Woodstock Diaries - some random notes

During these days commemorating the 50th anniversary of the most famous music festival, ever, I enjoyed playing my 4-tracks Woodstock tape and the 5 classic discs: my most beloved tracks are CSN&Y, Jefferson Airplane, Canned Heat, Joe Cocker and Jimi Hendrix... but... yesterday evening I watched at the TV the documentary "Woodstock Diaries"...

My '69 Sovereign's headstock...

I loved the interviews with the organizers and, as a guitar player and a recordist, I noticed for the first time something really weird: the microphones used on stage during all the 3 days of love and music were the ubiquitous, cheap, then iconic Shure 565 and they were used for vocals, acoustic guitars, guitar amps reinforcement... everything was miked with these rugged mikes!

My Shure 565 Unisphere...

No Neumanns', AKGs, Telefunkens'... dynamic Shures', rugged and honestly sounding... able to flawlessly work in rain and high humidity conditions where many sought-after mikes would have succumbed.

Talking about guitars... Country Joe McDonald used in his "Gimme an F... gimme a U..." rag a Yamaha FG-150 acoustic... John Sebastian in his dyed trouser and t-shirt played an Harmony Sovereign H-1260, Tim Hardin also played the very same Sovereign's... nothing too expensive or esoteric, yet this pop choices didn't make the performances lesser.

Harmony Sovereign H-1260 ladder-braced (1969)

Only Joan Baez used a majestic, pre-War Martin 0-45... something similarly esoteric was played by Steven Stills and Neil Young, with their vintage D-45s.

Richie Havens of "Freedom" fame played-to-the-bone a Guild D-40... if you're intrigued by the topic, have a look here for more guitar trivia.

Priceless.

Nonetheless, despite the cheapos or vintage instruments choices, everything was recorded with 565... same mike which used, among the many, Freddy Mercury... a microphone - whose suggested use is as a vocal-mike - recorded one of the most iconic events ever... the dad of Shure SM-58 with its 50Hz-15kHz limited bandwidth didn't, ahem, limited the enjoyment of people attending the concert or the zillions people listening to the discs.

This makes me think about audiophiles and their obsession for "uncolored sound" and "flat frequency response"...  an Harmony Sovereign is more colored than a Martin D-28, a Shure 565 Unisphere is rolled-off and colored compared to a  B&K/DPA 4001... so what?

Music wins over technology... creativity, communication, empathy of musicians is more important than onanistic technicist paraphernalia!

Amen.