He was just one pound, eleven ounces when he was born, and Saturday night, he was playing tribute to one of the biggest rock stars in the world with the eyes of the world on him. The kid who taught himself to play guitar listening to Hendrix rock Woodstock played Woodstock Saturday night.

Conrad Oberg opened the Woodstock anniversary concert at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel, NY, and made his guitar scream in tribute to his hero for a feedback-laden rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. Continue reading »

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Just in case all the media coverage hasn’t already tipped you off, this weekend marks the 40th anniversary of  Woodstock. To commemorate that watershed cultural moment, the Pew Research Center recently conducted a survey that attempts to explore the differences between the generation gap during the late ’60s and early ’70s (which, history tells us, was vast and divisive) and the generation gap that exists now. Are the same hostilities between young and old still blowin’ in the wind? Do teenagers today strongly believe that they shouldn’t trust anyone over 30?

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In honor of the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock, here are some “hippy baby names.”

The most popular names are certainly classifiable as “hippy” or “hippy-ish” or “hippy-esque.” Whatever you want to call them. I’m talking about Rainbow, Sunshine, Rain. Continue reading »

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I was watching “Back to Woodstock” on Dateline NBC Sunday night. I’ve seen lots of footage of the music, the people, the enormous piles of trash. This time I was struck by a line from Lisa Law, a photographer and filmmaker who documented much of the 3 days. (She also ran a “trip tent” and cooked food for the thousands of people who showed up.)

Law is also a mom: she was pregnant during the Summer of ’69, and already had a toddler in tow. Talking about going to “music and arts festival” in the Dateline piece, Law says, “Having a baby and being pregnant does not slow me down. My children are an extension of me, and so I have no problem doing things with them attached to me.” Continue reading »

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The Woodstock baby would be forty years old next weekend if she or he were real. But there’s a much sadder story of kids who won’t be forty years old in 2009.

The babies lost at Woodstock. Continue reading »

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You know I love a nice, juicy, out-of-hospital birth. But I’m not sure where I stand on live, in-concert labor and deliveries. Not that giving birth among a half a million people at a large, outdoor, three-day-long hippie concert is all that common.

In fact, births at Woodstock — long one of the many free-love stories told of the event — may never have happened.

The supposed Woodstock baby (or babies — estimates range from zero to four births at the famed 1969 concert on a farm in Sullivan County, New York) turns 40 in August and people are starting to ask again. No one has ever credibly stepped forward and said, “I’m a Woodstock Baby.”

But there is some evidence there were births. From the AP: Continue reading »

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When I asked Abigail Yasgur how she could write a book about Woodstock for kids, she laughed.

“We left [sex and drugs] out. We’re parents, we know parents have to make that decision for themselves,” said the author of a kids book published just as the world gets ready to celebrate forty years since peace, love and rock and roll took over on a muddy field in upstate New York. Continue reading »

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