By: David Schultz

This weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Music & Arts Fair; a fact that you will no doubt be bombarded with over the next three days. While most people look at the festival in the context of today's festivals that tend to run with clockwork precision, what really stands out about Woodstock is the fact that as much as everyone may want to believe that it could happen again, it simply couldn't. The magic of Woodstock was a half million people treating each other kindly and with respect. Sadly, this will never happen in today's world. In a world of VIP passes, hyperactive youth and the Baby Boomers sense of entitlement to not be hassled when they go to any show, no festival of Woodstock's size and scope could ever give rise to a near unanimous communal spirit. It's what the Woodstock promoters found out at Woodstock 99.

The Woodstock generation made the festival's reputation but the music was pretty memorable as well. Many of the musicians went on to have legendary careers, others became footnotes. Here's what happened to the artists that walked the stage forty years ago.

Richie Havens
Being one of the few artists present when the Festival was about to start, Havens turned his impromptu opening slot at Woodstock into a small charter industry of kicking off festivals and concerts. He’s released dozens of albums, covering everyone from The Beatles and Dylan to The Who, with his most recent album, Nobody Left To Crown, being released near the end of 2008

Swami Satchidananda
The man who gave the opening benediction would start the Integral Yoga Institute and open the Light of Truth Universal Shrine. He passed away in 2002 and did not factor in the naming of Danananackroyd.

Sweetwater
No one would fault you for mistaking this group for Stillwater from Almost Famous. You would be wrong nonetheless. A few months after Woodstock, lead singer Nancy Nevins was injured in car accident, injuring her vocal cords and suffering brain damage. The band’s career never recovered.

The Incredible String Band
The Scottish folk group may have ceased playing in 1974 but you can still hear them in the psych-folk bands of today.

Bert Sommer
A folk singer who never saw any lasting success, Sommer would play with The Left Banke and appear in one of Sid & Marty Krofft’s lesser-known kids shows. He died in 1990.

Tim Hardin
The folkie was better known as a songwriter than a singer, penning the folk standard “If I Were A Carpenter” and Rod Stewart’s “Reason To Believe.” He spent most of his post-Woodstock life battling heroin addiction, dying of an overdose in 1980.

Ravi Shankar
The world’s most famous sitarist is best known for playing Woodstock and The Concert For Bangladesh. His friendship with George Harrison had a great influence on the Beatle’s solo work. Nowadays he may be best known for being Norah Jones’ father.

Melanie
The female folkie has a long unheralded career, continuously working and releasing albums at a decent clip.

Arlo Guthrie
The son of legendary Woody Guthrie, Arlo never had to rest on his father’s laurels. Nary does a Thanksgiving go by – or seem proper – without hearing “Alice’s Restaurant” on the radio and his Carnegie Hall performances are a New York tradition.

Joan Baez
Still a standard-bearer for the Woodstock generation, her post-Festival career has been marked by four decades of activism. She still appears at benefits and lends her voice to worthy causes. She opened the Philadelphia portion of Live Aid with “Amazing Grace” and recently appeared at the 50th anniversary of the Newport Folk Festival.

Quill
Never getting beyond cult band status, Quill broke up within months after playing Woodstock. They were one of the few bands that failed to parlay their appearance at the festival into any type of success.

Keef Hartley Band
Playing Woodstock was easily the high point, if not the only point, in this band’s short career. A jazzy combo, they released four albums before breaking up in 1972.

John Sebastian
A talented harmonica player and inductee into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, Sebastian’s post-Woodstock career will probably be best known for writing and singing the theme to Welcome Back Kotter.

Santana
One of the handful of artists that would perform at the 1994 Woodstock sellout and avoid the disastrous 1999 edition. Santana would spend the 70s as a Guitar God, the 80s and 90s as a borderline nostalgia act and then a stupendous Grammy-winning revival in the 00s.

Canned Heat
More than 40 members have circled through Canned Heat over the last four decades. The band is still around though but the only original member is drummer Fito de la Parra with Larry Taylor and Harvey Mandel occasionally rejoining Canned Heat for select shows.

