Woodstock 50 Years On

With special guest:

• Glenn A Baker…
  in conversation with Bill Kable

Glenn A Baker is a father of six children and a grandfather of 12. For those of us whose memories extend a little he is the music guru so he is a very special Dad to be on our program.

Glenn is here to tell us about an adventure he had lined up for those with a special interest in a particular seminal event and rock music generally. Yes to our surprise it is 50 years since that massive and unplanned gathering of over 500,000 people in upstate New York listened to the cream of the world’s musicians playing in a concert, some concert.

The Woodstock concert went for three and half days. It was recorded for records, tapes and later CD’s. It was also a major feature film that was issued soon after the event and many years later re-issued in a Director’s cut. In 2019 Woodstock was honoured again when Glenn A Baker lead a tour group to Max Yasgur’s dairy Farm in Bethel New York near the town of Woodstock and many other locales famous in rock’n’roll history.

Glenn and his tour group travelled to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and New York on the way to Woodstock in order to soak up the atmosphere. There were concerts, films and introductions. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity and if you can’t feel the excitement just listen to Glenn telling us about the trip with his enthusiasm turned up to 11. Listening to Glenn speak takes us to a special place in space-time, a time of peace, love and beauty when men first walked on the moon and the American anthem was played like never before or since. But most of all it was fun to be at the concert and fun now to listen to Glenn.

Glenn A Baker

Described by Rolling Stone magazine Music Editor David Fricke as “Not just Australia’s top pop scholar but a world class rock journalist who writes with the enthusiasm of a true fan” and once by Phil Collins as “the most thorough and knowledgeable music journalist in the world today”, Glenn A. Baker is a three time winner of the BBC’s Rock Brain Of The Universe title, though possessing a knowledge of music well beyond rock. An author of 17 books (including Best Of Baker: Music and Best of Baker: Travel), Glenn is a nationally syndicated radio and television presenter of long standing, the specialist compiler and/or annotator of more than 600 highly acclaimed album anthologies, a hit songwriter and a writer of features for more than 200 publications.

In 2018 Glenn was awarded an Order of Australia.

Song selection by our guest: White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane

Note: This program is an encore presentation of the one aired on 28 February 2019.

Listen Now (mp3)