Earworm

Published on 21/08/2024.

We certainly are lucky boys and girls lately! It turns out that last Friday gave us two extraordinary musical treats: Post Malone’s new offering, which I discussed on Monday in my full F-1 Trillion review, and a new live album that I discovered only yesterday from legendary British blues-rock and roll band Ten Years After. The more discerning reader may take a(n obvious) hint from the title Woodstock 1969 that the tracks are not exactly recently recorded and hail from the band’s performance at the historic New York music and art fair. That being said, this does mark the first time that Ten Years After have had their hour-long set released as a stand-alone album, despite the music being previously released as part of Woodstock compilation albums.

With the 55th anniversary of one of the greatest moments in music history still in view, let us rediscover this quinquagenarian treasure and look at some of the stories behind Ten Years After’s show.

Background

The band emerged on stage at around 8.15 p.m. on the 17^th of August 1969 – the third day of the festival. The conditions in Bethel, New York were dire, with the Poughkeepsie Journal reporting the next day of ‘rain that turned [Max Yasgur’s] farm fields of the festival into seas of mud’. The weather had a woeful effect on the stage equipment which led to technical issues with the instruments being out of tune, failures with some of the sound recording devices, and the camera team only managing to film the very last song of the hour – albeit the highlight of their set. These errors are most obvious on Woodstock 1969 with the inclusion of two takes of Sonny Boy Williamson’s Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, one labelled ‘false start’, wherein the band had to stop to tune up after the first attempt and there being recording errors on the second take. It looked like everything that could go wrong did go wrong for a band that had only released two studio albums at the time, Ten Years After (1967) and Stonedhenge (1969), and had yet fully to break into the USA prior to accepting the gig.

Despite all of this, the band remained upbeat and gave it everything they had, playing a tight set that still burst at the seams with frenetic energy synonymous with the sixties. Their set opened with ‘a little ol’ blues’ in the form of an electrifying rendition of Howlin’ Wolf’s Spoonful and culminated with I’m Going Home – with lines from Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On and Blue Suede Shoes thrown in for good measure. Alvin Lee’s signature screech and blistering guitar work wove their way throughout an exciting performance, and ‘The Fastest Guitarist in the West’ ensured a happy crowd by the end.

Ten Years After may not be remembered with the same reverence as Jimi Hendrix’s Star-Spangled Banner, but their performance – one of the best of the weekend – was nonetheless as captivating, and it catapulted the band to global stardom. Ten Years After’s best album chart performance in the US prior to this, for example, was 61^st, but the show very much put them on the map, and their third album, Ssssh, released mere weeks later, peaked at 20^th on the Billboard 200 – arguably due to their new-found popularity.

Album Track List

The full track list from Woodstock 1969 is as follows:

1. Spoonful
2. Good Morning Little Schoolgirl (False Start)
3. Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
4. The Hobbit
5. I Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes
6. Help Me
7. I’m Going Home

Final Thoughts

Of course this new album will never bridge the gap between persons like me listening on only half-decent laptop speakers and those lucky enough to have been there to hear it live, but I think Woodstock 1969 serves as a reminder of the importance of the festival as a cultural phenomenon and of the break-out point for Ten Years After which led them to a successful career of ten further studio albums afterwards.

In the words of the band themselves from their 1974 single Positive Vibrations, ‘Give yourself some positive vibrations’ and check out Woodstock 1969.

Written by Lewis Brown.