Israel gets jump on Woodstock 50th anniversary

The chances of mud and nudity are slim, but the 50th anniversary of the iconic Woodstock music festival will be marked in Israel with three days of music in the Arava.The producer of the original Woodstock festival, Michael Lang, has announced that he will produce a 50th anniversary version in New York this summer, but the Israeli edition – on April 4-6 – will precede it by a few months.Titled “Almost Cut My Hair” after the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song that pledged allegiance to the ideals of freedom espoused by the 1960s counterculture, the festival will feature jam-oriented and exploratory acts like Lazer Lloyd, the Paz Band, Amir Lev, Shlomo Mizrahi, who will present a Jimi Hendrix tribute, Tree and The Elevators with a Grateful Dead set, as well as appropriately trippy DJ sets all weekend by 88 FM mainstays Gil Matus and Barak Haimovitch.The event, taking place at the Camel Bar campsite south of the Dead Sea, is being produced by Eran Remler, the force behind the annual Grateful Dead Gatherings at the same venue which attract hundreds of free spirits to the desert for a weekend of music and camaraderie.“This is going to be a super-high quality lineup, and the festival is going to channel the positivity of the original Woodstock,” said Remler. Unlike the original Woodstock, the Dead gatherings attract a diverse cross section of music and outdoors-loving fans – from families with young children and older former hippies with their grown kids to a smattering of English-speakers with kippot.
Attendance for the Woodstock fest is being limited to 500. For details, go to http://bit.ly/gratefulmusic