Worst Band To Play Woodstock 99

xxp Yeah, that was funny -- Scher's big on saying that he told someone to go f themselves

The worst of this festival were a handful of the forgettable HORDE tour jam bands on the 2nd stage like Rusted Root or Moe. The most boring loud rock set was probably Godsmack.

His music is shit, but Kid Rock's set was actually really exciting and fun.

The HBO doc (and I'm guessing the Netflix doc) never mentions the George Clinton set because it was actually dope.

the hbo doc was probably the most i enjoyed a doc while simultaneously disagreeing with every take being presented

Yeah, the "culture" takes were bad... this new series has very little of that.

I think Muse did alright for themselves

I did a double take looking at the list and realizing it really was them.

I imagine an advantage to playing the Emerging Artists stage was that it was the only one that was relatively indoors.

A funny detail in a new doc that I just remembered: when Jewel is about to go onstage, and they warn her that Sheryl Crow was pelted with mud, Jewel nods and says (very seriously), “…She always does.”

Ctrl+f for "Wyclef" brings up nothing -- not even nominated. Guessing this means no one whose posted has seen it yet?

I can't say it was the worst set of this festival, but 100% no bullshit -- it's the most fascinatingly cringe on-stage trainwreck from that weekend, which is really saying something.

One thing that is kinda baffling to me is that both documentaries almost entirely ignore that Rage Against the Machine and Metallica played main stage after that Limp Bizkit set. Like the entire narrative seems to be the place erupted into a riot after the Bizkit set (which started when it was still light out) and skips directly to the rave zone chaos at, what, 2 am? Like it was one clean movement. And then people burned the place down during RHCP the next night.

I don’t know how you can properly document an absolutely massive and fundamentally fucked enterprise like this fully, but both docs obv angling hard for the most titillating narrative and neither of them felt entirely honest.

I wonder if Metallica refused the use of any of their footage? Until you mentioned it, I didn't realise that Metallica played Woodstock '99 and I was... well, I was alive in 1999. The Wikipedia article has them but only in passing. And yet they played an hour and the footage at least suggests nothing went wrong, although the comments mention someone dying of heatstroke or something:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsJqQQzv58E

Was that the height of their anti-MP3 phase, or was it slightly too early? Weren't they massive in 1999? Skimming the list I had completely forgotten about the Supersuckers. I used to fancy the angel on the cover of Sacrilicious Sounds of the Supersuckers. And I still do! But I used to as well.

it was pre-Napster. they appeared on the cd that Woodstock 99 put out ("Creeping Death"), but they didn't play up their involvement there quite like they did in 1994

Were there W99 attendees who just went, had a good time, and were oblivious to any of the big problems (until seeing the news)?

I don’t think you could attend and not be aware of the problem of roasting on a hot tarmac with no water unless you were a Gila Monster or something

Beyond the water prices, obv. I mean the kind of problems that spawned two docs…

Like did everyone walk out thinking “That was a nightmare”; or did some folks just chill to the second stage, leave early on Sunday, and not know about the awful stuff happening?

(You don’t really get a sense of that from the docs, because their scope is so limited, as mentioned above. And even the woman in the Netflix doc, who was like 14 at the time, said she had a great time despite everything, I guess)

I’m saying the stuff that caused people to rage against the fest — expensive water, ridiculous ticket price, no shade, overflowing toilets, airport tarmac instead of grass — would have been pretty evident to anyone who attended. If you’re talking about the fires and lack of medical personnel specifically then sure

And plus something being a total shitshow and you having a good time are not mutually exclusive!

Yeah, sure, I’m taking about the actual “raging” – riots, fires, assaults, the stuff that W99 is notorious for. I don’t know anyone who went (a Metallica-obsessed coworker says he almost went, but backed out the week before).

Politer UK version:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/aug/29/reading-festival-violence-tent-burning

The festival has become popular with 16-year-olds as it falls on the weekend after GSCE results.

A-ha!

Aaron Bates, a Leeds festivalgoer, tweeted that one of the camps was “a literal warzone”.

I mean it wasn't was it

i finished watching the Netflix doc last night ... it was cool to see the production crew and medic and generally the people that are the invisible labor at stuff like this actually getting to be interviewed and treated like integral parts of the functioning of a large event.

1999 was the first year I went to lol Burning Man, so I was kinda comparing the two things, while watching it, I think 99 was one of the years where some wasted dude tried to run into the fire while the man was actively burning, and someone on Fire Safety duty (in a fire suit) had to run in and drag the dude out. Like, you put a large number of people, most of whom are strangers to one another, somewhere outside of their home environment (or one resembling it) and give them booze and drugs, people are going to get stupid and fuck shit up.

