Woodstock

[Robin Landseadel]

On Aug 16, 2009, at 12:09 AM, John Bailey wrote:

> Was thinking about Woodstock this weekend as it's impossible around
> here not to (a lot of coverage). Is this just a non-US thing?
>
> Which leads to three questions, each broader than the last:
>
> 1. Beatles vs Stones - nothing to add, but I always thought the big
> opposition was Beatles vs Elvis - you had to choose a side and stick
> to it. Elvis was Americanism, Beatles were Internationalism. PLUS I
> love all the stories about Elvis deciding he was a CIA agent, sending
> letters to the CIA, trying to get the Beatles barred from the US by
> appealing to the CIA.
>
> Educate me.

I do believe that the throughly drug-addled Elvis wanted to be a DEA  
agent.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aaelvisa.htm

> 2. Where's Woodstock in IV? Where are all the artists who played that
> supposedly pivotal event (besides Country Joe...)? Was the IV playlist
> really more typical of your average preterite stoner than those Name
> Bands? And even Neil Young was based in Topanga up until the late 60s.

The IV playlist [I will venture] has more in common with the author's  
taste in music than the musical taste "of your average preterite  
stoner," though the notion of the "average preterite stoner' in L.A.  
in 1970 may be a little off anyway. I mean, the L.A. scene provided us  
with Wild Man Fischer—and by extension, Captain Beefheart and Frank  
Zappa—and a lot of what was in the air musically between 1966/1970 was  
pretty off the wall. The inclusion of the relatively obscure "Bonzo  
Dog Band" ought to give you a clue.

> 3. Where are all of those Popular Trademarked Sixties Nostalgic
> Milestones? Woodstock, the Moon Landing, etc? Apart from the Manson
> murders, IV pretty much seems to stick to surface streets, dropping
> names that might have slipped off the grid, or require a bit of
> memory-nudging or research to catch. It's not a nostalgic novel in the
> sense that it just namechecks the usual suspects; although it might be
> nostalgic towards a particular seam of 60s/70s America that isn't
> captured by your usual commercial Today in History retrospective. Or
> is it? I came in a decade or so late and half a world away.

Yes, Inherent Vice is specifically concerned with Los Angeles in the  
spring of 1970. Nostalgia—the Hallmark-card rendition of that mud &  
herpes infested three days of hucksterism that will not be found in  
Inherent Vice—isn't the point as much as remembering what really  
happened, how out of it and deluded we really were back then. Again— 
like Vineland—the center of attention is on the corruption of the  
"Dream Factory."

> On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 1:01 AM, Otto<ottosell at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Happy Anniversary
>>
>> tracklist of the new 6-CD-set:
>>
>> http://www.my-artist.net/woodstock40
>>