Woodstock

Even then one missile boat could torch dozens of cities, and we had dozens on patrol out there all the time, targeting, untargetable.

The Soviets had the same, and the thing was,

trigger fingers were itchy.

Wake up to those subs and ICBMs and B-52s and Mutual Assured Destruction for breakfast every morning for a decade or so,

apocalypse possible any time.

Bobby Kennedy, dead. Martin Luther King, dead.

Students marching, sitting in, setting fires, fingers up, fists up. Black people rioting, white people rioting, police firehosing and clubbing and setting dogs on people. National Guard popping up here and there with their rifles,

while over in some teetering domino we're bleeding 10 or 20 favorite sons every day, month after month, year after year, until 58,000 are dead and 300,000 wounded, not to mention everybody else.

And here's Walter Cronkite

looking every night a bit more bent out of shape with screaming kids, with Tricky Dick, with a loss of grace and reason,  in his dark-framed glasses with his sad body counts (back when citizens were reminded at supper) until he's the only one you trust.

And there are Neil and Buzz walking on the moon and everybody watching.

Yeah.
They did things big in those days.

So when it was time to get together and hear  some music,

this happened,

and if you want a particular moment, pick Mike Shrieve's drum solo  as he nailed it in Soul Sacrifice at age 19,

for half a million people standing on a hill not hurting each other.

~~~~~~~~~~

Douglas Logan

Comments

[Emilie]

I think this version captures the feel more, or the feel as imagined by a 21 yr old child of hippies.