Capitol Theatre

EcRocker on March 19, 2009 at 3:55 pm

I was just on one of the Woodstock sites today and from what I read was that the Dead were on stage during one of the many rain falls that took place. Someone who said he was a friend of the band said that their set was aweful mostly because they were trying to avoid getting electrucuted.

http://www.woodstock69.com/wsrprnt5.htm

“Phil Ciganer’s buddy was Grateful Dead guitar guru Jerry Garcia, who used to pop into Ciganer’s hippie boutique in Brooklyn. But, friendship aside, Ciganer had to be honest about the Grateful Dead’s performance at Woodstock. The band members were standing in water, their electric guitars were shocking their fingers. "It was the worst show of theirs I’d ever seen,” he said."

Could be a good enough reason.

condoking on March 19, 2009 at 10:37 am

Anyone know why the Dead were not in the original movie or on the CD?

dhassert on March 18, 2009 at 8:43 pm

Speaking of Woodstock’s 40th Anniversary

Warner releases extended Woodstock doc on DVD, Blu-ray
3 Days of Peace & Music: Ultimate Collector’s Edition to offer two hours of new footage
By Susanne Ault — Video Business, 3/11/2009

The Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music: Ultimate Collector’s Edition will include a bunch of collectibles.

MARCH 11 | Warner Home Video is pouring on the love for Woodstock’s 40th anniversary, packing in two hours of never-before-released footage into its June 9 DVD/Blu-ray Disc re-release of the documentary about the 1969 music festival that became a cultural touchstone.

Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music: Ultimate Collector’s Edition will be available on DVD ($59.98) and on Blu-ray ($69.99).

When the Woodstock project was announced last year, Warner initially expected to add one hour of previously unreleased concert footage. Now running at two hours, the new material includes 18 performances by 13 acts, spanning Joan Baez, Country Joe McDonald, Santana, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, among others. Five of the acts now includedâ€"Paul Butterfield, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, Johnny Winter and Mountainâ€"have never appeared in any film version of Woodstock.

Exclusive to the Blu-ray version are such features as a live community screening of Woodstock for Web-enabled high-definition players and a customizable playlist.

Both Ultimate Collector’s Editions will be packaged in numbered gift boxes and include a 60-page reprint of a Life commemorative issue. Vintage photos, festival memorabilia and an iron-on patch also will be in the sets.

The studio will offer a Woodstock first look to attendees of the South By Southwest Music + Film Festival on March 21.

Initially, Warner was circling a July 28 bow for the title in order to coincide more closely with the festival’s true August 40th anniversary. But the studio bumped up the release date to please an unspecified retail chain planning a Woodstock-related promotion in June.

Woodstock will represent one of Warner’s three major 2009 catalog tentpole titles. The other two are the Blu-ray debuts of The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind, both coming later this year.

Studio executives are betting that the extra two hours of Woodstock footage will especially attract consumers. Warner was able to unearth eight hours of previously hidden footage, but chose the best two hours of performances for release.

“Two hours is beyond rare,” said Warner executive VP/general manager Jeff Baker. “It’s not unusual for a filmmaker to have 15 minutes to an hour. But I’m not aware of any film that had two hours of content that filmmakers couldn’t get in originally.”

The title should enjoy a marketing boost from other activities planned around the festival’s 40th anniversary this year.

VHI Rock Docs and History is behind a two-hour documentary, tentatively titled Woodstock: 40 Years Later, bowing on VH1 channels in August. The project is executive produced by Michael Lang, the organizer of the original festival.

Also, the Ang Lee film from Focus Features, Taking Woodstock, will bow in theaters during the anniversary in August.

Warner also is rolling out a relatively more entry-level, two-disc special edition of Woodstock ($24.98).

Organizer Lang said of the decades-later attention, co-creators “Artie [Kornfeld] and Joel [Rosenman] join me in congratulating Warner Home Video for putting together this brand new and exciting look at our event and for unearthing more of the historic performances that electrified us at the time.”

EcRocker on March 17, 2009 at 10:32 am

Movie I am sure that Q104 is going to do some sort of Woodstock tribute just so they can feel like they are the happening station.However I wonder if their archives are anything that WNEW FM would have compiled. Also in case you were not aware the Montauk is presently closed. Word has it that Passaic want to demolish it olong with the hotel next door. Besides the last movies shown in there were pornos. I guess it has something in common with the Capitol.

Al your last line reminded me of a line from a song by Don Henley.

Out on the road today
I saw a dead head sticker on a cadillac
a voice inside my head said don’t look back
you can never look back.

