The year is 1994. The 21 year old me -I am 48 at the time of this writing - is standing in a field full of people and music. Smoke, laughter and dancing filled the air as a sense of elation swirled around me. I was feeling the first flashes of freedom in my young adult life. Myself and a group of friends had driven to the Woodstock Music festival. "Three more days of peace and music" as it was advertised... but I was a punk. Not so much into peace at the time but I was ALL about the music. I have been drumming since I was four years old, writing poems and lyrics since I was 12 or 13 and had been playing guitar for a while now. I was born madly in love with music. It feels at times as if songs had been inscribed into my soul before my birth. To me this was more than a concert. This was a holy experience.
We looked at the schedule of events and quickly realized that we had some choices to make. There were two stages. The main stage: which was for all of the headliners. And the south stage: where all of the alternative music and "older" acts were. For some reason, beyond my comprehension, Santana (who played at the Woodstock in 1969) was scheduled for the south stage. There was no way in hell we were going to miss that. He was scheduled to go on Sunday. So we set up camp near the south stage where we would wind up spending the majority of our time. We set up in a spot that was far enough to avoid the mass of people crowding the front of the stage, but close enough to see the performers. The weather was hot and humid and it felt like there was a storm brewing. You could just feel it in the thick air. We didn't have cell phones back then to tell us that we were right but we had a suspicion that it might rain. But here we were. Far from our homes back in NH and in all of our hot, sweaty glory. We were happily surrounded by music, people celebrating and playing music, and lets not forget the weed... lots and lots of weed.
Joe Cocker began the day on the North Stage. We wanted to see the him badly enough to leave our post and swim our way through the ocean of people the see the man himself. We grew up listening to him and now we had a chance to see him sing the songs we all knew by heart. Only problem was the Cranberries were going on second on the south stage the same morning. Some of us wanted to stay at the North Stage for Blind Melon (who played directly following Joe Cocker) but a few of us planned on high tailing it back to the South stage after Joe Cocker wrapped up.
Mr. Cocker and his band went on without a hitch and were absolutely fantastic! A powerful otherworldly voice bellowed in front of us from a twisted human frame. He sings as if he's transforming into a werewolf and is in great pain. His face showed the weight of every lyric he sang. We were watching a genius give his gift to the world right in front of us. I'll never forget it as long as I live.
Directly after Joe Cocker a friend and I split up with our group and basically ran back to our tent to catch the Cranberries. We made it but I believe we had missed a few of their seven song set but I was elated! Dolores and crew sounded amazing. She was very animated walking back and forth on stage as she sang. I had LOVED this band since first hearing them. I listened to their albums over and over again back then. I still do to this day. Sometimes I watch the performance on
Youtube via this shitty quality video, but my memories are what really make this video. Everytime I hear the angelic voice of
Dolores O'Riordan I get emotional. Such a tragic loss to the music world. Her voice is so beautiful that her talent as a lyricists gets completely overlooked. If you have never looked at her as a great lyric writer I will direct you to The Cranberries 2017 release Something Else. The songs are stipped down so you can focus on the words she is singing. Let that album run through your ears and into your brain a few times and you will realise that there is a lot of beauty and sadness and even hope in her lyrics. All reasons why I wish she was still on this planet. But it's like I always say: All of my heroes are dead... but they still makes noise.
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