The thing that stuck with me the most, was how the two dudes that get introduced at the beginning of episode one who had gone when they were 16 and were fans of Limp Bizkit (et al) ... how they really resembled IRL Beavis & Butthead. Definitely the bands booked on the mainstage were like Beavis & Butthead bands, so I was just thinking of this like ... okay, people who are producing a festival. Imagine an audience of 50k Beavis and 50k Butthead and at least 10k chicks, a significant number are under 18, and plan accordingly.

The fact that Sher was so douchey re the rapes was really gross ... like, that girl in the van that drove into the rave tent was 15!

The business with the candlelight vigil and then fires being started was like ... the production crew dude who was like wtf when they told him they were going to hand out candles was super OTM. Like, that would have been my response. Esp. considering the Beavis & Butthead factor.

Definitely the bands booked on the mainstage were like Beavis & Butthead bands

You're right for, like, Metallica and Korn, but it would take a time machine or fan-fiction to know what B&B would think of Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock

I agree that those dudes in the doc were def a little like IRL Beavis and Butt-Head, but I also get the sense that you think that's 100% a negative thing, which I don't entirely agree with.

i mean there *was* fire

I also think, like, a lot of C U L T U R A L C O M M E N T A T O R S make a big deal out of the kids destroying the place that jerked them around and stole their money and ignored them for three days, like oh no they burned down PROPERTY. Like give me a fucking break, your neolib is showing.

I interviewed Gavin Rossdale this week and asked him which of the two W99 documentaries more accurately reflected his memory of events. Commendably, he said that the only important thing was the rape victims, but that he was still a little baffled by the decision to put Bush on between Korn and Limp Bizkit.

I'm not saying it's 100% negative. Just like, it's a fucking bro-fest, if left to their own devices and without stuff to offset that - free potable water, better infrastructure, (including security) - they are going to do shit like that. Even if the burritos were reasonably priced! Even if there was grass and not tarmac!

Like, one of the few events I've been to in the past year was Mosswood Meltdown (formerly Burger Boogaloo) and it was pretty fucking chill and respectful. Part of it was organization, including who was booked to play, but a lot of it, tbh, was the fact that a significant amount of the crowd was like 40+, there were a lot of women/female identified people, there were people there with their little kids (it was super cute btw).

I know you will clown me for this, Whiney, but when they were showing the fires and destruction and hand-wringing about property damage, I was like, yeah, yeah, that's like, what the aftermath of large protests look like where I live.

i mean there *was* fire

― Mr Haaland's Opus (Neanderthal), Friday, September 9, 2022 2:06 PM (twelve minutes ago)

^ gets it

You're right for, like, Metallica and Korn, but it would take a time machine or fan-fiction to know what B&B would think of Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock

― Histoire de BradNelson (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, September 9, 2022 2:01 PM (twenty-five minutes ago)

uh, B&B's tastes were fairly predictable ... I think we can safely place LB and Kid Rock in the Beavis & Butthead genre

idk if I ever detailed my experience as a young teenage nerd wrt Woodstock's 94 and 99, but

I was 14 when Woodstock 94 happened and I basically stayed home all weekend and watched it on pay-per-view. I obviously would have killed to go, but I lived like 1,300 miles away and couldn't drive, so I had to settle for TV. A lot of my faves were there (Primus, NIN, Chili Peps, Porno for Pyros) and looking back, it's really wild to see how the collective understanding of "alternative" culture really was somehow wrapped up in this huge monster festival. Like at the time — to me at least — Sheryl Crow and Blues Traveler felt "alternative" somehow, Salt-N-Pepa and Cypress Hill were in their boho stages, they could have even retconned Dylan at that point and I wouldn't have blinked. Imagine how my life could have been changed if I stumbled across the WOMAD stage or Aphex Twin? The big headliner was PETER GABRIEL!

So Woodstock 1999 rolls around and I'm 19, in college, I had a little red truck and I could hypothetically drive to NY if I wanted, and the lineup is all bands I hated and all really represented the slow creep of commercial interests into so-called "alternative" music. In retrospect, it's a little funny to think that the Spin Doctors was somehow more "pure" than, like, Limp Biz, but at least in 1994 it felt like the horse was actually pulling the cart. My thought was basically "why would I go to this?"

I think the HBO doc (which I hope I never watch) points to "the zeitgeist" or some shit, but I just think it was just a completely different audience.

Like what do all three Woodstocks have in common: Loud music, copious drugs, lots of nudity and a playground-like atmosphere thanks to mud (or shit). The crowd that attended 94 saw the music and mud and drugs and nudity and fitted this utopic countercultural idea to their own (mainstream-abetted) counterculture of the time. A lot of the crowd that attended 99 saw the music and mud and drugs and nudity and came wanting to get shitfaced and grab women.