Mountain
A powerfully heavy band, their three albums released between 1969 and 1972 remain their defining output, although they’ve managed to remain a viable live entity. The raucous “Mississippi Queen” and Leslie West’s penchant for entertaining guest spots will always keep Mountain from slipping into obscurity.

Grateful Dead
Woodstock defined the festival experience and afterwards The Dead redefined the live concert experience. Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995 marked the end of the band; although through Bob Weir’s Ratdog and Phil Lesh & Friends, there is ample opportunity for Deadheads to relive the glory days. Just his past summer, a reformed Dead with all the surviving members toured the U.S.

Creedence Clearwater Revival
Mixing San Francisco headiness with Southern sensibility, CCR created the swamp rock choogle out of thin air. After an acrimonious breakup fueled by discontent with their record company, CCR’s voice, John Fogerty refused to play his old songs out of sheer spite. After being unsuccessfully sued for plagiarizing himself, Fogerty returned to his classic material, making them staples of his live show.

Janis Joplin with The Kozmic Blues Band
Sadly, Janis would be gone a little more than a year after performing at Woodstock with her post-Big Brother band. On her way to becoming a potent live force, Joplin toured Canada with The Grateful Dead and recorded enough material for Pearl, her memorable posthumous release. Despite dying at 27 years old, she lived a historic life and remains the prototype for female blues singers.

Sly & The Family Stone
Destroyed by indulgence, they were pretty much done by the mid-70s, right about the time that their funky sound would have morphed into disco. Stone became a recluse and from the 90s on, his appearances were usually very brief and equally bizarre.

The Who
Keith Moon’s death in 1978 derailed the run of one of the biggest and greatest bands of all time. After a 1982 farewell tour, The Who return in 1989 for a 25th Anniversary tour and would sporadically and lucratively tour for next twenty years. John Entwhistle died in 2002 and in 2006, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend released Endless Wire, a fitting final chapter.

Jefferson Airplane
Along with the Grateful Dead, Grace Slick and company would also perform at Altamont with Marty Balin getting knocked out midset in a scuffle that involved the Hell’s Angels. In 1974, the Airplane became Jefferson Starship and after much legal wrangling morphed into Starship, the Grace Slick led version of the band released the abortion known as “We Built This City.”

Joe Cocker
His revelatory rendition of “With A Little Help From My Friends,” which ultimately became the theme to The Wonder Years became one of his many famous covers. In addition to The Beatles, Cocker would memorably cover The Box Tops, Leon Russell and Dave Mason. He won an Oscar for “Up Where We Belong” and Kim Basinger made his version of “Leave Your Hat On” oh so much more memorable.

Country Joe & The Fish
“Country” Joe McDonald and Barry “The Fish” Melton went as far as a band devoted to protest songs could go. By 1971, they were more interested in appearing in Maverick cinema and in 2001 had to fend off a copyright infringement suit over their most well-known “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixing-To-Die Rag.”

Ten Years After
English blues bands were all the rage in the Woodstock era and Ten Years After remains a leftfield selection on classic rock radio. The band had a nice little run until lead singer and guitarist Alvin Lee became engaged in other projects. Without Lee, the band quietly faded away.

The Band
Robbie Robertson would leave The Band in 1976 and even though most of The Band despise it, The Last Waltz remains one of the era’s defining concert films. They would reform without Robertson in 1983 and play in various iterations until 1999. Richard Manuel would commit suicide in 1986 and Rick Danko would die in his sleep in 1999. Levon Helm’s career has had a recent renaissance, his Electric Dirt released this past June.

Blood, Sweat & Tears
By the time they got Woodstock, Al Kooper had left the band but with David Clayton-Thomas singing lead, BS&T had an early-70s run of jazz-rock albums that retain a certain oddball charm. For those who abhor Isaac Newton, Blood, Sweat & Tears made sure that we knew that what goes up, must come down.

