Country Joe & The Fish

Irwin Silber, who chronicled 1960s folk song renaissance in Sing Out magazine, has died. Irwin Silber, who as founding editor of the small but influential magazine Sing Out became a towering figure in the 1960s American folk music renaissance that brought Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie and numerous others to prominence, has died at age 84.

James Gurley, innovative guitarist for Janis Joplin's Big Brother band, dead at 69. James Gurley, the innovative guitarist who helped shape psychedelic rock's multilayered, sometimes thundering sounds as a member of Big Brother and the Holding Company, the band that propelled Janis Joplin to fame, has died of a heart attack. He was 69.

AC/DC, Miles Davis kick off box set season; also releases from Michael Jackson, Def Jam, more. Here are a selection of box-set offerings this season:

NASHVILLE (Billboard) - Back in 1969, Woodstock organizers billed their three-day festival as "An Aquarian Exposition." But although the concert became free when an expected crowd of 200,000 grew "half a million strong," it was conceived as a business proposition.

The date was Aug. 15, 1969. It was 40 years ago today that Jimi Hendrix taught all those bands to play. There were 32 in all (if you count the solo acts and Swami Satchidananda, who gave the invocation) and roughly half a million people who came to hear what they had to say at the Woodstock Festival Aug. 15-18 during the Summer of Love. There also was a lot of mud and mind altering that weekend, and a lot of peace was guiding the planets.

Celebrity birthdays for the week of June 14-20. Celebrity birthdays for the week of June 14-20:

DETROIT (Billboard) - Thirty-eight previously unreleased recordings from groups such as the Who, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Jefferson Airplane will be included on a boxed set commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock festival.