I have no real recollection of Sha Na Na; either I was asleep or prowling the grounds, waiting for Jimi.
re: Sha Na Na :
https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-08-...t-unlikely-act
This, I've always suspected, was precisely the problem. A LOT of people who knew nothing of the festival, and heard of it only at the last minute, jumped into their cars with only the clothes on their backs and $3 in their pockets and headed to Bethel in droves, clogging the roads, thinking they'd catch the show on Friday night and then go home. They got there and got stuck.
Most everyone I knew who made it to the festival had a great time. I do know some, though, who were miserable pretty much the whole time. As we walked to the site, there were plenty of people coming the other way.
I'd been to large anti-war demonstrations and, by extrapolation, figured there were a lot of "us" out there. But Woodstock clinched it. I heard more then one person say, "Just think of how many people
didn't make it!"
There's no way to understate the siege mentality that existed in Nixon's Amerika. For detractors who insist that Woodstock was just apolitical escapism for middle class (mostly white) kids, I submit--in full recognition of the contradictions in the counterculture of the Sixties, and the exploitative role of corporate capitalism--that there is a "politics of pleasure," and that our very
togetherness was not only inherently political... it was a threat.
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