Johnny Winter
After Woodstock, Winter began his move into the category of revered guitarists who never really hit it big yet will be cheered wildly upon being brought on stage by people who probably never heard him play but want to feign familiarity so they can keep their classic rock cred.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
With or without Young, Crosby, Stills & Nash would remain a vital and important cog in the classic rock scene. Their most revered output came in 1969 and 1970, most notably Déjà vu. They will headline one of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame benefit shows this October.

Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Pre-Woodstock, Butterfield was probably best know for being the purveyor of the Chicago blues that backed Dylan’s controversial electric set at the Newport Folk Festival. Post-Woodstock, the influential harmonica player would do a lot of session work, most notably with The Band.

Sha Na Na
Their appearance at Woodstock helped bring about a revival for 50s nostalgia that resulted in the TV show Happy Days and their own syndicated late70s variety program. John “Bowser” Bauman had the greatest success outside the band, hosting a later-day version of The Hollywood Squares.

Jimi Hendrix
Just over a year after the revelatory performance that ended Woodstock in the wee hours of Monday morning, Hendrix would be gone. Of all the performers that played 40 years ago, none influenced rock and roll to the degree that Hendrix did. There have been and there will be many guitarists that will draw comparisons to Jimi but there will never be another.

Labels: Woodstock

By: David Schultz

This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, the 3 day music festival in Bethel, New York that helped define the Sixties. The commemoration of the event starts today with the reissue of Michael Wadleigh’s Academy Award winning documentary Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music, on which a young pre-Mean Streets Martin Scorsese toiled as editor and helped create the film’s multi-panel presentation.

The summer months will likely see a whole host of Woodstock remembrances of varying quality. One which doesn’t seem probable is the rumored anniversary celebration in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York put together by Michael Lang, who helped organize the original festival. With the actual anniversary dates, August 15-18 unavailable, the Brooklyn event seemed doomed from its inception.

On a more definite note, on August 18, Rhino will release 40 Years On: Back To Yasgur’s Farm, a 6 CD set which will recreate the festival in chronological order over its 77 tracks. Those hoping to get those long unheard Quill, Bert Sommer and John Morris tracks as well as the continual updates on the quality of the acid being passed around can rejoice but anyone looking for music from The Band’s set will have to keep searching. Listeners can judge for themselves if The Grateful Dead’s harsh self-assessment of their set was accurate: 40 Years On contains their complete version of “Dark Star.”

The most authentic anniversary celebration will take place in Woodstock at the Bethel Woods Center For The Arts, which sits on the site of the original festival. On August 14, Richie Havens will once again open the festivities with a show featuring the “Heroes of Woodstock” taking place the next night. The Levon Helm Band, Jefferson Starship, Ten Years After, Canned Heat, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Mountain, Tom Constanten (Grateful Dead) and Country Joe McDonald are scheduled to perform.

The festivities will stretch into the fall; on October 25, West Fest, a left coast celebration of the festival, will take place in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The free show will feature performances by Country Joe McDonald, poet Michael McClure and Ray Manzarek of The Doors, The Chambers Brothers, Barry “The Fish” Melton, Blue Cheer, Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks, guitarist Harvey Mandel and Denny Laine of The Moody Blues.

The low key celebrations will hopefully restore the dignity to a festival whose legacy of brotherhood and communal goodwill has been consistently raped by those trusted with its care. Woodstock 94 in Saugerties, New York cast the first stain upon the storied festival’s reputation and five years later, the commercialism and lawlessness of Woodstock 99, held on an Air Force base in Rome, New York, destroyed any shred of the festival’s status as an ongoing symbol of love and peace. Co-opting Woodstock’s peaceful ideals as a marketing tool, Woodstock 99 marked the lowest point in the uncomfortable shotgun marriage between art and commerce.

The entire festival season is premised on recapturing the magic that occurred at Woodstock in 1969; it's a feat unlikely to ever be repeated. To put things in persepctive as to how things have changed in 40 years: this year's Bonnaroo featuring Phish and Bruce Springsteen costs roughly $250 not including food, drink and travel and you will not get on the campgrounds without a ticket; at the original Woodstock, where The Who and Jimi Hendrix performed, tickets were $18, people shared everything they had and most people were let in for free.

