Wow, had never heard the Blood Sweat and Tears set before. Fantastic. What a bunch of pros.

But really, everything I've heard from everyone is pretty great, especially considering the conditions, etc. The various previously released compilations do not in any way do it justice.

Guess I'll have to spring for the complete recordings in some form or another after all.

I have to admit I thought the playing of the full Woodstock concert on the radio was pretty darn good. It was amazing at how many great artists played full sets of wonderful music at an outdoor venue. The majority of the artists, if not all, did their best. And, yes, Blood Sweat and Tears with the full complement of horns, etc. were fantastic.

So, I just learned on a music chat forum, from the guy who engineered and mastered the Woodstock complete 50th recordings in response to my comment that the BS&T set was great, that it actually sucked until he fixed it. The horns were "horribly out of tune," he said.

So, our emotional response to hearing the set in the context of the times was apparently manipulated by a fake representation of what actually happened.

Somewhat disappointing.

But it raises a question of ethics. Which is better, an accurate but possibly embarrassing record of what actually happened, or a doctored, more aesthetically pleasing revision of history?

And if you were there and heard it live, would you have been tripping so hard that it wouldn't have mattered if the horns were out of tune?

"Let me take you down
'Cause I'm going to strawberry fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry fields forever

Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It's getting hard to be someone
But it all works out
It doesn't matter much to me."

Woodstock 50 turned into a slow-moving train wreck

“You can’t ‘magic’ one of these [Woodstocks] into happening, and that’s what they tried to do with this,” says David Crosby, one of the veterans of the first Woodstock who was booked for the anniversary festival. “It had nothing to do with anybody feeling good about each other. It had to do with certain people making a huge amount of money. That’s a grubby way to start in the first place. It’s not a motivation that brings out the very best in people.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WehjMZcQqPA

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