WOODSTOCK
Woodstock is a 1970 documentary film of the watershed counterculture Woodstock Festival which took place in August 1969 near Bethel, New York. Entertainment Weekly called this film the benchmark of concert movies and one of the most entertaining documentaries ever made. The film was directed by Michael Wadleigh. Woodstock was a great commercial and critical success. It received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. In 1996, Woodstock was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". An expanded 40th Anniversary Edition of Woodstock, released on June 9, 2009 in Blu-ray and DVD formats, features additional performances not before seen in the film, and also includes lengthened versions of existing performances featuring Creedence Clearwater Revival and others. (More from Wikipedia)
Barely one year later, in October 1968, Joe Cocker released a cover of "With a Little Help from My Friends" – a Number One single in the UK – which gets my vote as the most satisfying Beatles cover of all time. His version of the song is very different from how the Beatles performed it, and that is what covers should be as far as I am concerned. Joe Cocker is backed by a stellar band that includes Jimmy Page on guitar (the first Led Zeppelin album came out in the following year), B. J. Wilson of Procol Harum on drums, Chris Stainton on bass, and distinctive organ by Tommy Eyre. Cocker's frantic performance of the song was a highlight of the Woodstock film of the original Woodstock Music & Art Fair gathering in 1969.
(June 2015)
* * *
"At the Hop" though has reached almost mythic status, far beyond even the major hit that Danny and the Juniors made of the song. One of the earliest of the rock and roll revival bands, Sha Na Na (with the name taken from among the innumerable nonsense syllables in the classic "Get a Job" by the Silhouettes) performed "At the Hop" at the original 1969 Woodstock festival not long after the group was founded earlier that year. Sha Na Na is perhaps the most unlikely rock band to appear at Woodstock; what’s more, their set immediately preceded that of Jimi Hendrix which included his legendary performance of "The Star Spangled Banner". "At the Hop" also appears in the Woodstock film and the triple-LP Woodstock soundtrack album.
(August 2015)