The Chili Peppers (who played 94 *and* 99) are a great example of a band that — in the '90s — appealed to both sensitive alterna-types AND jock douchebags. It's not the Peppers' fault that one brought nice kids and the other brought pricks. I think the sensitive nu-metal kids who liked Korn and Limp Biz from TRL (all of whom were in jr high or high school aka younger than me and were probably watching on MTV or pay per view like I did) were probably pretty cool and probably turned out great. But I think a lot of the 20-somethings in 1999 really just took the wrong messages from the music and we're still feeling the repercussions. Like at it's core Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock and DMX really does represent a full fruition of the pan-racial Rick Rubin 1986 dream of hip-hop and rock music coalescing into the pop music of alienated youth. Korn played a song that legit has the screaming coda "I'm a faggot!" I think a crowd of 100,000 people screaming "I'm a faggot" is more utopic than people give it credit for — not to mention DMX getting all 100,000 white kids to defang the dreaded n-word by turning it into a chant of brotherly love.

It's not these bands' fault that some people just liked the anger and the nihilism, but the bookers should have been able to figure it out

ha i def identified as a sensitive nu-metal kid at the time. i did not watch woodstock 99 on ppv, had no interest, not sure why

At the time I pretty much thought that anyone my age (19) who liked this stuff was a total dumbass, and it's pretty funny that it would be the lil Brads of the world who were best absorbing its emotional layers. I'm sure there were a lot of Jane's Addiction fans who were throwing Birkenstocks and whatever when I was too young to see em

I went to Woodstock '94. I was reviewing it for a magazine of some sort so we managed to get a hotel nearby and I went up with a photographer friend of mine.

I went up very cynical - I remember asking every band in the interview tent how much they were being paid to play or why they didn't play Bethel '94, the competing fest that was supposed to be the more organic, One of the guys in Aerosmith answered me by smashing his thumb and forefinger together and smiling so I was not entirely off bas, but maybe I didn't need to be so boorish about it all.

My attitude kind of changed when I saw King's X play. Here was a band I had followed since I read about them when their debut album came out and loved. I enjoyed watching them attain whatever successes they had, contributing to it somewhat in my own way by writing about them, and seeing them play to so many people was just amazing to me. I really felt the band's spiritual approach connect with hundreds of thousands of people and it was beautiful and changed my whole mind about things.

I wound up borrowing my photographer's camera one night and when he went back into the hotel, I stayed behind to roam the grounds and take pictures. I love those shots - people at tents, people caked in mud, all kinds of faces, girls lifting their shirts for my pictures was a trip! Walking around all night I had numerous people offering me drinks that they snuck in. Or maybe they were allowed, but that doesn't seem right. Regardless I got nice and toasted and had no place to sleep it off.

I wound up befriending a girl who let me crash with her. We had sex while Metallica played, I can still recall the sound of the band in the distance and the low chatter from people walking around her tent. It was really surreal for me, a metal geek getting laid at Woodstock. And I never saw her again and do not even recall her name.

I didn't go in 1999. I don't think I could have topped the event five years earlier so even without the anarchy, it was for the best.

It's not these bands' fault that some people just liked the anger and the nihilism, but the bookers should have been able to figure it out

that's what I meant about it being a bro-fest and the organizers should have figured this out and planned for it better. Idk, I was a college alt-rock DJ in 1994, and I thought the line-up was a bit underwhelming, mostly stuff that I had to play because BRU was a commercial station and we had to follow the playlist. I went to Lollapalooza that year (the year it was at some old air force base with shitty freeway access, as opposed to the typical stadium-type venue, so we sat in traffic for like 5 hours and I missed Nick Cave, but I did get to see the Breeders, who were cool, though I really wanted to see Nick Cave. Anyway, the Woodstock 94 line-up was even less exciting to me. ...

By 1999 I was no longer working in radio, I was 24 years old and living on the other side of the country, and the Woodstock 99 bands/aesthetic were so divorced from anything I liked ... except for maybe like, Willie Nelson (lol) and maaaayyyybee Metallica because that was like imprinted in my brain from high school.

I was hanging out with a friend who is my age the other night and mentioned I was watching this documentary, and he had basically the same aesthetic disregard as I did, though, James Brown he had to say was legit cool because he's the dude that put on the last show James Chance played in SF lol.

my friend put on the James Chance show, not James Brown ... but repping James Chance and not liking James Brown's music is like ... very suspect (total side note; my friend is down for James Brown).

I felt a very buried sense of embarrassment and sadness awaken watching both of these docs. I was 15-16 in ‘99 and seeing those clothes, those bands, and the general “aura” of the kids from that era just brought back so many memories of feeling entirely out of place.

All respect to people who dug the music and found a way to fit in, but that cultural moment was the absolute worst for kids of a certain sensitive bent in a small town.

I mean adolescence sucks in general, not unique, but the specifics totally reignited some kinda PTSD.

my friend put on the James Chance show, not James Brown ... but repping James Chance and not liking James Brown's music is like ... very suspect (total side note; my friend is down for James Brown).