In this Aug. 16, 1969, file photo, a young woman naps on top of her car while trying to reach the Woodstock Festival.At a time of bitter protests over the Vietnam War, Woodstock “seemed to transcend the anger that clearly a lot of people were feeling. It was about being together. It was about helping out someone that needed something,” says Breda, now a nursing professor at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. “The music spoke for us.
“I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time,” the late Sen. John McCain famously said in 2007. To some, the festival was an inspiring moment of countercultural community and youthful freethinking. To others, it was an outrageous display of indulgence, moral decay and insouciance in a time of war.The Woodstock audience did include at least one Vietnam veteran, snapped in a well-known photo . Performers included Country Joe McDonald, a Navy veteran who served mainly in Japan. His anti-war “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag” became a memorable Woodstock moment.
The show was part of the Harlem Cultural Festival, a concert series that would later be dubbed a “Black Woodstock.” Her mother wouldn’t let her go to Woodstock. But Beatty Barnes feels the city-sponsored Harlem festival, which was showcased in two network TV specials, showed people didn’t have to go far to come together around music.“It was embarking onto ‘what do we have already here where we can have people gather?’” says Beatty Barnes, who became a Broadway actress and singer. “It was a really great thing.”
GlobeArts Legacy = dope, sex , bad music ...now the kids and gr kids do: dope, sex, cell phones 24 /7. Great legacy. Woodstock. Rain , garbage . Lots of lying. Ask Keith.