BY the time you get to Woodstock, you still have 113km to go to find the natural amphitheater that became the hallowed ground of rock ’n’ roll with the Woodstock music festival in 1969, a kind of ceremonial end to the 1960s. I discovered this on a visit to the Hudson River Valley area a couple of hours north of New York City.
As a young teen approaching draft age in ‘69, I had bigger things to worry about than concerts in rural New York state. So I didn’t recall that the organisers had to find an alternative to their original plan of having Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and company entertain for a few days near the town that gave only its name to the festivities. Thus, when I asked a Woodstock shopkeeper last fall where the concert was, I felt like an idiot when she said, “Well, it wasn’t here.”
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Just RM5 per month.
