Posted by 
When Woodstock ’94 was first announced I was disappointed. While I join the rest of my generation in lamenting the fact that I was born too late to have attended the genre-defining concert in Bethel, NY (I would have been less than 2 years old in the summer of ’69) I am not among those who strive to relive such iconic moments with watered-down copies and memorials. In my opinion, if you weren’t there, you weren’t there; too bad, so sad. Maybe that’s why I tend to rally against tribute acts. It certainly has a lot to do with why I always try to make sure I am there whenever I can (wherever “there” may be), in case “there” turns out being the place to be.
Suffice to say I had absolutely no intention to attend Woodstock ’94. However, when my girlfriend bought tickets and told me that if she wasn’t going to be reenacting the Summer of Love with me she would just have to reenact it with someone else, well I quickly convinced myself to take her extra ticket, if just to chaperone.
I was spending the summer working at the family business in Moncton so I drove solo to Toronto to pick up my girl and her two friends. The four of us arrived in Saugerties by mid-afternoon on the first day of the fest, August 12th. We were directed to one of many parking lot fields and loaded with more gear than we could possibly carry – tents, food, coolers, campstove, the whole nine yards – we boarded a shuttle bus to take us to the site itself.
The bus dumped us at an entry gate and we bundled our stuff together and got into one of a dozen lines. With every inch forward we got closer and closer to what turned out to be a weekend-long textbook case of disorganization, as employees at every level were left to make up their own rules and policies for every decision. The first example came when the ticket-taker at the head of my line insisted on literally taking everyone’s entire ticket, whereas the ticket-taker to our left was tearing them in half and the ticket-taker to our right was merely looking at the tickets and handing them back to people untorn and unscathed.
I had spent a lot on that ticket and it was a pretty nice ticket too, big and fancy with the two-dove logo on it. At this point there was no chance of convincing my girlfriend et al that we should start over at the end of the line to my right, so instead I held up the line pleading with the ticket-dude until he finally compromised and let me keep the top strip off my ticket. Every time I look at my little Woodstock ticket stub I hate that young man all over again.
Of course, I was already attending the festival under protest. I saw the Woodstock branding as nothing more than a money-grab that was capitalizing on the recent ’60’s pop culture revival and I had vowed that I wouldn’t spend a cent onsite. A month before I had purchased some white t-shirts and tie-died them, using fabric paint to print “1994 Summer Music Fest” (my personally made-up anti-Woodstock name for the weekend) on the back of each one. As soon as we got our tents set up I presented the four tie-dies to my crew, urging them to join me in boycotting the official festival t-shirt.
Though a long day (and having spent the past six weeks away from my girlfriend) made me more interested in spending the first night of the festival just relaxing at the tent site, I did take a trip down to the main stage area for a peek. The Friday lineup was all up-and-comers and mostly unknown to me so as I look at the evening’s lineup on the ‘net all these years later I can only guess what band might have been playing on the stage as I weaved my way from the tent city and through the massive crowd. I know it wasn’t Blues Traveller, I would have remembered that (and I’m surprised that I didn’t catch them), but I always imagine that it was Live, if only because I love mispronouncing their name (I pronounce “Live” with a soft “i”, as in “I live in Ottawa”).
The last act of the evening was being held back as a surprise, and the consistent rumour going around onsite was that it was going to be The Rolling Stones. I didn’t believe it for a minute and was comfortably back at the campsite as the headlining slot approached. Sure enough we heard an excited scream echoing from the faraway PA, “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome The Rolling Stones!”
I leapt out of my tent in a flurry only to run into Mark who was leaping out of his own tent with equal ferocity, the two of us pulling on t-shirts and tying shoes. We started running and stumbling towards the stage when the music suddenly began. We both stopped in our tracks and looked at each other. Blister In The Sun???? It was the Violent Femmes! The bastards had pulled a fast one on the crowd and we had fallen for it hard. Shaking our heads and turning around, we wove through the sea of tents back to our site and hit the sack anticipating an early wakeup for day two.
Todd Man Out 