Labels: Woodstock

By: David Schultz

More than 25 years ago, John Mellencamp began his career under the name John Cougar, a name he claimed was foisted upon him in a calculated A&R move to boost album sales and increase radio airplay. Once he had achieved a modicum of success, Mellencamp secured the return of his true surname, spending the next decade releasing material as John Cougar Mellencamp. In 1991, Mellencamp finally shed the Cougar, seemingly regaining every ounce of his artistic integrity. Given Mellencamp's tireless efforts to rid his populist work of any corporate influence, the ultra-ubiquitous use of his latest single "Our Country" in conjunction with the promotion of the Chevy Silverado bears every indicia of "corporate sellout." Long gone are the days when PETA member Chrissie Hynde goes to a Gap outlet and knifes a bunch of leather jackets simply because the shopping mall mainstays requested her consent to use one of her songs in a Gap commercial.

To say that the profitable nature of the record business has skyrocketed since the days of Buddy Holly and "Rock Around The Clock" would be an understatement of gargantuan proportion. The evolution of the "music business" has oftentimes seen the focus placed more on business than music. Basic corporate concepts such as skillful marketing plans, profit maximization and good old Gordon Gekko greed, once inimical to the artistry of the music profession, are now commonplace. On one hand, debuting "Our Country" as a placard for the automotive industry could be considered good marketing, but it also qualifies as just another moment in the uncomfortable marriage between art and commerce . . . and not even one of the more egregious ones. What follows are the ten most severe instances of the artistic vision coming under attack by the corporate mindset.

10. Ed Sullivan Tells The Rolling Stones and The Doors To Keep It Clean

Given Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Super Bowl, it seems almost quaint that CBS and Ed Sullivan once worried about suggestive lyrics being sung on The Ed Sullivan Show. In 1967, The Rolling Stones were slated to make an anxiously anticipated appearance on the legendary variety show and sing "Let's Spend The Night Together." Concerned that the lyrics, tame by today's standards, could prove offensive, CBS censors asked Mick Jagger to change the words. Under threats of being taken off the air if he sang the "offensive" lyric, Jagger complied, rolling his eyes while warbling "let's spend some 'time' together." [The BBC wasn't as prudish] Later that year, the Sullivan show made a similar request to another high-profile artist, but with much different results, Worried that the line, "Girl, we couldn't get much higher," from The Doors' "Light My Fire" promoted drug use, CBS asked The Doors to change the lyric. Playing live without a delay - ah, the trusting pre-wardrobe malfunction era - Jim Morrison got right up into the camera and, much to the dismay of CBSand Sullivan, not only delivered the line unedited, accentuated "higher." The network's crusade to protect tender sensibilities from suggestive rock and roll lyrics didn't succeed. In the aftermath, the two songs went on to be played on classic rock radio a few hundred thousand times without corrupting the nation's youth. However, the same Puritan attitudes exhibited by CBS and those that monitor and oversee network television persist today; Janet Jackson's left breast has not been seen in public since 2004 (at least not without a hand covering it) and the repercussions of her "wardrobe malfunction" are still being felt on network TV and commercial radio.

9. Sony Infects Its Customers' Computers In The Name Of Combating Illegal Copying

In 2005, according to the New York Attorney General, BMG Music placed XCP and MediaMax DRM copy restriction software on a number of CDs, including releases by Trey Anastasio and the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. The software installed its own CD playback software and prevented the music from being downloaded onto the purchaser's computer in an iPOD compatible format. While Sony portrayed their effort as an ideological blow against the illegal copying and exchanging of copyrighted music, it seemed more of a thumb in the nose to the increasingly popular proliferation of Apple's iTunes. In making sure that their programs went undisturbed and iPOD unfriendly, Sony installed cloaking software that not only rendered them undetectable, it interfered with the way Windows played compact discs, opened security holes that permitted viruses to enter the user's system and transmitted certain data to Sony/BMG from the user's computer. When the problems became known to Sony, they acted arrogantly and denied culpability, drawing the ire of Attorney Generals in New York and Massachusetts. By the time Sony was finished making sure no one publicly or privately duplicated their music, they ceased implementing the software, had to offer "patches" the fix the damage done to their customers' computers and faced a class action lawsuit.

