Still Crazy After All These Years

By some some combination of circumstances I can only attribute to such things as chaos theory, psychokinesis and Divine Intervention, MD&E is still posting after half a decade and is celebrating its 5th birthday. Yay!

Postcards from The Road. 1.

Seen on a car in Washington state (photo Olivia Morrow)

Now why do I doubt the veracity of the above statement (and I can assure the ladies the driver was not Brad Pitt)...?

Woodstock Again

To continue today's leitmotif, here are a few clips from Michael Wadleigh's Woodstock. Enjoy them before they are taken down from YouTube (or alternatively buy or download the movie).

Woodstock: Four Decades On

Forty years ago this weekend nearly half a million people of my generation assembled in the fields of Max Yasgur’s farm, Bethel, upstate NY, for an “Aquarian Exposition” of peace, love and music. The rest, as they say, is history. I wasn’t there. I was however running around the home counties of the British Isles in my pre-undergraduate year absorbing as much popular music culture as possible. News of “Woodstock”, the Mother of all Festivals, travelled quickly across the Atlantic and when the eponymous film by Michael Wadleigh was released a few months later (actually I think it was 1970 in the UK) I rushed up to see it at one of the large screen cinemas in Leicester Square. To this day I still have some reservations about the musical choices made by the director but there is no question about the pioneering and cineamatographic techniques which are still stunning and also that film accurately captures the zeitgeist of that time.

Now, when I watch Woodstock I must confess to feeling quite emotional. The music defined an era and it's wonderful that many of the performers are still going strong viz Paul Kantner and various Jefferson iterations, Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens, Alvin Lee, Carlos Santana, Townsend-Daltery et al. While our lustrous locks and youthful looks are long gone, I hope that some of the values of my generation -societal awareness, peace, social justice and the belief that the status quo can be changed, still exist and that we have passed successfully the baton of idealism to our children.

The image above is from the end credits of the film (the Director’s cut) -it’s great advice and I feel a strong sense of obligation to heed it closely.

We may be greying but there’s plenty of life in us yet. Hell, yeah!

Peace!

World Events

Mad Dog reunited with Cool Cat after 10 year hiatus

Wow it’s been a funny old month in the Silly Season. More blog material around than ever and no time to write a thing. In the last 30 days or so I’ve attended a concert, been reunited with a very cool cat (see above), participated in a rally (the automotive kind -report pending), wielded a sword almost every day and dropped 15lbs. And all this gainst a backdrop of unbelievable 106°F heat (sorry, I’m still stuck in Imperial measure out here in the Colonies) and all sorts of notable world events including swine ‘flu fever fever (100,000 cases in one week of July in the UK), the death of Grasshopper, the lunacy of the lunar landing’s 40^th anniversary, the realization that even with space age technology we still can’t build a reliable toilet. And this weekend it’s the 40^th anniversary of Woodstock (more on that tomorrow). Oh my, where did the time go?

Peace!