Uh oh, the 40th anniversary of Woodstock is about a month and a half away. Did you remember? If not, it’s probably due to the distinct lack of buzz, seeing as there is no official concert scheduled, although boosters keep adding “as yet” in hopes that original co-producer Michael Lang will manage to put together a show in New York’s Prospect Park.

A handful of mostly lame events are planned for different parts of the country, and a tour called Heroes of Woodstock — featuring Mountain, Jefferson Starship, Tom Constanten (repping Grateful Dead) and others — has 16 dates on the books (none in the Southeast). In all, though, it would seem as if folks have other things on their mind than memorializing the watershed cultural event.

That doesn’t mean it’s a complete wasteland. Sony Music has released a well-thought-out group of reissues called The Woodstock Experience, five two-CD packages pairing a classic 1969 album and a complete Woodstock performance. Sony catalog artists Santana, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, Jefferson Airplane and Sly and the Family Stone got the treatment.

Thirty-three acts performed at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair from Aug. 15-18, 1969, including such long-forgotten names as Quill, Sweetwater, Keef Hartley Band and Bert Sommer. (The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, The Byrds and a handful of lesser-knowns declined invitations. Jeff Beck, Iron Butterfly and Joni Mitchell canceled.)

Only a handful of the performances have been immortalized, mostly via the 1970 film Woodstock and its soundtrack. And Sony can legitimately boast three of them in this collection: Sly, Santana and Joplin. Winter did not make it into the movie and while Jefferson Airplane were represented with two songs in celluloid, their set has not earned the same historical cachet as the top three.

Let’s have us a closer look at these twofers. I’ve ranked them on their merit as live performances.

Sly and the Family Stone. The runaway winner. Sly’s 50-minute, nine-song show is a balls-out party from the opening “M’Lady” to the closer “Stand!” The group’s rhythm tracks have a collective propulsion that has as much to do with Larry Graham’s rumbling bass and the interlocking guitars as it does with drums. Deep, deep funk — with rock crunch. Sly and company find just the right blend of scripted performance and in-the-moment spontaneity.

A band has to be really tight to play this loose. They accelerate the pace of “Everyday People,” giving it a gospel-tent fervor. The sing-along during “I Want to Take You Higher,” one of Woodstock the film’s crescendos, benefits from the leadup tune “Music Lover” and Sly’s spoken set-up. Even the song “Love City,” in my view a second-tier Sly tune, has an uncommon crackle. The set’s companion CD, Stand!, is a terrific bonus, the best Sly album this side of Greatest Hits.

Santana. The band’s self-titled debut, which is the companion CD in this twofer, was released in May ’69 and reached No. 4 on the charts in late September, so it’s safe to say that a scintillating performance at Woodstock played a big part in putting Santana on the map.

The group’s use of Latin rhythms must have been an exotic treat for the hippie hordes in upstate New York. Santana plays a fairly rote version of the hit-to-be “Evil Ways,” but excels in the dynamic Latin jams, especially “Soul Sacrifice,” with its relentless groove, roil of hand percussion, monster riff and hair-raising guitar solo.


Janis Joplin. The damaged blues-rock songstress had made her bones two years earlier at the Monterey Pop festival. A few months before Woodstock she left the sub-par Big Brother and the Holding Company, went solo and transformed her show into kaleidoscopic R&B revue, heavy on the horns. I generally find Joplin’s vocals akin to a razor blade scraped against a rock, but I’ll give her credit for the unhinged energy and commitment she puts into her ragged performance.

Of all the live CDs in this series Joplin’s most effectively captures the flavor of Woodstock. Before closing with “Ball and Chain,” she launches into a spacey speech, in which she says, “Music’s for grooving, man, and music’s not puttin’ yourself through bad changes. You don’t have to take anybody’s shit, man, just to like music. So if you’re getting more shit than you deserve, you know what to do about it.” Uh, OK. If Joplin’s caterwauling in her Woodstock set wears you out, load up the companion CD, I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, where she tones it down considerably.

Johnny Winter. Very few people knew of the reed-thin albino when he took the stage and pumped out an hour of raucous Texas blues, boogie and early rock ’n’ roll. Winter’s set thrust him into pantheon of late ’60s guitar heroes. He played fast, and fast was much revered in that era. As his career has worn on, Winter has spewed so many notes that it’s devolved into chattering, but at Woodstock he brought a lot of slides, slurs and bends into play. His bottleneck work on “Mean Town Blues” still raises goosebumps.

Winter, joined mid-set by his brother Edgar on sax and keyboards, played a show in front of a few hundred thousand people in much the same way he would’ve performed at a roadhouse outside Fort Worth. The second album in the package is Winter’s self-titled debut.

Jefferson Airplane. The San Francisco band’s ensemble vocals always sounded precariously held together, even on this set’s companion CD, the stridently anti-war Volunteers. At Woodstock, the singing came unglued. Grace Slick’s pitch wavered and her already shrill voice turned into a yelp.

The blend of instruments is mushy — and not just because of the recording quality — and the guitars consistently slide out of tune. The rhythms wander, and the extended jams — especially on “Wooden Ships” — come off as rudderless noodling. The band gets a foothold near the end of the set with a sharp “White Rabbit,” but by then it’s too late.