The Woodstock That Spent Fifty Years in a Basement
In the basement of a Paris apartment building sat 295 boxes with the remains of a forgotten Woodstock style music festival. Some reels smelled of vinegar and rotten celluloid. Others had faded into malignant shades of magenta. The sound had separated from the image. Faces disappeared beneath mold, dust and chemical decay. For nearly fifty years, the festival existed mostly in rumor. Then somebody opened the basement. Riviera ’76 had been Michael Lang’s attempt to transport the Woodstock dream across the Atlantic and reassemble it beneath the sun of southern France. Betty Davis came. Joe Cocker came. Jimmy Cliff, Gil Scott-Heron, Magma and John McLaughlin came. Organizers expected 100,000 believers at the Paul Ricard racetrack. About 30,000 arrived. This was not the revolution you were looking for. Perhaps that was the first clue that the counterculture had entered a different dimension—one where peace and love still appeared on the posters, but accountants waite...