History

Wallkill is a town in Ulster County, New York, and it is in this chronicle for something that did NOT happen there. Through the spring and early summer of 1969 the Woodstock Music & Art Fair was planned for a Wallkill site, and the organisers commissioned David Edward Byrd — the Fillmore East's poster artist — to advertise it. Byrd's design, built around Ingres' La Source and titled 'An Aquarian Exposition', names Wallkill, New York and the dates August 15, 16 and 17. Roughly ten thousand were printed. Then the town's zoning board banned the festival, and the organisers moved it to Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, sixty miles away, where it happened. The Byrd poster is therefore an artifact advertising the wrong place — one of the most collectible sheets of the era precisely because it is a record of a refusal. This entry is kept distinct from Max Yasgur Farm, Bethel for that reason: the two are different places, and the whole meaning of AOR-3.2 is that it names the one the festival never reached.

Its Place in the Scene

The town that threw Woodstock out — named on David Byrd's 'Aquarian Exposition' poster, printed before the eviction.

The Facts

Shows at this Venue