Sha Na Na Woodstock - 20 Years After (DVD)

(Liberation Hall) 23 tracks

23 songs by 1950s revival group Sha Na Na, recorded at the Woodstock Twenty Years After concert in August 1989. Sha Na Na, the popular 1950s revival group that has sold more than 20 million records and appeared on its own television series, was one of the performers at the original 1969 Woodstock music festival.

Twenty years later, on August 20, 1989, the band performed with their original fellow musicians at the Woodstock: 20 Years After concert, held 3,000 miles away at Cal-State Dominguez Hills in Carson, California. Sha Na Na's appearance at Woodstock was only the band's eighth performance. The band was formed during the 1968/69 school year at Columbia University. The idea came from George Leonard, a humanities student who also became the group's choreographer. The original lineup included a dozen members who performed a song and dance repertoire based on popular rock and doo-wop hits of the 1950s.

"Within two months, we were the hottest rock band in New York, performing weekly at Steve Paul's Scene, where even the stars partied. One night Janis Joplin ran backstage to kiss us, smelling like Southern Comfort," Leonard recalls. According to the band's drummer, John Fair "Jocko" Marcellino, it was on the last night Steve Paul's Scene was open that Jimi Hendrix personally introduced Sha Na Na to Woodstock producers Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld. "We were booked that night," Marcellino told Yahoo Entertainment's Lyndsey Parker. "We got $350, the check bounced, and we got a dollar to be in the movie. But it was a good dollar." Her high-energy performance and closing rendition of "At the Hop" were a highlight of the concert and were featured in the documentary.

The film helped make Sha Na Na a U.S. sensation and sparked a 1950s nostalgia that inspired the Broadway musical Grease, American Graffiti and the 1970s television series Happy Days. When the 1978 film version of Grease hit theaters, the accompanying soundtrack featured six songs by Sha Na Na, and the group appeared in the film with two songs as Johnny Casino and the Gamblers. From 1977 to 1981, the group recorded 97 episodes of the Sha Na Na musical variety shows, becoming a staple of American pop culture. Their appearance in the movie "Woodstock" helped spark a craze for all things 1950s, inspiring shows and movies like "Grease" and "American Graffiti," as well as television series like "Happy Days"