Woodstock - 3 Days of Peace & Music (The Director's Cut)
|
Our Price: $99.95 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $95.95 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Woodstock - 3 Days of Peace & Music (The Director's Cut)
Movie Review: "woodstock" rocks
Summary: 5 Stars
wonderfully well done. beginning to end.Movie Review: WOODSTOCK 3 days of Peace & Music DVD
Summary: 5 Stars
My daughter used this as part of an oral report on Woodstock, she got a 95%Movie Review: eh
Summary: 2 Stars
i expected more from this dvd. was not an enjoyable watch, but i may give it another chance somedayMovie Review: Great content, lousy DVD production
Summary: 5 Stars
Great time capsule of a great era; highly recommend it. It's a shame the studio DVD production is up to par! The content is a 5, the DVD production is a 2. Much more could have been presented.Movie Review: Either the end or the beginning of a dream...
Summary: 3 Stars
My kids gave me this, probably to stop me binding on about the old days, and it is intresting to see some of this about 37 years after I first saw it on the big screen in Edinburgh.
Something that you don't realise from early cuts is just how lamentable some the the bands were - no wonder it was so swingingly edited. Jefferson Airplane are beyond awful, and Canned Heat are quite dire - I don't know what Henry Vestine was on but his guitar is out of time, out of tune and out of it completely. Some acts managed to get it together, such as the Who, Santana, and even Country Joe and the Fish (nice, if out of tune, guitar from Barry Melton) and it is easy to see why dear old Alvin Lee in 10 Years After was such a hit - coming from a country that boasted Peter Green, Jeff Beck, Clapton, Rory Gallagher, Jimmy Page, Kim Simmons, Mick Green and many others, it was the norm to be very good and to play very well. Excellence was expected and the British Blues Scene led the world. Muddy, BB King and many others have paid tribute to the Stones, the Beatles, Clapton, Green and all the others for making sure that anybody who isn't from the planet Zark knows who Robert Johnson is.
If you had to sum the whole thing up, I suppose that the performances by CSN and Ritchie Havens sum it up pretty well musically - lots of flailing at acoustic guitars and sweet vocals. And Hendrix ... well, Hendrix. I blow very hot and cold about Sir Jimi, and I am cold about this performance too. Thank goodness somebody else has had the courage to say that he was not actually that good. In 1968, at the Woburn Abbey Festival, I saw a dreadful performance from Hendrix, and I mean dreadful, when he was completely upstaged by a 20-year-old Rory Gallagher with a primitive version of Taste. And here they are again, a year after Woodstock, at the Isle of Wight Festival, and those who were there told me at the time that the absolute show-stoppers were Procol Harum (don't laugh - they had Robin Trower, BJ Wilson and Gary Brooker)and ... Rory Gallagher with Taste. Luckily we have "Taste At The Isle Of Wight" available so you can judge for yourselves..... but that great Deceiver, Memory, has put Saint Jimi forward as the star of the IOW show.
Anyway, as a social document it is fascinating, lots of Peace and Love and rolling in the mud. But like all dreams it had to stop, and what this self-contained village (supported by food drops and an army of social and medical volunteers) left behind was a bloody awful mess, an emerging account of some very threatening back-stage scenes and an acreage "ankle deep in human s***", as one American (called Berry - where else?) who was there told me. It reminds me of the Travellers, who want to be "left alone" and not "victimised" - as long as some silly bu**er in full-time work is prepared to pick up the tab, hand over the dole, pay for the schooling, pay for the medical needs, pay for everything in fact. I know that's a bit cynical, because there really was a soft feeling to the 60s and early 70s, but there was also a buzz of anger and violence. Perhaps you had to live through Nixon, Vietnam and the Hell's Angels to really get the point of Woodstock. Perhaps not.
Buy? Yes, I guess so, because there are good parts musically and socially, and it surely won't happen again. But FF the dreadful bands - there's a lot of them, too - almost all from the U S of A.