Music fans young and old are likely getting tired of hearing about the 50th anniversary of Woodstock this summer. While it’s no longer a guarantee that the three-day, star-studded event from Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang will take place this August, fans will now have the option to relive almost the entire 1969 festival in full with a forthcoming box set to arrive this summer.
Related: John Fogerty Shares Doubt Surrounding Ongoing Woodstock 50 Drama In New Interview
According to the announcement shared on Wednesday, a massive 38-disc, 432 song box set titled, Woodstock 50 — Back to the Garden — The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive, will arrive via Rhino this summer in accordance with the event’s highly-publicized anniversary. The compilation will feature recordings of nearly every song (sans three) performed throughout the original three-day event, including 267 tracks which have never been released until now. The tracks featured on each disc will be arranged in chronological order by the day and set time in which each artist played.
The enormous archival project will be sold at a manageable $799, and was co-produced over a 14-year span by Andy Zax and Steve Woolard. Also included in the package will be a Blu-ray copy of Michael Wadleigh’s Woodstock movie, a guitar strap, a replica of the original Woodstock program, a hardbound book from Michael Lang, and more.
In total, the 38 discs will include 36 hours of recordings from the performances, in addition to announcements to the audience like the one that said, “Somebody somewhere is giving out some flat blue acid.” What makes the forthcoming release notably different from the previous archival releases, is that Back To The Garden will feature the full performances from artists including the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, Sly and the Family Stone, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and more.
“There have been large boxed sets devoted to particular eras or tours — the Grateful Dead do a great job of that sort of thing — but there’s never, to my knowledge, been an attempt to present a large-scale durational experience of this sort,” Zax added in a statement to go with Wednesday’s announcement. “The Woodstock tapes give us a singular opportunity for a kind of sonic time travel, and my intention is to transport people back to 1969. There aren’t many other concerts you could make this argument about.”
Woodstock 50 – Back To The Garden (Official Trailer)
[Video: Rhino]
Fans can click here to pre-order Back To The Garden.
[H/T Rolling Stone]
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