SOME SATURDAY NOSTALGIA

One of my favorite songs is Both Sides, Now, in particular by Judy Collins, who made the original recording in 1968.  What I did not know is that it was written by Canadian Joni Mitchell, (click on that and you will see her singing this song, with appearances by Mary Travers and Mama Cass), who I best remember as a somewhat mousey folk-type singer of Big Yellow Taxi in the early 70's when I was co-directing Earth 2020, a summer course for teachers at the University of Hawaii.  This song was released in 1970, and the B-side was Woodstock.

But you wonder, didn't Woodstock, the concert, occur in 1969?  And wasn't that song sung during that Music and Arts Festival by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young?  What happened was that Graham Nash was then her boyfriend who asked her to write something commemorating the event.  She was supposed to perform Woodstock at the site, but had scheduling conflicts, so the group inserted it into their set.  Became the anthem for the youth of those days.

I have especially fond memories of the above, for:

In August of 1969 my wife and I were driving from Baton Rouge to Montreal to interact with the remnants of the recent World Expo.  We spent the night in Hershey, Pennsylvania to visit the chocolate company.  I then read about a concert in Woodstock, New York, just 250 miles away.

Did you know that Woodstock, Snoopy's buddy, was named after the concert?

I had a personal desire to go because in 1967 I had organized a rock concert in Naalehu, where the rodeo was later scheduled, maybe the first rock outdoor event before Woodstock.  Of all my life accomplishments, this could well make the top ten.

I heard some rumor about Woodstock being kind of crowded and maybe even a mess, with a storm approaching.  Interstate 87 went directly to Montreal, almost 400 miles away.  At Kingston, only about ten miles from Woodstock, we saw that the traffic to get off was blocked, so we continued on to Montreal.  That's one of the better decisions I've ever made.

It rained.  Mud.  A mess.  Yet, the pivotal moment in popular music history, defining the counterculture generation.  Joni Mitchell wrote the song, Woodstock, but never appeared.  Here she is singing this song a few weeks later.

Turns out that all those Woodstock concerts were never held there.  The original occurred in Bethel, 66 driving miles away.  Thirty-two acts performed for 400,000, and it actually went on for four days.  

I'll end today with Send in the Clowns by Judy Collins, a very recent recording.  This song came from Stephen Sondheim's 1973 musical, A Little Night Music (that was the nearly 3-hour 1990 revival from the Lincoln Opera House, New York). Frank Sinatra recorded it before Collins.  But few know that A Little Night Music came from the English translation of Eine kleine Nachtmusik, that Mozart ditty.  I use this term because I have a doorbell tune to alert me that my meal has been delivered, and I have it set for Eine kleine Nachtmusik.  I hear it at least three times/day.  There was a 2007 film starring Elizabeth Taylor, but skip that, for Rotten Tomatoes gave it 20/32 ratings.

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