Comments on: MATTHEWS SOUTHERN COMFORT – “Woodstock”

By: flahr

flahr — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 17:56:58 +0000

I notice Tom abandoned his attempt to justify liking Jive Bunny in the end ;)

Very pretty song this, I feel all shivery listening to it and I’ve been trying to sing along to the gently dreamy chorus. Guitar work in the background is fab although the solo is a bit unnecessary. I reckon I should like it less than I do* but I like it a lot. 7/8.

*it feels like it being a pretty song gives it an unfair advantage, y’know? Like a pretty song doesn’t have to be as good as a not pretty song for me to like it the same amount.

By: Waldo

Waldo — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:57:29 +0000

I was away at school camp at Marchants Hill, Hindhead when this was going up the charts and this is my association with it. Marchants Hill was tucked away in a wooded area of outstanding natural beauty and was a lovely retreat for inner city council high-rise kids, of which I was one. I thought the song was wonderful and magical and spoke of dreamland and safety and places other than Stockwell. Yes, comfort. Believe me, that’s quite sufficient to be able to claim my love for it.

By: Marcello Carlin

Marcello Carlin — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 13:32:56 +0000

Did anyone ever do an Acid House cover of “Woodstock”?

By: Antony Smith

Antony Smith — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 08:31:45 +0000

An aside…but rather an important one…
One of the posts above mentioned Britain’s “biggest other movement linked to pop”…ie the late-sixties underground and punk were all there was.
One again it seems the biggest pop cultural “movement” of all is airbrushed out of the history of popular culture.
The dance culture of 1988- was far more significant than either of the other two in the significance it made to British youth’s lives. Hippy and punk were only ever adopted by a tiny minority of the youth as a whole.This was particularly the case with ‘working class’ youth (obviously with “hippy” and despite punk’s attempt to falsify proletariat credentials equally with the latter movement .Also it only really effected the same small sector of the music buying public just a younger generation.IE those who believe in the worthiness of “rock”.
Acid house/rave and its aftermath brought a whole new group of people into the equation including a far more significant proportion of females.It changed the whole way a generation (approx those born from about 1964 onwards)spent their time and although classless was and is a genuine working class phenomenon (something punk never really was).

By: Chris Brown

Chris Brown — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 22:20:39 +0000

Keeping my powder dry for the time being, I’ll just point out that the title of the Sandi Thom song was the one aspect of it I had no problem with it. Otherwise “both sides of the same con” is only too apt.

By: Marcello Carlin

Marcello Carlin — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 14:30:05 +0000

*falls off chair in office sinker you badstar (misprint)!* ;-)

By: pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør

pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 14:26:30 +0000

JIVE HITLER MORE LIKE

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 14:20:28 +0000

Haha luckily I will not have to justify my fondness for S-on-45 on this blog! (Catchall excuse: I was 8!)

I will have to save my reasons for JIVE BUNNY.

By: Marcello Carlin

Marcello Carlin — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 14:19:09 +0000

Who said anything about “random”?

By: Erithian

Erithian — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 14:06:35 +0000

Tom – yes I did like the Sandi Thom record, although I realise the proper time to discuss it is way into the future. Come to think of it, you’re the first person I’ve encountered who had a good thing to say about Stars on 45, but hey, vive la difference!

MC and Alan – disagree with my musical tastes by all means, but random references to Bush, Iraq and suicide bombers are more than a bit silly.

By: Marcello Carlin

Marcello Carlin — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 14:17:58 +0000

There won’t be the Mary Hopkin factor.

By: pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør

pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:56:38 +0000

by the time that time comes* we will have passed through loathing and “ironic love” to ALL OF US ADORING IT mark my words

(ps i still haven’t heard it somehow)

*=21 years hence acc.the LORD CUSTOS OMICRON 7-year CYCLE OF ROCK HISTORY™

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:49:18 +0000

It will make for an interesting debate when the time comes, though I think you’re the only person I’ve ever talked (or ‘posted’) to who has a good word to say for it!

