Review:
This page highlights only the most significant various artists collections out of a myriad of official and bootleg albums that have covered much of the music featured at the August 15-18, 1969 events at Yasgur’s field. The 1970 Woodstock Soundtrack is the highest ranked of the batch in the Dave’s Music Database. The best way to get this version is the 2009 Rhino remaster, “but even it has problems: the source tapes were problematic at best. It restores the original LP order, features new liners by Gene Sculatti, and has more photos in the booklet.” J1
There’s also the 1971 sequel, Woodstock 2, which was combined with the original Woodstock soundtrack on the Mobile Fidelity triple-CD version. BE
In 1994, a 25th anniversary, four-disc box set was released and then in 2009 another box set, Woodstock: 40 Years On – Back to Yasgur’s Farm, celebrated the 40th anniversary by expanding to six discs. This is the best place to go for the most complete view of Woodstock.
Check out Wikia Entertainment for the full schedule and setlists of each performer. WoodstockProject.com is a great resource for tracking down all the commercially and bootlegged Woodstock material.
Here’s the highlights of each set.
Woodstock Soundtrack:
“It’s almost impossible to regard the soundtrack albums for the Michael Wadleigh documentary Woodstock, simply as music, apart from the event that inspired them or what that event has come to represent. Music from the Original Soundtrack and More: Woodstock was originally released by Atlantic’s Cotillion imprint as a three-LP set in a gatefold sleeve” J1. It “was really rock’s first ‘coffee table’ album. Bought by millions but not really listened to that often, it’s amid a flood of wrong notes and the inherent flaws in recording live in front of hundreds of thousands of people in a temporary, makeshift venue. It was more satisfying for journalists and scholars than for ordinary listeners, what with its artists represented by one or two tracks and no more than 15 minutes of music by any single performer. But it did sell in the millions (and yielded a follow-up, Woodstock 2), fueled by the mystique surrounding the event and the release of the accompanying movie, and at times it did have a certain amount of energy to help drive it.” BE
“There were some telling moments: the second-ever public appearance by Crosby, Stills & Nash, not in great voice but surprisingly adequate given that they were trying to harmonize in front of 250,000 people, and the introduction of Neil Young as the fourth member of the group; Joan Baez, at her most politically defiant and at the height of her reach with younger audiences, doing what is probably the definitive version of Gram Parsons’ Drugstore Truck Driving Man; Canned Heat near the end of the road for its classic lineup; Joe Cocker on his way up the superstar ladder; Jefferson Airplane near the end of its classic era; and Jimi Hendrix in one of his biographically (if not musically) transcendant public appearances.” BE
“Musically, the second disc sounds the least dated with its over the top performances by a shockingly great Santana with Soul Sacrifice, Ten Years After’s guitar workout on I’m Goin’ Home, Jimi Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner medley (still a stunner after all these decades); the Jefferson Airplane’s rocking and raucous version of Volunteers, and the orgiastic Sly & the Family Stone medley that includes Dance to the Music, Music Lover, and an insanely great I Want to Take You Higher. There is some filler as well thanks to a drippy John Sebastian track called Rainbows All Over Your Blues, and an indulgent Love March by an out-of-their-prime Butterfield Blues Band.” J1
“Disc one is more complex. There are some fine moments here, especially the CS&N and CSN&Y tunes, including Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (perhaps not perfect in voice but a very inspired performance), and Wooden Ships, with a decent if not thrilling Sea of Madness, in between. There is a desultory We’re Not Gonna Take It from the Who that is out of context, given they performed the entirety of Tommy. While Canned Heat’s Goin’ Up the Country has aged well, Country Joe & the Fish’s The ‘Fish’ Cheer/ I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag has not, nor has Joan Baez’s performance of ‘Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man.’ Her version of Joe Hill is generic.” J1 “Richie Havens’ Freedom (which is really a rewrite of ‘Motherless Child’)” BE “is still thrilling, especially since it is preceded by Sebastian opening the entire set up with another duller-than-dull I Had a Dream.” J1
“Freedom” and “Arlo Guthrie’s Comin’ into Los Angeles give listeners about the same level of intimacy on their acoustic guitars. And listening to CSNY’s Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, while it might not be the group’s best harmonizing or tightest performance, Stephen Stills does one hell of a great job and offers a sample of what he’d deliver on his stunning first solo album a little down the road.” BE
