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Various Artists: Woodstock 40 (Rhino)

Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, July 2009

WE ARE ALL so inured these days to the business of rock festivals – sponsored, multi-generational, beamed into our living rooms – that it's difficult now to imagine the tribal excitement and trepidation felt by people as they swarmed into New York's Catskill mountains for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair on a long hot weekend in August 1969. 60,000 hippies were expected at the event; at least 350,000 showed up, most looking for some kind of communal climax to the '60s rock dream, soundtracked by (most of) the leading lights of the London/LA/San Francisco/Greenwich Village revolution.

Total word count of piece: 534

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