Flea Market Saturday: Woodstock and Les Paul

Woodstock, instant city of half a million..

This weekend is the 40th anniversary of the once-in-a-lifetime
music festival called Woodstock that ensured a place in history for
Max Yasgur's farm near Bethel (not Woodstock), Sullivan Co, NY.

In the following video, see the farm before site prep began,
fences that would prove useless, and the building of the stage,
accompanied by Crosby Stills & Nash doing "A Long Time Gone":



Next, Max Yasgur congratulates the crowd (before the rains came):



Attempts to recreate the magic of that first Woodstock have failed
because there's simply no way to recreate the circumstances that
transformed "just another weekend concert" into A Legend.
Tom Degan of Goshen NY turned 11 that historic weekend, and although he was too young to attend, his Woodstock Revisited is an accurate depiction of the times, before and after.

And what does Les Paul (who died this week - R.I.P.) have to do with Woodstock?

Well, he invented the electric guitar, without which it's doubtful many of the performances that weekend would have been quite so memorable.

Peace,