Woodhenge: Behind The Music
3 days of hunting, gathering, and celtic rock
For three days in the hot period of 3969BC nearly half a million young nomads attended the Woodhenge Music and Arts Festival. It was the most celebrated and peaceful gathering of the Mesolithic period which took place in an area of The Island Britannia which was known as Witheridge. It promised to be a weekend of nomadic tribes enjoying music, love, and peace. But it was not so peaceful for the three promoters, Artemis Field-of-corn, Joelius Rosenthorn, and Micah Langspear. Artemis: “I was as petrified as some of the fossils there. It was like..someone is getting burned at the stake for killing 20,000 people man, and that someone was gonna be me!” Joelius: “I had never seen so many hunters and gatherers in the same place man, it was like Bedrock bedlam. Sex, crazy smoke, weird tablets, and just people everywhere. There was no way someone wasn’t going to get jousted or have their eye poked out with a stone sling man, it was just a crazy scene.” Micah: “I wanted to have a nice small mass of a few thousand, you know, like to share some gathering strategies, new hunting techniques, and maybe exchange some cultural art, which was coming off the cave walls and onto rock trinkets. I never dreamed that so many people existed let alone would come to our festiva1”
It was a troubled era, the end of the 3960’s, the BC’s most turbulent decade. Protests over The Cola Wars pitted tribal leaders against the youth, Neolithic Counterculture protests and civil disobedience gatherings fighting for the rights of crossbow arrow hunters, Gatherer Libbers burning their breast straps, and the assassination of some young leaders of the Liberal Cave Party. It was the Stoned Age, and kids were puffing on crazy smoke and getting stoned all over the European countrysides. Lutes and pan flutes replaced the strings and reeds in music, the female gatherer sheepskin body covering got higher exposing more skin and hunters began braiding their hair. In the middle of the decade the Greek Olympics had become marred with inter species showering and the new event, javelin fondling. It was the beginning of the sexual revolution and attitudes were changing fast. There were female hunters, stay at cave Dads, and manskin arrow handling attitudes were being redefined. The ice age was still on the minds of the older generation but the youth just told them to chill out. The times they were a changing. As the cultures moved out of the caves and into tents a variety of artistic expressions evolved. Young tribal members found new and interesting uses for the blowpipes. Gatherers used them for self gratification and the hunters found they could entice more gatherer groupies by using blowpipes to make new more melodic sounds while others modified the pipes to use as a multiple user smoking tools. The strange new phenomenon of nasal powder sniffing through the tubular blowpipe increased as well as young nomads searched for new ways to get “that feeling”. Power powder, mood tablets, and crazy smoke were sweeping the meadows. A countryside turned on, tuned in, and dropping LCDVII tablets to hallucinate. The time seemed right for three young visionaries to create a gathering, build a monument, and change the flat world forever. But was the Pagan community ready for a Rock and Rumble monument? When we come back, some were building monuments, others jotting down notes …….. (long pause for effect)
It was Joelius Rosenthorn who first had the vision, peering across the huge land mass of grazing Harecleum, the oversized bovines that populated Witheridge. Joelius saw an abundance of milk the gatherers could use to make cheeses and yougurts, and bovine skins to make come do me shoes and negligee’s. The huge animals were prime for prime rib. Giant steak ladden bucks for the hunters to kill and butcher and a wide open area to share and exchange idea’s. Joe had the dream but not the backing. Artemis Field-of-corn, an old friend of Joes who played the cave bear femur flute in his band “The Rolling Boulders” had connections but they came with conditions as well. “I told Joey I could get him enough sheep wool and wolf pelts but we would need to make some monuments for a few Gods, Thoth, Musagette, Cernunnos, and Tzets. A few nice stone pillars all connected like a dais, a table of stone for the Gods, ya know. We could use it as a stage! I had connections for some Granite and Bluestone from Sarsen. That’s when we brought in Michah. Micah: “I had a sweet rock quarry in Sarsen with the perfect stones for making monuments. Only problem was they were huge, hard to move.” The three visionaries had come across their first challenge, moving these two ton slabs of stone some five hundred miles to Witheridge. They went to their old friend Axle Roads from the rock and rumble band Bows and Bouquets who had invented the original Goodyear. Axle: “Micah and I used to race in reverse, we go back a long way. For some back monument passes and a few bags of crazy smoke I promised him my newest invention I called the flatbed could get the boulders to the site. Man he has good weed, haha” Axle delivered but became part of the problem from drinking to much solution. As treacherous as that was it would end up becoming the least of their problems. When we come back, Shepherds State Thruway shut down as thousands leave their chariots to walk to the Woodhenge Festival…….. (Another long pause, even more effect)
Terrapin - The Journey 