Early Music Festival Culture
The culture of early music festivals were something that the live music industry had never seen before. The saying "Sex, Drugs, and Rock n' Roll" perfectly describes the culture surrounding Music Festivals in the 1960's and 70's. Drug use in the crowd as well as the camp sites was extremely prominent. In Woodstock alone, 80 arrests were made on drug charges like LSD and heroin. This rampant drug culture was not ostracized by the rest of the attendees, in fact it was welcomed and even supported. The majority of Woodstock attendees used marijuana at the festival, and because of the sheer number of users, including the artists, police did not attempt to arrest the marijuana smokers. This trend was widely seen throughout many music festivals around the world.
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In addition to drugs, sex was a huge part of the Woodstock culture and this culture continued to other festivals as well. Women could commonly be seen without any clothes on, and nobody really cared about what other people saw. This led to a lot of drug fueled sexual activity at Woodstock. While other music festivals were not as rampant with this part of the culture, it was still a prominent component in the culture.
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Despite the rampant drug and sex culture of early music culture, they were extremely peaceful. This is probably because most people at these festivals were hippies, environmentalists, and vegans. In Woodstock alone, an event that held 400,000 people, there were no incidents of violence all weekend. This is pretty impressive considering the fact that many music festivals require people to be crammed close together, a formula that almost makes violence inevitable. But the people of Woodstock were able to make it through "three days of peace".