Woodstock matters the way the Mayflower used to: a lot.

In the old days, not so long ago in America, a generally WASP elite was recognized and deferred to as some sort of Society. They were in the Social Register, alums of the top prep schools, members of the DAR, or even better, the Sons of Cincinnatus. And of course THE event to be present at the birth of was that first voyage of the Mayflower over here in 1620. Now not all of the old elite of the North-East came over on that particular vessel -- but to be able to trace one's people back to that particular voyage was particularly auspicious.

Earlier in history, in the Middle Ages, at the Battle of Crecy, the finest flower of French nobility was cut down by the English long-bow. And so because the sons of so many great old French families served there and died there, as the centuries rolled on, even though it had been a defeat, the battle became a favored marker of fine noble status amongst Frenchmen -- it mattered, in a good way, if your ancestors had ridden into battle on that fateful day.

And so this is what Woodstock is becoming and will become over time: it is a Mayflower, a Crecy of today's emerging American elite: wealthy, powerful, well-educated, culturally very "left" if not so in terms of actual politics. In many ways better than the old elite, in some ways worse. (And of course some of the old elite, if not most of it at this point, has come to terms with the new ascendancy, and have traded in their white shoes for Birkenstocks, and have settled comfortably into the new class structure.) For this new elite, being able to say I, or my parents, or now, my grandparents were at Woodstock is to say that they were present at the creation.

Is all this a good thing? This new class is far more Democratic than the old one used to be. Is it a bad thing? Class privilege seems to be powerfully strong, although adaptable. I don't really know where the score comes down, positive or negative. But either way, as the kids say, "it is what it is." And one thing it is, for sure, is that it matters.

by the importance the event gathered to itself over time. Of course the Mayflower people, in some ways like the Woodstock people (viz, the God-came-down-to-earth thread) would be amazed, but they would not be entirely shocked -- they hoped and prayed that they were doing God's bidding - that they were changing the world for His benefit, under His auspices.

Sure, it had one of Jimi Hendrix's all time greatest jams. And CSN&Y blew the roof off the house (so to speak.)

But in the end, it was just a concert.

Did it change anything about the US? Even three-day concert festivals were nothing new: Monterey Pop kind of invented that (and before it the Monterey Jazz festival.)

The drugs? Well Grateful Dead concerts beat them there.

The only difference is that we have some awesome footage of Woodstock. We have the entire Hendrix set. We have the entire CSN&Y set. We have films, documentaries, bootlegs, official recordings, etc.

A similar event happened in the UK with the first Isle Of Wight concert, only there were no cameras for this one. As a result, most people say "Isle of what???"

I knew 4 people who were at Woodstock. They had fun, but they saw it for what it was - a concert. A fun concert, sure, but the defining moment of a generation?

Most boomers I knew who were hippies thinks that sells them short. What about the demonstrations? The peaceful demonstrations where there was no violence on their part, despite the cops going Blitzkrieg on them.

What about the civil rights struggle?

What about the burning of draft cards and bras?

All of this was much more of a defining moment than a concert.

You talk of all those demonstrations and call Woodstock "just a concert" but it wasn't. It was a lesson in survival.

Who were we? We were the kids still reeling from the assassination of JFK, RFK, and MLK. Hippies and drop outs because we'd been taught a lesson that if you stick your neck out someone will chop it off.

JFK murdered in my senior year of high school. I entered as a college freshman to a class mourning a senior murdered in Mississippi with two other idealistic young people.

And then came '68's slaughter. And a DEMOCRATIC convention that will live in infamy. After working our asses off to get our slate elected, what we saw in that convention hall...?

So there they were, the young who had had enough of the impossibility of change, in a situation with not enough food, water, or port-a-potties, and the only way to make it was to help each other out. A re-affirmation of socialist principles that many of us hadn't really thought we'd need.

And that's what made it different.

Think about what Woodstock meant - it was as if it were the media's excuse to label you guys "druggies and partiers."

Now think about the 68 Dem Convention. Think about what happened there - and the response afterwards. Every time I read about that I learn of a new hero that was borne out of those ashes...

Because I'm a typical ahistorical idiot American.

it was a concert. A great big, stoned, wasted, totally psychedelic concert. Boys who were facing death in Vietnam if they lost their deferments were letting it rip and the girls were there with them to help. We did that everywhere, not just at Woodstock; the venues were smaller, and usually private - in apartments and houses and dorms all over the country - but we celebrated the music and the love and the sex and the drugs. We did it and we loved every minute of it.

But Woodstock didn't change anything. Look at how long the debacle in Vietnam continued after Woodstock. Life went on as it had before, and today, those of us who were old enough to have gone to Woodstock are the grandparents, and, like life in 1969, we're all over the socioeconomic and political scale.

You've made it out to be far more than it actually was.

And if every person who claimed to have been at Woodstock had actually been there, its population would have been close to a billion.....................................

That's all it is, really. The real changes in society were not happening there. They began with the civil rights movement in the early and mid-60s and continued with the movement against the Vietnam War. Woodstock was a concert.

What I remember from that period of time was being in Selma, Alabama in 1965 and lining up in front of the Pentagon and the White House a few years later. Woodstock was a concert.

I think I hit the bulls-eye, squarely, in terms of analysing the import of the events at Yasgur's farm, 40 years ago.

(If I Do Say So Myself.)