Post Woodstock 94

November 11^th 2014,

 

Hard to believe it’s been twenty frigging years since this show, man. Well times are a lot different now for sure. Anyway the origin of this journal, rather the time frame I had begun writing it was pretty much right when I got home or soon afterwards. Despite those years, 1994-1996, of hard drinking and partying, I had kept very clear detailed journals, when I wrote, of stuff I did. I did not stretch the truth for effect and I had very good recall even of drunken actions. If I didn’t remember then I made it clear that I didn’t remember. For example, I’m almost certain that the reason why I got lost from my friends was that as we were walking in, a stranger gave me a drug, a pill which I took immediately and I’m fairly certain this drug got me so high I didn’t know which end was up and which was down. So I left it out. Anyway, the original journal was written on my mother’s word processor as computers were just making their way into computer stores. To me, a word processor was leaps and bounds above a type writer, which I used quite a bit my senior year in high school and then in college. When the computer came along and I saw what it could do, it was mind blowing. Anyway, I digress. So I wrote my Woodstock journal and probably retyped and printed it three times. In 1996, I submitted one version to the creative writing department at Umass Boston. I forget why. It wasn’t good. Maybe I just thought because it was part of music history. What history? It was just a journal for god sakes. Well I didn’t stick around long enough to get any feedback, in fact, I quit soon after because I was all wrapped up in the courts. I never put an address on the paper and so it was lost, somewhere in the trash bins of the university, I guess. After a time when I realized it was gone, I was bummed out. I thought it was my only copy and for the last 18 years it was, until a week ago when I found an early draft of it. And again, it still sucks but it is only a journal and was never meant to be a creative piece. Since I’ve been transcribing it to Word, I have left it as it is. I just don’t have the time to clean it up to make it a better read. Maybe someday. But for small changes, it’s pretty much verbatim. As a post script to this, as I just remembered it, combing through all this Woodstock stuff that Time magazine published an article about it and a picture on its cover. First off I was an idiot not to save the magazine. Anyway, my sister had the magazine and apparently identified me in a crowd of people and I remember her showing me the picture and honestly I could not tell if it was me or not and just let it go with a shrug. She swore it was me. However, out of everything I lost that weekend, it wasn't my ski pants, money, whiskey or camera, it was my #91 Notre Dame football shirt. I loved that damn shirt!