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Notes -
The other day I commented on the 3-part Netflix documentary series about the Woodstock '99 music festival. Since then I learned that there are actually at least two entire podcasts that dealt with this particular subject matter. As one of these, Break Stuff, is relatively short I decided to listen to all 8 parts, driven more by a general sense of nostalgia than curiosity I guess. I concluded that there are even more cultural angles to this event than I thought.
Here are my general observations and (I assume) potential fodder for culture war discussion:
In the discussion I mentioned above the subject of festival deaths was raised. Curiously the Netflix documentary ignores it wholly. What I read before is that there was one case of death during Woodstock '99. It turns out that I was mistaken, as there were actually three - coincidentally the same reported death toll as of both Woodstock '69 and '94. One was a traffic accident, the other was a case of an older man, supposedly an attendee of Woodstock '69 as well, succumbing to a heart attack. The third case, the one that received any significant media attention at all, involved a young and supposedly obese man who was an avid Metallica fan and decided to try throwing himself in the middle of the moshpit in the punishing heat as the band played and the massive crowd was naturally going nuts. Whatever we think about his decision, I think it's fair to say the paramedics on site, who were generally undermanned and unprepared anyway, were also somewhat negligent in this case. When the guy collapsed due to heatstroke and was carried to them, they instantly assumed it's a drug overdose as they had no thermometer. There was a lawsuit as a result which was predictably settled out of court. I'm going to guess it was due to the victim being obese that the incident garnered only limited attention. Obese people generally get only low levels of sympathy, especially when they are men who put themselves in danger (keeping in mind that 'putting yourself in danger' is a rather wide category when you're obese).
Either way, I'd argue the whole reason why the subject of festival deaths ever had any cultural relevance in the US was the Altamont incident due to the negative significance of the latter as a watershed cultural event.
In one podcast episode it was argued that Woodstock '99 signified the overall decline of the riot grrrl phenomenon, which was notably absent from it. From a feminist point of view, this sad event coincided with the even sadder event of rampant sexual assaults. What was this cultural phenomenon, you might ask? Mark Ames of the former magazine Exile summed it up in 2005 as:
What to do if you’re an American chick who wants to flirt with the cool college rock crowd, and you’re not comfortable adopting the intentionally asexual angry-dyke-elastic-waistband-whine and bleeding-heart ideology of your PC sisters? Why, you simply rip off the unwashed grunge fashion of the boys who you’re trying to get to notice you, adopting their greasy-hair-in-the-face, their four-chord-Stooges aesthetic, their ratty scream and “body art,” and refurbish the hippie-dyke ideology about empowerment and reclaiming your body in angry “whatever, man” poetics, and voila! You’re a grrl! As they said in the 90s, “You go, grrl! Really, we mean go, as in you go and wash your hair and put on something nice. Seriously, just go. You’re embarrassing yourself. ”
I can't really get hung up on this though, as far as I'm concerned. From women's point of view I guess it made practical sense in that particular milieu to adopt a style that does not alienate either your radical feminist fellow female college students or the male grunge fans you hang out with. It came and went, as these trends usually do.
Apparently it was also standard practice at other music festivals during the '90s not even to allow attendees to bring their own drinking water in. Well, damn. At the same time, almost nothing was done to stem the massive amount of illicit drug trade and use that was taking place at Woodstock '99.
The Woodstock festivals in general can be described as populist/egalitarian in character: they were supposed to make a profit (which they never did) while at the same time targeting all music fans (not just fans of any particular genre) and not charging that high of a price for tickets, so that even average college students and young working adults could afford it. VIP treatment and various expensive perks were not on offer. In contrast, Coachella was incidentally organized for the first time in 1999 as well, and it represented the business model of the future. It abandoned any egalitarian pretenses and was marketed to well-paid middle-class adults, offering VIP packages and various perks. This was a big cultural shift. The new model worked and it was only after two decades that the trainwreck of the Fyre festival happened, reminding older Millennials what a similar trainwreck Woodstock '99 was. (Similar, but not for exactly the same reasons.)
Another cultural shift was taking place at roughly the same time Woodstock '99 bombed. It used to be that heavy metal music was popular among young and white, mostly working-class or white trash dudebros who found in it an outlet for their rebellion against their drab, conservative Christian, suffocating and boring cultural surroundings. This was the case throughout the West and to some extent the Soviet Bloc, not just in the US. It was a young, white and lowly subculture cordoned off from the mainstream. We've long been at a point where none of that applies anymore. This music genre is both consumed and created by mostly middle-aged well-off men. The element of rebellion has completely gone away. I suppose the emergence of nu-metal played a big role in this, as it was quickly co-opted by the mainstream and commercialized, causing a rift between older (purist) and younger metal fans.
It was during the turn of the millennium that the Sexual Revolution seemed to have entered a particularly sleazy period in the US, which was reflected in the usual antics during the festival. The porn industry was mainstreamed, Howard Stern was big, the 'Girls Gone Wild' series was on TV and visual entertainment was getting ever raunchier. I guess this trend did not peter out until after 2008.
As I was listening to these accounts I was overcome by a strange sense of nostalgia. From the mid-nineties to 9/11 times were good overall and I don't think we realized back then how good we have it.
Ok but what I wonder is why the content-industrial complex suddenly felt the need to dig up Woodstock ‘99 and hang it’s corpse Oliver Cromwell-style. It feels coordinated.
I'd say the fiasco of the Fyre festival, Millennials getting into positions where they can make documentaries, and the intention to hang nu-metal's corpse.
Do please hurry up with that shit.
Yours, an ex-metalhead (the actual traditional metal, not this nu-shit)
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