Woodstock: What is it and Where Did it Come From?

August 15 through 18, 1969: The four most important days in the lives of every member of my generation. I know this because someone had the foresight of filming the Woodstock Music Festival apparently aware that forty years later not a single baby-boomer would have enough brain cells left to recall even a moment of our lives prior to yesterday afternoon. I do remember being a high school kid in '69, but details are quite fuzzy. I think I was the star quarterback on the football team and I seem to remember nailing the entire cheerleading squad, and Miss Grant too-the sexy student teacher in my geometry class. Or maybe that wasn't me, I'm not sure. But the point is that a vast majority of us who grew up in the 60s have varying degrees of self-inflicted brain damage and therefore require a little help in recalling those events that made us what we are today-a generation of burned out idiots.

But while we may be utterly clueless when it comes to existing on this planet, we do know good music when we hear it and no generation produced a better soundtrack to get fucked up to than we did. And it was at Woodstock that perhaps the greatest collection of musicians ever to assemble in one place made history in front of half-a-million fans who congregated to smoke pot, get naked, have sex and listen to loud music-just like what we did at school assemblies.

One of the responsibilities of any baby-boomer is to help educate later generations about Woodstock and lucky for you I happen to be one of the world's foremost experts on pretending I know a lot about stuff. One of the things I like to pretend I know a lot about is Woodstock, so as a service to you the reader, I have put together a number of questions I hear people ask all the time about that amazing music festival along with answers that will surely leave you with the impression that Nancy Reagan may have been on the right track when she said, "Just say no!" Of course she was wrong. Take it from me, the best way to forget about what a loser you are is to "Just say yes!" Anyway, here are those questions I was promising...

Note: For full comprehension of what you are about to read, a couple drags of weed are highly recommended.

Wait a minute. Woodstock was a music festival? I thought Woodstock was Snoopy's birdie friend.

Funny you should bring that up. Snoopy named his feathered friend "Woodstock" after returning from the music festival. Of course, it wasn't until he had dropped acid at Woodstock that the dog had even seen the bird and many of Snoopy's friends believe that Woodstock never actually existed and was merely a hallucination. One sad side note: Jobless and heavily into drugs by the mid-80s, Snoopy was evicted by his landlord Charlie Brown and died of a drug overdose, naked in the hallway of a seedy Greenwich Village apartment building. He was 105 (in dog years).

I'm looking at the lineup from Woodstock and I see Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, The Dead, CSNY, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Joe Cocker-Wow! Then I see Sha-Na-Na. Sha-Na-Freakin'-Na? Are you kidding me?

We are still trying to live that one down. Let's just write it off as a poorly thought out, drug-related decision.

Why is it called Woodstock if the festival was actually held in Bethel, New York?

Another drug-related decision.

Woodstock ran from the 15^th to the 18^th and yet the poster says, "3 Days of Peace & Music." Drugs again?

Yep.

What was up with the baby-boomer generation? Why all the protesting and drug use and sex-well the sex I get... and the drugs too-but the protesting? What was that about?

Um... not really sure... But the sex and drugs were great! ...I think...

I watched the film Woodstock and it looked to me like just a bunch of kids smoking dope and having sex in the mud. What's so great about that?

The dope and the sex. Weren't you paying attention?

My parents talk about Woodstock all the time like it's the be-all and end-all. Enough is enough! When I try to talk to them about current music festivals like Bonnaroo, they don't listen. What can I do?

I hear ya loud and clear buddy! Members of my generation can be a bit snobbish about our music and... Hold on here! Did you say Bonnaroo? What the hell is a Bonnaroo? You gotta be freakin' kidding me! Bonnaroo? Get the hell out of here you pimply-faced little weasel!

I, uh... is there any... um... I forgot what I was gonna ask.

Thanks for your question. Always good to hear from a fellow baby-boomer.

My parents told me that I was conceived at Woodstock. Does anybody else find it a bit disturbing that teens were having sex out there in front of everybody?

Not at all. Public fornication was quite common at Woodstock. In fact there's a good chance your mom was passed around the crowd like a used doobie and that your father isn't really your daddy at all. By the way, any chance you have blue eyes and dark, curly hair?