8. The Fan Club Pre-Sale Goes Corporate

Many artists have made a practice of allowing registered members of their fan club to purchase tickets for their shows in advance of the general public. For most fan clubs, membership is free and takes only a minute to complete the online form. Savvy marketers that they are, The Rolling Stones were one of the first artists to take the concept one step further, charging a hefty membership fee for inclusion in their fan club. Other bands like The Who, U2 and recently The Police picked up on the practice, which amounts simply to a premium payment of usually $60 or more, for the right to buy advance tickets. Sad enough that bands found a new way to extract money from their fans' wallets, corporate marketers have recently latched on to this trick. For the recent Best Buy sponsored reunion of The Police, members of Best Buy's Rewards Program had the opportunity to purchase tickets even before The Police's fan club, whose membership fee is $100. Norah Jones' recent concert at the Theater at Madison Square Garden was practically sold out through the Target pre-sale by the time tickets were made available to the rest of her non-Target shopping fans. Corporate sponsorship has become an accepted practice within the touring world, but when purchasing preference of quality concert tickets becomes a Best Buy, Target or any other corporate benefit, it's the fans who will truly suffer.

7. The Grateful Dead Removes Their Soundboards From the Live Music Archives

Inherent to The Grateful Dead's mystique was their willingness to permit their fans to bootleg and trade their live shows. Long before other bands would recognize the benefits to be reaped from the free exchange of live music, The Dead created the model from which they would work. With the advent of the Live Music Archives at archive.org, Deadheads entered the digital age, flooding the site with multiple copies of nearly every Dead show ever played; all with the permission and consent of the venerable San Francisco band. The Grateful Dead were not the first band to change their mind about the availability of their shows on the Archives, but their about-face stung their fans the most.



Citing the detrimental effect on present and future archival CD and DVD releases, the Grateful Dead, upon the initiative of Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, revoked the consent that permitted the Archives to act as a conduit for the exchange of the Dead's shows, denying fans the opportunity to obtain the music for free so that it could be sold to them in the future. "When the music was given away for free to trade, the band was making so much money touring that the music was not as valuable to them," explained Marc Schiller, who assists the Dead with their online marketing. "Apple iTunes has made digital downloads a business." The Dead underestimated the angry, aggrieved response from their fans: like dire wolves they howled vociferously, adamantly pointing to Jerry Garcia's numerous statements that the music belonged to the fans. Bassist Phil Lesh even chimed in to express his bewilderment over the entire issue. Ultimately, a compromise was reached: fans would still be able to freely download shows recorded by their peers but the better-quality soundboard recordings would remain available as streaming audio only - that is, until the Dead decide to release the show commercially and remove it from circulation.

6. John Fogerty Gets Sued For Plagiarizing Himself

In 1985, John Fogerty, the most identifiable member of Creedence Clearwater Revival, released Centerfield, the album that marked the high-water mark of his post-Creedence recording career. As Fogerty had assigned the copyrights to his CCR material to Saul Zaentz' Fantasy Records as part of a deal to get out of his contract, he was loathe to play his old material lest he generate royalties for Zaentz, a man he despised. Once Centerfield, which contained the scathingly derogatory "Zanz Can't Dance" (ultimately changed to "Vanz Kant Danz"), became a certified hit for Warner Bros., Zaenz retaliated as only a scorned corporate mogul can. In a fit of pique, Zaentz sued Fogerty for infringing the copyrights he held on Fogerty's Creedence Clearwater Revival material. Claiming that Fogerty's hit single "Old Man Down The Road" sounded too similar to Creedence's "Run Through The Jungle," Fantasy Records sued Fogerty, marking the first time in history that a label sued a musician for sounding like themselves. Although the Court declined to set a precedent that a musician cannot plagiarize from himself, Fogerty did win at trial. With guitar in hand, Fogerty took the witness stand and took the jury through the songwriting process of each song, showing that a musician can have an archetypal sound without borrowing from past successes. As Fogerty hadn't played Creedence songs in years, seats for the gallery were filled for his performance/testimony. "I was accused of ripping off myself," Fogerty later marveled. "The little boy in me envisions the day I'll actually segue from 'Old Man' right into 'Run Through the Jungle.'"