Michael

condoking on March 16, 2009 at 11:55 am

Woodstock was “one of a kind” and will always be remembered by fans of Rock & Roll. Hard to believe it was 40 years ago. I still play the soundtrack often. Some, if not all, of the performances were legendary. Richie Havens “Here comes the sun”, Canned Heat “Going up the Country”, Arlo, Janis, Sly, 10 Years After, and one of my favorites “County Joe’s "Give me an F” war protest song. Those of us that missed going to Woodstock still remembers what we were doing or where we were those 4 days. “Love & Peace” had a meaning. After that is seems that concerts like Altamont in N. California were all too common. All too violent.
John & I tried to re-create that love & peace feeling at the Capitol. Not sure about the later years but the few years I was involved I think we were successful. Bill Graham left the NY area and closed the Fillmore and we tried to pick up right where he left off…

I know you “can’t ever go back” but we can still remember!!
Al

roscomouse on March 15, 2009 at 12:46 am

Hey there, East Coast Rocker. As you know, I know from what you speak. You rang a big bell for me when you cited BOA because they were one of the two bands that ever gave me a tip for service on beyond the call of duty. (The other was Pearl Bailey, whose equally wonderful husband, Louie Bellson, recently passed away.) What you describe is the death of rock and roll due to the amoral nature of big business.

Rock is by definition of, by, and for the people: democracy in one of its purest aesthetic forms. Big biz turned it into a packaged commodity which generally means a loss of character in favor of receipts. And, of course, that could not have happened without the acquiescence of the artists themselves. I am by no means a socialist, although I completely accept my personal responsibility to my fellow man as I also understand my complete dependence upon my fellow man, but the demise of rock and roll is directly correlated to its being completely overwhelmed by what I think of as the combined greed of big business and the artists, both of whom stood on the shoulders of true giants, to take without permission the joy of life that cannot be without truly sharing among all of us.

To imagine that rock and roll is, perhaps, a religion is simply to acknowledge that we all shared a common thread of humanity, including responsibility as well as joy, and knowing that we shared a common appreciation for the gift that is our individual and collective lives.

My joy, now, is the hope that accompanies the long overdue and wonderful shift from a faux moral 30 years of pure greed to a new era of hope based on the same values that we who are proud of our 60s heritage can see as the clear light of sunshine. No longer shall we be “busted for smiling on a cloudy day.” It may be a dream, but it is a dream worth our communal effort to fulfill.

Others have come before us with varying degrees of success but I, for one, hope and support every effort of every new generation to take control of their own destiny, to respect the wisdom of those of their elders who have any, and to do right as best they can. As for the music, I think I hear more than echos of the greatness of the past, but the promise of a brand new future.

Bless you all who are willing to make the effort to go on with a love and desire to use your lives to make a more sustainable and joyful world within which we can all hope to live healthy and happy lives in the pursuit of excellence (not just happiness or perfection) in all endeavors of our choice. Please forgive me my boorish boring bully pulpit but, whether or not you forgive me my lame presentation, let us all pull together on the oars that propel our ship to a better place. The wind alone cannot and will not blow us where we wish to go.

Opportunity is the gift we have been given, but it is an opportunity that we must accept as both a challenge and a responsibility if we hope to succeed. Our joy is only to strive for a better future. Whether or not we can achieve that goal is yet to be determined, but joy itself is the selflessness and the sincerity of our effort. Long live rock and roll. It embodies the essence of democracy.

Am I speaking only to myself?

EcRocker on March 14, 2009 at 10:57 pm

Gone also are the days when a band would pull up to a show in a U-haul or some other named rental truck and set up on stage. The house would provide the sound and lights. Then came the all in one tours where the bands would show up with a tractor trailer full of band gear sound and light gear. From there it just expanded. Now you got to more trucks more trailers. Some to the point where bands doiong stadium tours had lep frogging systems. For those of you who do not understand it is when you have a band playing with such an elaborate staging sound and light system it would take not hours but some times days to set up and tear down for a show that may last 2 hours. So while for example Pink Flyod was playing in Giant Stadium with the staging, sound and light system another unit would be setting up at another venu. Some of thes shows had as many as 20 tractor trailers if not more. When major bands started doing the full size trailer thing for shows at places like the Capitol it also made finding space to park them a major pain in the ass. The Capitol stage was not very deep and in most cases anything that was notneeded to be used for the show such as road cases got tossed back out the door. Rock tours became a monster. The more stuff they hauled around meant more people to pay and so on down the line. That is why we may never see ticket prices as low as $3.50-$5.50 agin in this lifte time.
As for bands using rental trucks it is still hpaening. When you see a band that was big 35 years ago doing small clubs is because they need the money and are not big enough to be out touring major venues. Most of the bands only hae maybe one original member and can not draw the big money as if it were the original band.

