Imagine getting back to the garden without burning it down

Last summer’s 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair passed with minimal effort to update its spirit for the present day, as attempted amidst much Generation X cynicism in 1994 and unmitigated disaster in 1999, but the event retains a stranglehold on the popular culture. Certainly, the recent leak of plans for the Earthship Summit and IMAGINE concert — scheduled for July 10 and 11 at Downsview Park — would not have been taken seriously if not for the participation of hippie nostalgia merchant Artie Kornfeld, whose most significant role in helping scheme the original Woodstock was getting Warner Bros. to professionally film it. Names like Foo Fighters, Nickelback and Lady Gaga have been “contacted” according to co-organizer David Kam — a Montreal artist concurrently speaking of closed circuit broadcasts in 200 theatres, video dispatches from the likes of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and three all-star re-recordings of John Lennon’s “Imagine” — even though this level of ambition contradicts everything you ever hear about how the music industry now works. Are campground-worthy acts going to reroute planned tours and transcend contractual obligations just because a guy from Woodstock is involved and half the ticket price is being pledged for charities? That sounds like what they’re saying — even though the one-day July 2003 Molson Canadian Rocks for Toronto show held on the same site seemed to require all kinds of political wrangling via MP Dennis Mills and Senator Jerry Grafstein, and didn’t claim to be for any good cause except for drawing media attention to the SARS-scarred city — headliners the Rolling Stones and AC/DC were reportedly paid in full, and then some. Next month, we will supposedly find out whether this is for real. History, however, is not on their side.

A few months after Woodstock, on December 17, 1969, Lennon and Yoko Ono appeared at the Ontario Science Centre to announce the Mosport Peace Festival — planned for July 1970 at the raceway site north of Bowmanville. The event never happened, after a dispute ensued about whether or not to charge admission. “Surely they can hustle some big firms or something to put up the money,” Lennon told Rolling Stone after giving up on the plan. “And anyway, it looked like the national and local government were interested. Wouldn’t it be a great plug for ‘Young Canada’ — and the tourist trade?” But, according to promoter John Brower — who brought John and Yoko to Varsity Stadium a few months earlier — there was a dispute over support from the provincial Conservative government after Lennon had a mutual admiration summit meeting with the Liberal prime minister. So, it took until July 1996 for such a weekend camp-out to happen at Mosport: EDENfest, a 61-act festival whose headliners included The Tragically Hip, The Cure and Porno For Pyros, culminated in a fiery riot after rumoured “surprise guests” on Sunday night failed to appear. Buffalo-based organizer Mark Drost departed the event in an ambulance, and plans for a follow-up festival were quashed after creditors started calling — later, Drost was arrested for extortion, thus didn’t follow through on his deal to hold a similar event every summer at Mosport for the subsequent decade. But the prehistoric EDEN website still lives online, along with a Facebook reunion — and a sense of how these festivals tend to turn out.