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Celebrate Woodstock's 40th Anniversary with Coast-to-Coast Events

Today, festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo are the pinnacle of live music experiences. Concertgoers happily sweat it out for the chance to see their favorite acts take the stage, their greatest worry finding mobile reception in a field jam-packed with iPhones and Blackberries. Forty years ago at a certain seminal festival, the mood was different: It was the Summer of Love, and instead of The Killers and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the audience had Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and an incomparable bohemian spirit.

We're of course talking about the original Woodstock, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Those "3 Days of Peace & Music" should never be forgotten, and there are plenty of commemorative events taking place to recapture the mood from the Summer of '69. Break out your headbands, angel sleeve dresses and caftans and pay homage to the event that came to define a generation.

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Music Travel / Arts / Museums / Woodstock / → All Tags

No H-Word Allowed at Woodstock Museum

Despite the name, Woodstock didn't happen at that small town in New York. The original counter-culture concert series played out on a farm in Bethel, where the locals are excited about the soon-to-open Museum at Bethel Woods. The site is already home to a performing arts center, and the museum should join the party by next spring. Just don't call it a hippie museum, says Republican town supervisor Harold Russell:

This is the farthest thing from a hippie museum that anything could be. I personally take a little offense to that.

And while the arts center did host a "Hippiefest" this summer, the museum plans to take a more serious tack with exhibits and multimedia displays that recall the end of the flower child era. With Baby Boomers retiring in droves, the Woodstock museum will surely find an audience.

Or so thought the two senators from New York, Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, who pushed for a $1 million earmark to help finance the project, though the Senate later denied that request. One of the lawmakers who voted against spending the money, Senator Norm Coleman, says that shouldn't keep folks away:

I was at Woodstock. I have been to the site of the Woodstock museum. It's a wonderful museum. That doesn't mean the government has to pay for it.

Related Stories:
· A Museum On Woodstock, With a Haircut [Washington Post]
· Bethel Woods Center for the Arts [Official Site]
· Sirius Radio and Grateful Dead Giveaway [Jaunted]
· Music Travel coverage [Jaunted]