5. EMI Sees Things In Black And White – Not Grey

Before DJ Danger Mouse became a household name as the skinnier half of Gnarls Barkley, he stood poised to become a highly publicized defendant to a copyright infringement suit at the hands of EMI. Mixing Jay-Z's raps from The Black Album with musical snippets from The Beatles' White Album, Danger Mouse, nee Brian Joseph Burton, created the cleverly-named The Grey Album. Danger Mouse pressed only 3000 copies: none of which he sold, giving them away to his friends instead. However, in the age of the Internet, The Grey Album became a digital success story with copies being downloaded in record numbers. By exposing Beatles fans to Jay-Z and vice versa, Danger Mouse's 2004 venture transcended the lines that usually bracket musical genres, creating an interpretive work to be enjoyed by everyone . . . except EMI Records. While Sony Music/ATV Publishing, a venture between Sony Music and Michael Jackson, own the publishing side of The Beatles catalog, EMI controls The Beatles' sound recordings on behalf of Capitol Records, Inc. At the peak of The Grey Album's success, the hyper-vigilant EMI sent cease-and-desist letters to Danger Mouse and independent retail outlets carrying the album, effectively ceasing distribution of one of rock's most inventive musical works. The concept of reworking Beatles music and vocals in fresh combinations wouldn't be forgotten though. Two years later, EMI would release Love, a recombination of Beatles music overseen by producer George Martin and his son Giles.

4. Ticketmaster Crushes Pearl Jam

At the apex of their early 90s success, Pearl Jam got the bizarre notion in their head that tickets prices for their shows should be kept reasonable, somewhere around $20. Raining on the grunge rockers parade, Ticketmaster's service charges rendered such a dream relatively impossible. When Ticketmaster proved to be killjoy, remaining inflexible on Pearl Jam's demands that they soften their policies on excessive service fees, Pearl Jam refused to play any arena that sold tickets through Ticketmaster. Quickly, they learned that practically every arena in the United States had an exclusive ticket sales agreement with Ticketmaster and that the corporate behemoth threatened lawsuits against any promoter or arena that breached it by using another distributor. Left with no method of selling tickets, Pearl Jam cancelled their 1994 summer tour and brought an antitrust suit alleging that Ticketmaster used a monopolistic domination of the ticket distribution industry to secure a near 30% markup on tickets sales. In the band's view, Ticketmaster was taking unfair advantage of adolescent passion while unreasonably exploiting a marketplace in which they had no competition. Pearl Jam may have won a fleeting battle when Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard testified before Congress but ultimately Ticketmaster would win the war. By 1995, Congress decided against further investigating Ticketmaster's business practices and Pearl Jam's antitrust lawsuit proved unsuccessful. In 1998, heeding the complaints of their fans, who had difficulty acquiring tickets through alternative distributors, the grunge godfathers returned to Ticketmaster arenas. A true victory in every sense of the word for Ticketmaster, their service charges have doubled since the conflict ended.

