'Underground' media got word out on Woodstock http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/082909/opi_487213539.shtml
8/28/2009 by Ed Tant "By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong," went the words to the countercultural anthem written by musician Joni Mitchell and performed ably by a nervous new trio called Crosby, Stills and Nash before a cheering multitude at the now-legendary Woodstock festival in that soaring summer of 1969. One aspect of Woodstock that hasn't received much media attention is the question of just how a crowd perhaps "half a million strong" managed to converge on a dairy farm in upstate New York for what was billed as "three days of peace and music." The year 1969 was B.C. - "before computers" were ubiquitous in almost every American home, school or library. How did the word of Woodstock wind its way into the world of 1969? Much of the credit goes to the national network of "underground" newspapers that were present in almost every city, college town and hippie enclave four decades ago. Back in those heady times, you didn't have to go to Woodstock. Woodstock would come to you, as huge outdoor rock festivals were popping up all over the country, including the Atlanta International Pop Festival that drew a crowd of more than 100,000 less than six weeks before Woodstock wowed the world. Forty years after the summer of Woodstock, the online bulletin for the AARP noted on Aug. 10: "Way before the Internet, the underground press helped to spread the word about the festival and draw people there from all over the country when it was rare for people to travel thousands of miles to attend a music event." Of course, Woodstock and the festivals like it were much more than just musical events. The people who can remember those times when AARP might have stood for "American Anarchist Radical Protesters" are now thinner of hair and thicker of waist, but we can recall those times when a thriving network of underground newspapers served as a national "grapevine" that told the news of festivals and political rallies "from sea to shining sea." The hipster mecca of San Francisco had an underground paper aptly named the Oracle. Not far from 'Frisco, Berkeley bohemians read the Berkeley Barb or the Berkeley Tribe. In New York City, there were the venerable Village Voice and the rousingly radical Rat. Chicago was the home turf of The Seed, probably the most beautiful of all the underground papers, with its "psychedelic" graphics that mirrored the tenor of the times. Atlanta had The Great Speckled Bird, a fine alternative paper that first spread its wings in early 1968. "The Bird" sunk its beak and talons into such Atlanta sacred cows as the Georgia Power and Coca-Cola companies. The underground press of the 1960s was a direct descendant of activist newspapers like Appeal to Reason, which was published from the 1890s to the 1920s and which boasted a circulation of more than 750,000 readers per week at its peak in 1913 - a large circulation even by the standards of today's mainstream media. Those of us with fond memories of the underground press can appreciate the words of writer John Hilgerdt that ran in the pages of a New York underground paper called The East Village Other just after the Woodstock festival 40 years ago: "No one will leave here the same person that existed before. For a few days we were all in a beautiful place. Can we do it again? All I know is that I don't want to leave here. I feel like I've come home." -- Ed Tant's work has appeared in The New York Times, The Progressive and other publications. For more, see his Web site, www.edtant.com. . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
