Woodstock > Spring Fling

It's the 40th anniversary of Woodstock this weekend. You know that. You can't not know that. The only way to be unaware of this fact would be to crawl underground with your eyes squeezed shut and your fingers jammed in your ears. On one level it's kind of annoying; after all, we're talking about arguably the greatest party in the history of parties, a free free-for-all with iconic performances by real deal rock stars and an audience of half-a-million-strong slathered in mud having sex and taking acid/getting stoned/popping pills like tic tacs/etc. etc. The ultimate musical cultural experience... and we all missed it.

But lucky for us, our baby boomer parents love remembering the good old days before they sold out and moved to the suburbs, which means re-releases of the 1970 documentary, a new movie by Ang Lee, and more TV and newspaper coverage than you can probably handle.

But here is something you might not know: before Jimi Hendrix played the Star-Spangled banner like he was setting the flag on fire, before Joni Mitchell compensated for skipping out on the festival by penning the song that would forever define it, even before Max Yasgur gave the green light to a few hundred thousand hippies to crash on his farm, there were "two young men with unlimited capital" who financed the whole throwdown, and one of those men was John P. Roberts, a then-24-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate. You're welcome, America, for being the school where Roberts learned the importance of playing as hard as he worked.