Levon Helm, Jefferson Starship, Country Joe to Play Woodstock 40th Anniversary Show

Levon Helm Band, Jefferson Starship and Country Joe McDonald are among the acts that will descend on Bethel, New York, on August 15th to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival, Billboard.biz reports. Mountain, Ten Years After, Canned Heat and Big Brother and the Holding Co. will also play the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, a venue built on the site of the original Woodstock, which ran from August 15th-17th, 1969.

Helm appeared at the 1969 fest with the Band, while Jefferson Starship took the Woodstock stage as Jefferson Airplane. With the exception of Big Brother & the Holding Co. — Janis Joplin performed at the '69 concert with the Kozmic Blues Band — the rest of the acts performing on August 15th all had a set at the original Woodstock festival. As Rock Daily previously reported, Richie Havens will also play a Woodstock-related event on August 14th, returning to Bethel to perform "Freedom," the song that opened up the '69 festival, at a media-only event.

Four decades after it drew hundreds of thousands to upstate New York, Woodstock promises to be everywhere this summer. Taking Woodstock, an Ang Lee-directed comedy about the behind-the-scenes story of the fest, is due to hit movie theaters on August 14th. Plus, Woodstock.com plans to relaunch itself as a social networking site and the festival's original promoters and organizers are scrambling to hammer down plans to commemorate the original festival by 2010.

Related Stories:

• Woodstock Organizers Team With Sony Music for "Social Network" Website
• Producer James Schamus Says Ang Lee's "Taking Woodstock" Will Capture "Hopeful Spirit"
• "Massive" Woodstock May Not Come in 2009, Promoter Says

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Song Stories

“Time to Pretend”

MGMT | 2008

Listening to MGMT’s breakthrough song, one might interpret it as being about the excesses of rock stardom, but it’s actually about the duo’s pet praying mantis. Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden told Rolling Stone they got the idea from the insect's jerky movements. The mantis died, but the two bandmates kept the egg sack and allowed the hundreds of eggs to hatch. “We tried to name them all, but they died after a day,” said Goldwasser, with VanWyngarden chiming in, “But the praying mantis dance inspired us.”

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