The 50th Anniversary Woodstock celebration is supposed to be a grand and nostalgic celebration. The original 3-day festival featured the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Crosby/Stills/Nash/Young, Joan Baez, Grateful Dead, CCR, Janis Joplin, The Who – the list literally goes on and on. Then, we received the news on the Woodstock 50th Anniversary lineup:
It’s time #Woodstock50☮️♥️? pic.twitter.com/gvyCXegh6F
— WOODSTOCK (@woodstockfest) March 19, 2019
This troubling lineup begs the question – what are they going for here? To relive the magic and bring back the heart and soul of music? Or simply to sell tickets to rich kids who don’t know any better? It is hard to tell what their purpose is based off this lineup release.
Electronic music artist Kaskade summed it all up in one succinct Twitter post:
Just looking at this Woodstock 50 line up… ???… sorry, dozed off there reading through it… so much for trying to capture the original spirit of the festival….
— Kaskade (@kaskade) March 20, 2019
Santana played the original – that will be cool. Some other oldies but goodies will be a nice treat. But Miley Cirus? Jay-Z? Cage The Elephant? The Racounters? Granted, some of these artists are great in their own right, but the iconic idea of Woodstock is not a Popfest.
It is a gritty, filthy, barely livable music festival where the best in the music industry played for the love of their craft. Fans stormed in each day, walking miles, suffered the rain, mud, poor equipment, and every other thing that can go wrong in order to listen to the music and love each other.
This idea may get fabricated along the way, but let’s be honest – this “Woodstock” ain’t no Woodstock.
To cleanse the palate, here is Hendrix performing back at the real Woodstock in 1969.
