He credits his musical abilities to his mother, who made him practice on his instruments for at least an hour a day "which really makes a difference" and also had him play for charity "whenever it was right".

Buzzy missed the original Woodstock festival - at that time, he was 10 miles away rehearsing at Bernard Stohlman's private farm, since he was unable to get to the venue "since the highway was so crowded."At that time, he wasn't playing with Hendrix, but had participated in a jam session with him at a club called "The Scene", where Edgar and Johnny Winter regularly played. He later played the vibes on Hendrix's final album, "Drifting."

Buzzy performed with Bette Midler in the early days, when he co-authored her "theme song", which was called "Friends." The song was originally intended as a "folky thing that you could play with one microphone placed with an acoustic guitar, but she turned it into a Broadway-like show tune."

At the time Buzzy played with Midler, she had just finished "Fiddler on A Roof" on Broadway, and she had started performing at the after-hours Continental baths in New York City. He recalls, from that time, Barry Manilow inviting him to write songs with him - which he never did - "I kick myself because of that".

From the bathhouse experience he recalls meeting sixties gay activist Jack Nichols, then editor of Gay, the first same-sex oriented magazine in America. "Everybody was there - believe me. "Linhart also humorously recalls that "it took a while to get used to playing to a couple of hundred guys naked except for towels."

One of the reasons he is involved with Spiritstock is that he believes that there are many people who don't want to spend hundreds of dollars to be muddied and thrown in mosh pits like in the recent versions of Woodstock in Saugerties. That the idea of Spiritstock is to keep the best part of Woodstock alive - "without the commercialism that's been quadrupled over the years". Linhart also stated that it is a private event, "where everybody chips in to make it happen - it's not really with the prime idea of making money - like a family affair."

"The idea" said Linhart,who performed there in the last edition, "is to have the people who can chip in something help pay for the party in the same way as it happened before but a little better prepared than before - of course back then they didn't have enough portable potties (laughs) I guarantee that there will be enough toilets for everyone".

According to a report of one of this year's participants - there were.

"We'd like to have a big barbecue picnic - that could be a family affair, bringing places to go that aren't available nowadays. This is something that you could bring your tiny children to and hopefully be like the safe-feeling picnics that I used to go to in the forties and fifties in the suburbs when we didn't realize anything bad was going on anywhere else."

"Spiritstock" says Linhart,"is totally different from all the super-commercial things that have been done. It's gonna be something that no one needs to be afraid of. - two and a half days of no worries"

As I approached him for the interview, Buzzy was using medical marijuana, and he quickly told me so "in case I was offended in any way( I wasn't)".

I inquired him on the matter, and he says that "medical marijuana is widely being used, especially by cancer and AIDS patients. We know to keep it away from children."

As we concluded the interview, Buzzy went on stage for a jam session, backed by Ken Mountenot on drums, Jonathan DeKalb on lead guitar and two of Mike Packer's band members on bass and keyboards. They jammed through some of Linhart's songs, and then the party went wild when Linhart played classics such as Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goodie and Jerry Lee Lewis' Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On. They gave an electrifying performance that made the crowd dance around, having the time of their lives.

All photos for this article by Ernest Barteldes