By: Erithian

Erithian — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:45:22 +0000

No point arguing with that!

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:27:20 +0000

The shame of Tooting. :(

By: Marcello Carlin

Marcello Carlin — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:16:57 +0000

Yes, that’s about the size of it.

By: Alan

Alan — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:13:35 +0000

i don’t know about the exact connection mc has in mind, but that sandi thom song was howling hypocrisy combined with the crassest “authenticity or death” sentiment, and it made me want to bully world leaders into a war on iraq

By: Marcello Carlin

Marcello Carlin — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:10:48 +0000

The connection is that both phenomena ease my understanding of what a suicide bomber must feel like.

By: Erithian

Erithian — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 12:50:54 +0000

And the connection is…?

By: Marcello Carlin

Marcello Carlin — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 12:44:04 +0000

In the same way that George W Bush was one of the freshest and most original American Presidents in a long time.

By: Erithian

Erithian — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 12:09:25 +0000

Hippy and punk as two sides of the same coin (whoops, I typed “con” there at first!) – pretty much what Sandi Thom was getting at. She knew that punk rockers didn’t wear flowers in their hair, but conflated ’77 and ’69 as eras she yearned to have lived in, where it seemed to her that music was more a cause than a commodity. Our no doubt varying views on the merits of that record will have to wait a while for an airing, but for me it was one of the freshest and most original Number 1s in a long time.

By: Daniel_Rf

Daniel_Rf — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 17:15:45 +0000

“Given the degree to which women and people of various colors have moved up and through society in the decades since, I’d argue that belief has turned out to be not exactly wrong, albeit not exactly like the believers at the time foresaw.” – this got me thinking, how much *was* identity politics a part of 60′s hippiedom? Like, it’s probably more or less a given that the views towards race and gender were more progressive than the preceding generation’s, but actual involvement in such causes seems more a post-Woodstock, 70′s thing. Racial harmony and equality tends to show up in 60′s hippie pop culture mostly as just another factor in the larger plan for world peace and whatnot (longhairs always present in reconstructions of Vietnam protests in movies, but hardly ever in reconstructions of Civil Rights marches and such), while feminism of course had to have had an…ambiguos relationship with hippies and “free love”, at best.

By: markgamon

markgamon — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 14:04:51 +0000

Beg pardon, folks. I’m not battling against punk. I was there for that too, though more as an interested observer than a participant. And I still love Pretty Vacant. ‘Hippy’ and ‘punk’ seem to me to be two sides of the same coin – and I suspect they’re being endlessly repeated in popular culture as we speak. Wasn’t the rave scene just a new local take on the pop festivals of the late 60s?

I do get pissed off when the current cultural media (punks to a man, as lord sukrat rightly points out) sneer at the 60s and idolise punk culture. Jonathan Ross is a prime culprit. There’s great art in every generation. Even prog-rock had its moments: I caught myself listening to a Yes album the other day and had to admit it was musically pretty stunning, despite the lyrics being hippyshit twaddle (that’s not to say I have a kind word for Gentle Giant, by the way).

I dunno. Of course it’s about where you were when you were 14. I was lucky enough to be 14 when White Rabbit and Sergeant Pepper came out, and unlucky not to have been a couple of years older so I could actually be at UFO in its heyday. In truth, my cultural touchstone is probably the British Blues Boom, which also gave us some fine stuff and some rubbish.

I was on the tail end of hippy and just a little too old for punk. I still prefer the positivism of hippy, but I’m dismissing neither.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 02:38:59 +0000

she basically talks about it as the beginning of the end of 60s utopianism, and compares it to the romantics, blake esp. i really like this song, and i know wood stock is a deeply problematic touchstone, but the idea of communalism and changing the world and all of that nonsense gives me a sort of warmth

By: Anthony

Anthony — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 02:36:20 +0000

is this the same one as joni mitchell, b/c Paglia has some interesting things to say about it in the last record, if it is