciousness.

"The underground press was flourishing, and when LSD was declared illegal on October 10, 1966, the psychedelic San Francisco Oracle became politicized while the radical Berkeley Barb began to treat the drug subculture as fellow outlaws. Acid was even influencing the stock market. Timothy Leary let me listen in on a phone call from a Wall Street broker who thanked Leary for turning him onto acid because it gave him the courage to sell short.

"As I wandered around the Woodstock Festival, I was overwhelmed by the realization that this tribal event was in actuality what the Yippies had originally fantasized about for Chicago. No longer did so many of these celebrants have to feel like the only Martians on their block. Now, extended families were developing into an alternative society before your very eyes. I had never before felt such a powerful sense of community."

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Kind of Blue at Fifty: Stalked by Bill Evans' Ghost

"Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue was released 50 years ago this coming Monday—August 17, 1959. That was ten years after, and ten degrees cooler, than the little big band of Miles’ Birth of the Cool. With Kind of Blue the baby had grown up: sleeker, more earnest, now distrustful of irony, and also cagier, suspicious without wanting to show anything that might suggest defensiveness. Its icy hauteur sets the standard for art that draws you in by pretending it doesn’t need anyone or anything but itself.

"Kind of Blue sold like cool-cakes. Its popularity has only increased over the years. Often said to be the best-selling jazz record in history, it attained quadruple platinum status by 2008; some four million copies have been sold in the US.

"The recording took place on two days, six weeks apart, in 1959. First came the two three-hour sessions from 2:00 to 5:00 in the afternoon and 7:00 to 10:00 in the evening on March 2, 1959 in the converted church on 30th Street in Manhattan that was the Columbia studio. Union rate was then pegged at $48.50 per session, and since there were two services Davis’ sidemen were entitled to double scale. Davis argued for a bonus of $100 for the first days work for his stalwarts, bassist Paul Chambers and saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley.

"As Ashley Kahn notes in his excellent Kind of Blue: the Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece (Da Capo, 2000), the initial producer of the session, the producer Irving Townsend, whose voice can be heard on the studio sequences offered on this year’s anniversary re-issues, wrote in an internal Columbia Records memo that Davis would “accept an advance of $10,000 with only a mild oath” after the success of Birth of the Cool and the subsequent Sketches of Spain. Miles had asked for $15,000. It’s hard to know how much Miles made off the record in total, but it’s a lot."

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Since I am on a musical roll here (so to speak) my vinyl ripping project is finally producing WAV, FLAC, and MP3 files that I like. There are a lot of steps in this process that I will share one of these days. It's nice to here the music again. Granted, many of my LPs have been released on CD but it's nice to hear the music from the grooves that I grooved to in the 60s and 70s. Not to mention that some of the CDs that have been released aren't the same. Early Beatles are a good example. The English album and the US album had different song lists. The CDs are of the English albums. That may be all well an good but those aren't the albums I listened to. Now I will be able to listen to the albums I want to listen to. And a lot of what I have on vinyl isn't available as a CD. Much enjoyment will ensue.