BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION AUG. 16-18, 2019) — The 50th anniversary of the Woodstock festival praise be has been thrust upon us. You may have heard about it.  Many of you might also know that a band from Pittsfield, Mass., The Quarry, played the most music there.

Roadies set up Mick’s drum set on the Woodstock stage. Day 1.

How did the Woodstock promoters hire The Quarry — Mick Valenti, Dave Carron, Danny Velika, and Mike Furey — to essentially serve as musical hosts for the most famous rock event of all time and play to crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands? Let THE PLANET tell you. Incidentally, in a completely serendipitous coincidence, this is the 1969th column we have written since we began this board. 1969. The gods are with us.

The band was headquartered in McAfee, N.J., where they had played the winter at Great Gorge Ski Lodge. McAfee was also handy to Manhattan, where Quarry headlined at two of the Big Apple’s hot night spots, the Zodiac Club and the Electric Circus. Talent scouts for Woodstock caught the band’s sets at the Circus in July and signed them for through their manager, Barry Hollister.

Mick, left, watches carefully as roadies set up his kit and The Quarry’s instruments on stage at Woodstock.

The Quarry arrived in Bethel while the crews built the main stage, did long sets during the festival itself, played on after the last note from Jimi Hendrix’s white Stratocaster echoed off Max Yasgur’s red cow barn, and even entertained the clean up and tear down crews. The Quarry played mostly original music, too, most of the songs written by Mick. Dave and Danny also shared writing duties.

God bless Max Yasgur.

Before leaving Bethel, N.Y., booking agents for the Texas International Pops Festival signed The Quarry for their event (Aug. 30-Sept. 1, 1969). This time the band would appear with Led Zeppelin, Santana, Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, and Ten Years After. They had hit the big time. Thereafter, it was tour buses and flying to gigs, mixed in with the group’s van-and-vehicle caravan.

This new film promises to be the ultimate film record. Note THE QUARRY finally getting star billing.

The Texas shows and Zeppelin ax man Jimmy Page changed Mick Valenti’s musical path forever. Late in 1970, he left Quarry to start Quick Fox, taking on the role of lead guitarist and front man. Mick wanted to rock. Dave and Danny fell under the spell of country-folk and ended up in Shenandoah, eventually becoming sidemen for Arlo Guthrie.

Meanwhile, Quick Fox toured the country for the next 40 years — colleges, clubs, theaters, arenas, private parties, with Mick based variously in the Midwest, Santa Fe, Daytona but HQd in Pittsfield. After James Brown, was he the busiest man in show business?

Today, Mick’s still writing, recording, and playing music, this in the middle of a flurry of activity relating to Woodstock’s 50th, mostly handling media requests. He’s also featured (billed as The Quarry) in the exhaustive new documentary, Creating Woodstock, released recently to U.S. screens.

Mick Valenti, on stage, Christmas concert 2018.

Part of Woodstock’s 50th has been the “cash in.” People have been paying crazy amounts for memorabilia fromrock’s seminal event. Mick still has some of the drum set he played there, the kit featured on the Woodstock II album cover, and he’s not selling. God bless him, too. He never sold out. Didn’t then, will not now.

Yasgur’s field has been marketed to death, built over into a park-like mall, and the gullible flock to the site as if it’s Stonehenge. Of the Quarry, Dave and Danny have passed on, too soon for their great talents. Mike Furey has been long gone out of music. Mick carries on, irrepressibly — the coolest, most optimistic, irrepressible, caring, loving man we have ever met.

The Quarry and Quick Fox, both his creations, are still the most successful rock bands ever to come out of Pittsfield, Mass. For that we thank our parents for allowing the three brothers to follow their own muses. Each of us pursued and reached one of life’s greatest blessings, that of being able to make a living at something we loved doing.

Yes, we’re prejudiced about Mick.

He’s my brother.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

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“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp” — Robert Browning.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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