KAPAI: Leaving school to hop on the hippy peace train

If you wanted to be happy you sang a happy hippy song.IF YOU want to be happy sing a happy hippy song.
 Given the winter blues has been singing for way too long, the weekend of Woodstock déjà vu and its 40th anniversary has been a welcome walk down my magic memory lane.
I wasn't at Woodstock with the other half million hippies; I was just sprouting bum fluff on my face as a fourth former at Mount College and Bill Smith our PE Teacher was giving us ridiculous kina haircuts that were far from cool.
But I soon caught the hippy peace train after leaving school and travelled with a few soul brothers and sisters who were at Woodstock, and ever since music festivals have made up many of the magic moments that fill the pages of my memory album.
The first was Led Zep at Western Springs before they had noise control and soon after Elton and the Eagles at Wembley Stadium, followed by Pink Floyd and The Wall among many others that tripped the light fantastic for me.
All of these festivals, just like Nambassa, Sunsets and Sweetwater's back home, brought us great hope that a change was on its way and I guess we are still waiting for that change that is still blowing around in the wind with Bob.
At Woodstock Richey Havens opened the five-day festival like a motherless child looking for freedom and from then on in Sly took his newfound family higher and higher. Janice gave each and everyone there a piece of her heart and it was left to Jimmy Hendrix to kiss the stars with his guitar, and by then there was a purple haze across the crowd leaving them all helplessly hoping that what Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were singing was going to come
true.
We are gardener's gatherers and growers and the message of love, peace and happiness that sprinkled across the planet from Woodstock was what the world wanted to hear, and for the next decade if you wanted to be happy you sang a happy hippy song.
But did it deliver what it promised?
For my two bobs worth of tambourine the answer is still blowing in the wind, and given what the words of modern day music is promising I will stay with the words from Woodstock - even if it does mean staying away from the towers and wearing the odd flower in your hair.
Woodstock - where Captain Zig Zag was king, and a bottle of brown beer was as foreign as K Fried in a Corromandel commune. And any act of violence was so uncool it could melt an entire polar ice cap.
And 10 years after Woodstock did the wailing and the one love promise (wrapped up in the holly herb) give Bob Marley believers the redemption they were looking for? For many all the holly herb has given them is a loss of memory and priorities, and even the Bro Bob had to make a few bob to keep his whanau fed.
So where does that leave us today 40 years after Woodstock? Does peace love and happiness still stand the test of time and deliver us from evil via the medium of music and the lyrics embroidered within them?
 If Joan Baez stood in front of us today and sang Swing Low Sweet Chariot would it carry us home to a better place? Would a little help from Joe's friends be enough to make the winter blues go away?
I guess the answer is still blowing in the wind and always will be, but the Bay Steamers certainly gave us great hope when they blew the wind out of Wellington.
Maybe the implicit judgments I made (not Tariana Turia) in my last column about alcohol and drugs are not the answer.

And the simplistic answer from my Woodstock Hippy whanau back in the day still applies today.
If so then what Tariana Turia said recently to the army of Tauranga Awhi angels (volunteers) is what Woodstock was all about.
"We should be reviving and restoring to ourselves the skills passed on from generations before, such as mara kai.
"My belief is clearly that "we are gardeners, gatherers and growers" and we should be teaching and promoting those skills as vital steps on the journey towards self-determination."
Self-determination! It sure sounds like a sweet song to me on a wet Woodstock weekend.
Pai marire (Peace)
broblack@xtra.co.nz