The most out of place thing here is Sha Na Na’s At the Hop, which sounds surreal but ragged and right, and Joe Cocker’s With a Little Help from My Friends, that closes disc one; it’s electrifying if rather out of tune.” J1
“The original, domestic triple-LP vinyl version had notoriously noisy pressings, and the original master suffered from all of the sound leakages and other defects inherent in recording live in the open air in front of several hundred thousand people.” BE The album, and its sequel, also “took the music out of the historical sequence of the festival and re-ordered (and edited) it for a sense of flow. Whether or not it accomplished its objective has been the subject of much debate…What is relevant is that these performances signified via their spotty recording quality – and sometimes dodgy performances – that there was an amazing array of legendary talent on hand at Woodstock; though not all of it is captured here.” J1
“So as it stands, Woodstock is a wildly mixed bag, and not particularly pleasant to listen to, but it does indeed have a significant place in the rock pantheon and should be regarded more as an artifact than as an album in its own right.” J1
Woodstock Two:
The original 1970 soundtrack “sold so well that Cotillion issued a sequel double album of more music from the festival that never appeared in the film.” J1 “This set featured many of the same artists who’d appeared on the first volume, with two additions: Mountain and Melanie. If anything, this set, more concise and more focused, is a better bet than its predecessor. Disc one is a stunner on more than one level. First, there are three tracks by Jimi Hendrix and his expanded lineup after breaking up the Experience (adding guitarist Larry Lee), and a trio of percussionists along with Mitch Mitchell and bassist Billy Cox. There’s the killer Jam Back at the House, which rolls in riffs and an instrumental array of tunes from his catalog including ‘Rainy Day Dream Away’; there’s a killer take on Izabella that’s raggedy but full of killer improvisation – check the interaction between Cox and Mitchell – and Get My Heart Back Together, also known as ‘Hear My Train A’ Comin’.’ These 20 minutes of music make it worth the purchase of this collection if you don’t already possess the Jimi Hendrix Live at Woodstock disc.” J2
“Jefferson Airplane is also here with an extra 12 minutes of music. Judging by this contribution and the inclusion of ‘Volunteers,’ on volume 1, this ranks as one of their greatest live sets ever issued. They begin Saturday Afternoon/ Won’t You Try with a medley of tunes from After Bathing at Baxter’s, issued early on in their career. The vocal performances by Marty Balin, Grace Slick, and Paul Kantner are simply stellar, but Jorma Kaukonen’s guitar as a guiding light also really shines here, and it screams on their other selection, Eskimo Blue Day, from the Volunteers album, even if its basic structure aped Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower.’ Disc one ends with the Butterfield Blues Band redeeming themselves with Little Walter’s Everything’s Gonna Be Alright, after the indulgent debacle of ‘Love March’ on volume one.” J2
“Disc Two features a trio of fine cuts by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young including Marrakesh Express, and a pair from Mountain: the stellar rocker Blood of the Sun, and the more pastoral Theme from an Imaginary Western. Canned Heat’s 13-minute Woodstock Boogie is a bit monotonous, but it’s a blast all the same. The tracks by Melanie and Joan Baez included here add nothing to this set and should have been left off in favor of some other artists who weren’t included on either volume, but that's personal preference. The Rhino edition of Woodstock Two contains new liner notes by Gene Sculatti, new photos, and completely remastered sound that’s a grand improvement on any CD edition released thus far.” J2
The Best of Woodstock:
This is a completely unnecessary CD since it simply distills the Woodstock Soundtrack from a two-disc collection down to one. Consequently, this “is far from a thorough overview of the festival – some of the artists aren’t represented by their most enduring material, and, after all, you can't cover three days’ worth of music in just one disc. Despite those limitations, the sampler does contain some of the festival's best moments, like Country Joe & the Fish’s ‘I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag’ and Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Star Spangled Banner’ and Purple Haze. In the absence of the actual Woodstock album, this can be an affordable substitute.” H
25th Anniversary Box:
“In 1995, the Woodstock: Three Days of Peace & Music [25th Anniversary] four-CD box appeared, combining virtually all the key parts” BE of “the original three-record Woodstock set from 1970, its two-LP 1971 sequel, Woodstock II, and a generous store of previously unreleased tracks from Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, the Band, Jimi Hendrix, and others.” S “Like the famed August 1969 rock festival it chronicles [the set] is something of a sprawling, disorderly, engaging mess.” S “There’s plenty of chaff to go with the wheat (one is tempted to conclude John (‘Far out!’) Sebastian’s blissed-out rant hasn’t aged well, but it’s just as likely most of the crowd at Yasgur’s Farm would have gagged him if given half a chance, and Jefferson Airplane and Crosby, Stills & Nash clearly had better days). But Sly & the Family Stone, Joe Cocker, Santana, and Richie Havens shine, the stage patter has become part of the lexicon, and the whole package now stands as a remarkable account of a pivotal musical and cultural event.” S
