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Roughly half a year ago there was a discussion here on the cultural legacy and (then) recent renewed interest and negative portrayal of the Woodstock ’99 music festival in the mainstream media. I haven’t seen the two documentaries in question but I’ve heard commentaries on them, and they agreed that much of the sneering and hostility present in their narratives is actually directed at the nu-metal genre in general, and the antics of Fred Durst in particular. I was sort of surprised that nobody mentioned this in the discussion. Anyway, it certainly doesn’t surprise me that much that they’d contextualize the whole incident in that way, as nu-metal is generally seen as an embarrassing and pathetic cringefest which was a plague upon pop music at the turn of the Millennium, thankfully one that largely disappeared after a few years as quickly as it appeared. And it was roughly at the zenith of its popularity when this festival took place, which was dominated by nu-metal bands.
When I’ve heard these commentaries I started looking for more on Youtube as my interest was piqued. Back when the BBC Learning TV channel existed it ran a rather good one-hour documentary on the incident but unfortunately I wasn’t able to find it. (I saw one or two other short documentaries from the same period i.e. 2000/2001.) I do recall, however, finding some news report which featured a segment from an interview with Sheryl Crow, who also performed at the festival and had a rather bad experience. I saw this YT clip about two years ago and can’t find it again unfortunately. To paraphrase from memory, she argued that the reason she found the whole scandal repulsive was that the white male nu-metal fans who committed numerous acts of arson, vandalism, rape, harassment etc. were mostly from functioning middle-class homes in the suburbs, objectively privileged by global standards, yet were constantly angry and destructive and couldn’t even put it in words why. She basically accused them of toxic masculinity even though I don’t recall her using that exact expression, but I wasn’t surprised anyway because she came across as the average lipstick feminist.
Leaving the subject of the festival aside, I wonder how nu-metal will be viewed in the context of the culture war. It appears to me that as a phenomenon it was a canary in a coalmine, providing an outlet for the angst of the young white (mostly) male members of a social class that was turning into the precariat under a system of late-stage capitalism, whose average quality of life was about to start collapsing. (Rising rates of mortality, alcoholism, illegitimacy, fatherlessness, unemployment, opioid addiction, prescription pill abuse etc.)
I'm not really an ICP fan, but once around the time period referenced here I kind of accidentally attended a Meeting of the Juggalos. It was at an outdoor event space that had two separate areas they rented out with the infrastructure (electical hook-ups, bathrooms, camping spots, controlled access gates) for two simultaneous events with about 200 yards of forest between them. I was attending the event at the other spot, a charity biker run start/end point with a couple of classic rock cover bands that wrapped up fairly early, right around the time the ICP event was really getting rolling. A good sized group of the curious, fairly enebriated, bikers wandered through the woods to the Meeting of the Juggalos, including me.
It was actually not a bad scene, much better than I was expecting. This was a 100% ICP focused event; they had a couple of opening acts that were part of the larger ICP musical world that the crowd liked and were all generally there for the same reason, ICP ofc went on last. This was one of the chillest, most relaxed and convivial concert experiences I have ever had. It felt like a Greatful Dead show except for the music and clown make up. The ICP fans were also very decent people, the female fans were treated repectfully, and it was incredibly safe overall. I understand a lot of this is down to ICP themselves who have put effort into maintaining this atmosphere at their events and have a zero tolerance policy toward troublemakers. I didn't care for the music all that much, but everything else was an ideal outdoor music festival experience. I admit some of this might have been the Juggalo's being somewhat fearful of a group of 1% bikers too, but his wasn't obviously a factor I noticed.
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