40 years since the 3 days

            As festival season kicks into high gear it’s hard not to remember the one festival that started it all. In two months, it will be the 40^th anniversary of arguably the most famous music festival of all time: the original Woodstock Festival. And to commemorate, Warner Bros. is reissuing Michael Wadleigh’s documentary Woodstock:3 Days of Peace & Music. The documentary will be remastered in an Ultimate Collector’s Edition and include over three hours of bonus footage, some of it newly-discovered, including 18 never-before-seen performances by CCR, Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker, the Who and the Grateful Dead, to name a few. Included in the bonus footage are interviews with Wadleigh, Martin Scorsese, producer Michael Lang, talks with the concert’s original chief on-site engineer and producer Eddie Kramer, and many others involved in the unimaginable task of documenting the historic festival back in 1969. They talk about having to record the performances with shoddy equipment, living in an 8x8 tractor-trailer with no view of the stage, having to sift through hours upon hours worth of film they got from the festival to make the documentary and the effect that the documentary had on people. The memory of the original Woodstock has always fascinated people, and with its message of peace, originality and spontaneity, it makes sense that it has been able to transcend generations to affect those too young to even have parents who attended. The Collector’s Edition DVD box set will be released tomorrow (June 9^th) and will only run a limited amount of copies (140,000). The box set will also come with a 60-page commemorative Life magazine reprint and a reproduction of the three-day ticket.

-Laurie Moot

Currently listening to: "Hesitating Beauty," by Billy Bragg and Wilco

This content is solely the property of The Athens Blur Magazine and may not be re-produced without expressed written consent. The Athens Blur Magazine is an 8 issue/year music & variety publication proud to be based in the Classic City of Athens, Ga. For more information, please contact editorial@athensblur.com