Woodstock Diary:
With Best of Woodstock and the 25th anniversary box set already having been released in 1994, “this album, may, at first glance, seem like an afterthought. Actually, it’s a pretty neat compilation. Shorn of the long, indulgent jams, crowd chants, and warnings against bad acid that were an integral part of the earlier, better-known records, Woodstock Diary is a polished little gem – an alternate take on the mother of all rock festivals. Woodstock minus the melodrama, if you will. It isn’t a faultless set list by any means: Jimi Hendrix’s performance – revelatory and inspired as it was – has been covered enough elsewhere, so you can’t help wishing that they’d given his 12 minutes to, say, the Grateful Dead or Blood Sweat and Tears, both of whom haven’t been featured on any of the Woodstock compilations to date. That said, there are lovely moments aplenty: Crosby, Stills and Nash doing the Beatles’ Blackbird; Johnny Winter dropping hot riffs all over Mean Town Blues (the only song he performed at Woodstock); and Joe Cocker’s cover of I Shall Be Released, on which he manages to be affecting without burning the tune down to the ground like he did far more famously on ‘With a Little Help from My Friends.’ Along with the Band’s The Weight, Richie Havens’ tender version of Gordon Lightfoot’s I Can’t Make It Anymore, and Tim Hardin’s If I Were a Carpenter, they make this album predominantly a celebration of the quieter moments at Woodstock. Nine of the 14 tracks here are featured on the 1994 box set, so, for those who own that album, this may not be vital.” M, although it is important to note that those five tracks do not appear on any of the other Woodstock collections referenced on this page. Also, “as a companion piece to the Woodstock and Woodstock 2 albums, it is excellent value.” M
40th Anniversary Box:
In 2009, Woodstock was boxed again, this time as a six-CD set, making it “the most comprehensive collection ever available of artists that performed at the original festival.” AZ “It can be argued that this is merely a cash-in, but a number of things should be considered when critically looking at a set of this size, covering one of the most important events in rock music history. Perhaps the most significant aspect of this set is that it contains tracks by almost every single artist who appeared on the Woodstock stage in their proper sequence. The exceptions are the Band and Ten Years After as well as the introductory speech by Swami Satchidananda.” J40
The collection features “38 previously unreleased recordings, including the Grateful Dead, The Who, Tim Hardin, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe & The Fish, and others.” AZ “In addition to the music, the set offers considerable amount of ancillary material sprinkled throughout the discs,” AZ including “stage announcements by Chip Monck, John Morris, and Wavy Gravy” J40, “lysergic babble, the sounds of rain, a cameo appearance by Abbie Hoffman, and the graciousness of Max Yasgur’s address to the crowd, heard for the first time in its entirety.” AZ
“In presenting a historical document of this proportion there are some interesting judgment calls to make. Producers Andy Zax, Mason Williams, and Cheryl Pawleski” J40 “pored over every inch of multitrack tape in search of the strongest parts of each of the 33 sets.” AZ “The sound, which was done by Eddie Kramer, is as good as it can possibly get…The book is a monster, loaded with photos and featuring Bud Scoppa’s wonderfully researched and presented liner essay, whose chapters account for each day, act by act.” J40
“Ultimately, however, it all comes down to the music. While we only get Dark Star by the Dead, we get (a bit) more music from the Who. The three tracks by CCR are all monsters, and hearing the five tracks by…[CSN/Y] all in correct sequence between BS&T and the Butterfield Blues Band makes total sense. One of the more welcome surprises is the expanded set by Sha Na Na. Fans of individual acts here will be delighted or complain about the treatment individual artists receive. Even though there is a bit more music, the Who still get short-sheeted (but we do get to hear the infamous row between Pete Townshend and Abbie Hoffman), as do the Dead. We didn’t need more of Arlo Guthrie than we already had, and why we still needed three tracks by Melanie or more by the completely unmusical Country Joe & the Fish is a mystery. We could have used more of the Incredible String Band or Richie Havens! But these are individual complaints. The set as it stands is the ultimate document – thus far – and will likely be for some time to come.” J40
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