Woodstock Movie

There is much truth to the argument that the landmark Woodstock festival functioned more as a turning point for the business of rock 'n' roll than for music itself. The photos of hundreds of thousands of young people gathered in a field in upstate New York that were sent around the world delivered a message that youth culture could be exceedingly lucrative.

There is much truth to the argument that the landmark Woodstock festival functioned more as a turning point for the business of rock 'n' roll than for music itself. The photos of hundreds of thousands of young people gathered in a field in upstate New York that were sent around the world delivered a message that youth culture could be exceedingly lucrative.

A dmit it. The '60s weren't just about peace, love and music with a message. The years also featured some of the most diverse fashion, with more "uniforms" than any previous era. Baby boomers can stay smug knowing that their kids have kept it all alive--not only through activism and granola--but recycling a style that defined a generation. The Doc Was In Then Dr. Martens at Woodstock? It's true.

A dmit it. The '60s weren't just about peace, love and music with a message. The years also featured some of the most diverse fashion, with more "uniforms" than any previous era. Baby boomers can stay smug knowing that their kids have kept it all alive--not only through activism and granola--but recycling a style that defined a generation. The Doc Was In Then Dr. Martens at Woodstock? It's true.

"It's been a long time coming . . ." --Crosby, Stills & Nash * Twenty-five years, to be exact. The opening number in "Woodstock," the documentary of the 1969 music festival that forever marked a generation, is unfurling on the big screen once again. And this time, there is even more peace and love to go around. Forty minutes of footage, including some of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, has been added to the already three-hours-plus length of the film.

Big things happened for Arlo Guthrie in '69. That was the year he got married, bought his farm in western Massachusetts and starred in "Alice's Restaurant," a Hollywood movie based on his popular talkin' blues anthem. And 40 years ago this week, the folk singer also landed at Yasgur's Farm, facing a crowd of nearly half a million at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair. He still hears about that one.

Attention parents: Be careful who you bring home to your impressionable offspring. If you were to invite Willie the Wino, Jack the Ripper or the Pillsbury Dough Boy to the house, well, who knows what strangeness may ensue? Now, once upon a time in scary olde England, the Lees brought home famous blues dude Big Bill Broonzy, and their boy, young Alvin, ended up being a guitar god fronting Ten Years After.

It's a safe bet that Woodstock '94 may get more ink in the Wall Street Journal than in Rolling Stone. And deservedly so. If ever a rock festival was made to order for the consumption of corporate America, this is it. A slew of upcoming Pepsi ads will try to make the Woodstock Generation synonymous with the Pepsi Generation. The soft drink giant isn't just sponsoring Woodstock, it's printing the "official" Woodstock Guidebook--all 10 million of them.

"It's been a long time coming . . ." --Crosby, Stills & Nash * Twenty-five years, to be exact. The opening number in "Woodstock," the documentary of the 1969 music festival that forever marked a generation, is unfurling on the big screen once again. And this time, there is even more peace and love to go around. Forty minutes of footage, including some of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, has been added to the already three-hours-plus length of the film.

Growing up in Harlem and the Bronx, Dennis Greene wanted to be a lawyer like Perry Mason on TV. Instead, he became a rock 'n' roll star. Through 15 years as lead singer of the '50s revival group Sha Na Na, Greene never forgot his boyhood aspirations or his Ivy League education. After the group's television show folded, he traded in his gold lame suit for gray pinstripes and is now a law professor at the University of Oregon.

It is an unpleasant future that is contemplated in the 1971 science fiction film "The Omega Man," one in which bloodthirsty radioactive mutants with poor complexions roam the Earth while only one example of humankind remains, and he's Charlton Heston.