Review by Steve Bloom

The "Heroes of Woodstock" tour celebrated the actual 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival on Aug. 15, 2009 in Bethel, New York at the original festival site, now called Bethel Woods.

The Heroes tour featured Jefferson Starship (only remaining member of the Airplane in the group: Paul Kantner), Ten Years After (minus the group's original guitar wizard Alvin Lee), Canned Heat (three original members, including drummer Fito de la Parra and guitarist Harvey Mandel), Big Brother & the Holding Company (of course, sans Janis Joplin) and Country Joe McDonald (hold the Fish). Just for the Bethel gig, original lead singer Leslie West and drummer Corky Laing anchored Mountain, and Levon Helm represented The Band with his exciting horn-heavy solo group.

Still, we went "back to the garden," as Joni Mitchell wrote, to check out the scene 40 years later. Mitchell also penned one of the '60s most poignant lyrics: "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." Well, that's what happened in Bethel several years ago when part of the original festival site was bulldozed and turned into a performing arts center.

Many in the baby-boomer crowd huffed and puffed up the hill from the parking lot and, after taking their seats in the pavilion ($69) or arranging chairs on the lawn ($19.69), settled in for the nearly eight-hour marathon.

Country Joe hosted, playing songs like "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixing-to-Die Rag" and "Coming Into Los Angeles" (a tribute to Arlo Guthrie) during the band breaks. Many of groups played well-worn blues anthems and crowd favorites like Canned Heat's "Goin' Up the Country" and Ten Year's After's sizzling "I'm Coming Home. Even with young hotshot Joe Gooch filling in for Lee, Ten Year's After didn't disappoint, breaking out "Love Like a Man," "50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain" and their lone hit, "I'd Love to Change the World."

Jefferson Starship (let's just compromise and call them Starplane) provided the show's centerpiece - a San Francisco-style jamboree that included Kantner, the Grateful Dead's Tom Constanten and members of Quicksilver Messenger Service and Big Brother. After cranking out hits like "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love," the ever growing ensemble joyously peaked with "With a Little Help from My Friends."

This highlight was followed by the day's only audience participation when an impulsive rain chant swept through the venue.

As the crowd thinned out, Mountain's Leslie West got married on stage before "Mississippi Queen" rang out as a wedding song, and Helms' band put an exclamation point on the day with swinging versions of "Chest Fever" and "The Shape I'm In."

There was no camping, free love or brown acid at this nostalgic celebration. With Woodstock's greatest hits coursing through our brains, we packed into our cars and simply headed home.

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