Still, maybe we should have gone after all

Right about this time of year I pop the Woodstock CDs into the nearest player for my own private celebration of the anniversary of the concert. August 1969. I was 19, working for the summer in a post office in New Jersey. I had been working in a factory for minimum wage ($1.65) when the post office job came open. I jumped at it, since it paid a magnificent $3.15 an hour. One guy I worked with made everyone mad by blowing off that weekend of work and going to Woodstock.

We kind of followed the story, since we lived in the general region, and were alternatively tempted to go and relieved that we hadn’t gone after all. The tickets were $12 and we just didn’t think we could spend that much. Then we saw the traffic jams, the rain and the general horrendous conditions and felt justified in our decision to stay home.

“What was it like?” We wanted to know. The guy came back and said, “Never heard a single note.” Another group of old high school friends tried to go up, but were turned away and some point and just spent the weekend in someone’s farmhouse.

All through high school the music I heard on the radio was very important to me. I was interested in the Beatles, the blues, rock of all sorts. There is a short list of concerts that I saw:

-The James Cotton Blues Band opening for Janis Joplin in Asbury Park. The girl I was with was a classical flutist and so did not appreciate Janis at all.
-A concert at the Fillmore East that featured The Doors, Richie Havens, The Blues Project, Janis Ian and one more act I can’t remember. Price for the whole thing: $4.00. Pretty steep, but we thought it was worth it. OK, it was 1967.
-The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band opening for The Doors at Hunter College in New York. The girls we were with went to the ladies room and didn’t return to their seats for some time. When they did show up again, they told how they had opened the wrong door and walked in on Jim Morrison and the gang! The Doors invited them to stay and party but they wisely declined and raced back to us.
-Led Zeppelin opening for Jose Feliciano. This was sad. Feliciano, as you may know, is blind, and when he came out, many of us who had only come to see Led Zeppelin left the arena. I made my date stay for a song or two to be polite, but then we joined the exodus.

So who do we go to see in this century? The Rolling Stones, of course.