3. Geffen Sues Neil Young For Not Sounding Like Neil Young

In 1983, David Geffen enticed Neil Young to sign with Geffen Records for considerably less money than Shakey was being offered elsewhere. The incentive that brought Young into Geffen's fold was the assurance that he could make whatever records he wanted without commercial restraint. Right off the bat, Young explored the new found territories of his freedom, testing the patience of his new label by experimenting with computer generated synth-rock and recording Trans, which gave the world an opportunity to hear what might have happened had "Mr. Soul" been recorded by robots. For his next effort, Young recorded Everybody's Rockin', an album of middling Fifties-style rockabilly tunes. Despite the fact that Young was exerting the exact creative freedom promised to him, Geffen wondered exactly they were getting out of their deal and sued Young for making "uncharacteristic music with no chance of commercial success." Even though Trans and Everybody's Rockin' peaked respectively at #19 and #46 on Billboard's album charts, Geffen seemed miffed that they didn't sound like Harvest or Tonight's The Night and demanded the return of $3 million dollars advanced to Young. In response, Young countersued for $21 million, the value of the entire deal. Although the matter ultimately settled, Geffen Records lost some credibility as a label with a commitment to fostering artistic creativity. Backtracking from the allegations of the suit, Geffen later tried to justify it, "The truth is I fought with [Young] because I wanted him to do better work."

2. The "Special Edition" CD

When music fans worldwide embraced compact disc technology in the Eighties, record companies salivated over the ability to sell them music they already owned, albeit in a higher-quality medium. Over the past 25 years, practically every major, minor and obscure album has been released on CD, leaving the labels with the quandary of having to come up with new music for the public to purchase. From this dilemma sprung the insidious creation of the "special edition" CD. Relying on fans' obsession to own the highest quality version of their favorite album, labels "remastered" them, tacked on a couple outtakes and re-released it in an effort to seek an additional $13.99. Already purchased Aqualung on CD? Well, too bad, because now you missed out on the "special edition" containing an interview with Ian Anderson and alternate versions of three songs off their earlier albums. The practice has pervaded practically any new re-issue. For example, although long available on CD, Arista re-released Patti Smith's Horses as a remastered special edition containing one solitary bonus track ("My Generation") and a "legacy edition" containing a second disc with a live performance of Horses. While nicely packaged and presented, the practice smacks of charging full price for an already available product with little fresh material. The practice has spread to Greatest Hits reissues as well. What better way to boost sales for Aerosmith's fourth Greatest Hits collection than to add on a couple rushed together new songs? Even when the re-issue does it right, like the "special edition" of Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run, the labels use the bona fide extras (e.g. concert footage, classic photos and copious liner notes) as an excuse to obscenely jack up the price.

1. Woodstock 99

Raping their own legacy and sinking to deplorable depths of capitalistic corporate behavior, Woodstock's organizers tried one last time to milk a dollar out of 3 more days of peace love and music. To counteract the storied legions of festival-goers who crashed the gates at the original Bethel, NY concert and its 1994 Saugerties, NY sequel, Woodstock 99 took place at the well-defended Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, NY. The fenced in, concrete covered space not only kept anyone without a $150 ticket (a steep price at that time) outside the gates, it also trapped in the 90 degree heat. Bringing life to the grizzly yet surefire marketing concept of selling water in the desert, the festival's organizers were more than happy to hydrate the sweltering fans - for $6 a bottle. Contrary to the spirit of brotherhood fostered at the original Woodstock, everything at Woodstock 99 was for sale, with corporate tents and ATMs set up throughout the grounds. By Sunday night, the breaking point had been reached. Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff" seemed to inspire many in the crowd to recklessness and by the time the Red Hot Chili Peppers launched into Jimi Hendrix' "Fire," rowdy, lawless fans had attacked numerous booths, ruined a great deal of merchandise and destroyed the Woodstock myth beyond repair. Woodstock 99's desire to wring every last cent out of their franchise, to the point of turning the crowd into a dehydrated, captive mass of marketing targets for food, water and merchandise, created the circumstances that led to the perfect storm of revolt against the "noble" corporate goal of maximizing profits at the expenses of the most communal, anti-commercial festival in rock and roll history.

Labels: Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, DJ Danger Mouse, Grateful Dead, Jay-Z, John Fogerty, Lists, Neil Young, Pearl Jam, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Woodstock