TV Reviews : Coverage of Woodstock Anniversary: The Sequel

So you thought the media was through celebrating--or milking--the 20th anniversary of the Woodstock Rock Festival? Think again. At 8 tonight, CBS comes up with the strangest retrospective of all, “Woodstock: Return to the Planet of the ‘60s” (Channels 2 and 8).

This is one puzzling, unbalanced, misbegotten, wasteful, irritating hour. But for rock fans, it’s also a must-see show.

Produced by Warner Bros., which put out the “Woodstock” movie, the hour is built around eight “lost performances”--songs that were evidently filmed at the festival but not used in the movie. Evidently because host Howard Hesseman never makes it clear; he and a gaggle of other ‘80s comedians spend most of their on-screen time making fun of the ‘60s, of Woodstock, and of the people who attended it, or telling us what they were doing when Woodstock was happening, or otherwise testing our patience.

This show raises more questions than “Jeopardy!” Like, man:

--If Warner Bros. indeed has found, as Hesseman says, “hundreds of cans of film” of the festival, why introduce some of this lost material in a context of snide ‘60s-trashing?

--Why hire an almost entirely unfunny bunch of current stand-up comedians (running from the dull Robert Klein to the abrasive Judy Tenuta) when you have excerpts from sets by people seen not at all in the movie (Janis Joplin, the Band, Johnny Winter) as well as out-take songs from Joan Baez, Sly & the Family Stone, John Sebastian, Arlo Guthrie and Crosby, Stills & Nash?

--If there are “hundreds of cans” containing unseen performances, why pad out the hour with performances by Jimi Hendrix and Country Joe and the Fish that are in the “Woodstock” movie? That’s just for starters. Still, odd and patchy as it may be, the hour is worth wading through for its music, even though--except for Joplin’s passionate “Work Me, Lord”--these “lost performances” are less inspired than most of the material in the movie.

Let’s just hope Warner Bros. doesn’t come across a lost Humphrey Bogart movie right now: It might feel compelled to spice it up with some numbers by Madonna and Prince.