Case in point. Back in the 90’s Black oak Arkansas was playing a local club in NJ. It had 3 original members in the band including Jim “Dandy” Mangrum. They were touring in some beat up conversion tour bus. They were doing so bad that they asked the club owner for an advance so they could buy fuel for the bus. Long gone were the days they would be hauling 3-4 trailers. Long gone were the days of playing 2500-3500 seat theatres. Long gone also are the days they would be playing stadiums and festivals with 50,000 people or more.

For those of us that lived it most of us will always treasure it. For those whi didn’t oh well you missed out on something.

condoking on March 12, 2009 at 9:51 am

I am a Realtor working and living in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Married for over 25 years to Barbara who worked in the box office at the Capitol Theatre. Son Jim produces concerts and shows in clubs throughout South Florida.

Am happy to be out of the concert business. With big corporations like Live Nation controlling everything the concert business is not the same. I remember putting our tickets for sale in “head shops” and music stores in NJ. This was before Ticketron. John would call the head shops and music stores to get an idea of what acts might sell tickets.

Two shows a night at the Capitol with 3,000 seats and tickets $3.50 to $5.50 each was only 35 years ago but in the music business that is a “lifetime”.
Al Hayward

roscomouse on February 25, 2009 at 9:20 am

March 10, 1973. See http://www.moyssi.com/capitolshows.htm But don’t stop there—you might find something interesting on one of the other 750 or so pages too…

roscomouse on February 25, 2009 at 7:22 am

Hmmm. I’d stay away from that trick. At our age, that’s the kind of coincidence that is bound to increase in frequency.

Another, lighter, coincidence: I met Harold at the Academy of Music on the same day that I met Candace in Gaelic Park, and Jimmy Delahanty turned out to be the cab driver who took me (for the wildest ride in my life) from my meeting with Harold to my car to meet Candace at Gaelic Park to begin my post-university career in lighting. Jimmy, by coincidence of course, became part of our all-star City Lights lighting crew and, again by coincidence, is now rumored to be joining Dave Capo’s Capitol forum as soon as he can get his computer woes worked out… Let’s all keep talking out loud and see who else turns up. It’s amazing to discover after all these years how many of us worked the same lighting instrument in the same place in the same venue at so many different times.

But there is no mold from which Harold Klein was cast. His bright light will be missed by all who knew him.

roscomouse on February 5, 2009 at 1:21 pm

Ugh! I thought I hit preview and then send. Sorry folks. Does anybody know how to delete a doppelganger?

roscomouse on February 5, 2009 at 1:17 pm

Michael, Which walnut is the dime under? Quick history. Candace Brightman, who is and always has been IMHO one of the best 3 LDs on the face of this planet directed lights for Stein at his Capitol in Port Chester and then at the much larger Academy of Music on 14th St. John and Al engaged her as LD for the Capitol but she chose to tour with the Grateful Dead instead. Heaven, but she thought well of John and didn’t want to leave him hanging, so she asked Harold Klein, who was moonlighting as one of her spot ops at the Academy to take her place at both the Academy and the new Capitol in Passaic. Harold—who is one very versatile, talented and entertaining guy—at first accepted and then got cold feet. At that point, George Geranius, who was then Blue Oyster Cult’s sound man, reminded Candace of my work at Stony Brook. She called me and I promptly accepted. (I was willing to try to be in two places at the same time because I was a sucker for every tall wispy lady who could split photons with a subtle idea.) But then Harold decided he wanted back in, so Candace borrowed a page from King Solomon’s handbook and asked us to split the gigs: One to go to the Academy and the other to go to the Capitol. Instead, Harold and I decided—on the day that we met each other—to handle Howard’s and John’s gigs as a partnership. Two people: Two places and Harold wanted the best of both worlds. I deferred as a professional courtesy to Harold because he was offered the gig before me, and so City Lights was born and grew to include The Bottom Line and touring gigs with NRPS, Jerry Garcia, Donovan, Lou Reed and others. During that period, we found that we could actually handle almost all of those gigs between the two of us, with the able assistance of our terrific lighting crew. So Harold or I could be found on the boards at the Capitol, the Academy, The Bottom Line, Asbury Park or on the road at any given moment, but we never knew which or when until the smoke cleared. Sometimes one of us would set up for the other, or do the early show while the other did the late show, so that we could also cover a touring gig. So it wasn’t your imagination: You did work with Harold AND me as interchangeable LDs or spot ops or BOTH at all three NY area venues. And yes, sometimes you could have seen me working two different gigs on the same day. A helluva way to make a living and I loved every minute of it.