The name a play on the Woodstock festival, the benefit concert to commemorate the seventh anniversary 1965 Watts Riots and help the community and organised by Stax Records with all the label’s biggest stars took place in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on this day in 1972, selected for coinciding with the thirtieth birthday of major talent Isaac Hayes. Spanning the musical genres of soul, funk, blues and jazz and included sets by Kim Weston, The Staple Singers, Eddie Floyd, Rufus Thomas, Ernie Hines, Hayes and The Bar-Kays. Invocation and various speeches were given by civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. Tickets priced at a suggested donation of one dollar so everyone could attend, the festival was filmed by David Lloyd Wolper (the producer by the television mini-series Roots, North and South, and the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1984 LA Olympics) and released the following year to high acclaim.
synchronoptica
one year ago: a visit to a potash mine
two years ago: Davy Jones & The Lower Third (1965), more miniatures from Tatsuya Tanaka plus links worth revisiting
three years ago: more words of Shakespearian coinage, quality control officers, the August Coup in Russia (1991) plus the ravens of the Tower of London miss the tourists
four years ago: a classic from Miles Davis (1959), a disembodied hand dominates the skyline in Wellington plus the plague of e-scooters
five years ago: dawn in the woods, the logos of Paul Rand, an on-screen marriage ceremony that may have been legally binding, winning-streaks plus Soviets crush reform attempts in Czechoslovakia (1968)
