Worst Band To Play Woodstock 99

I left out most of the decent bands to thwart challopers

Creed featuring Robby Krieger

surely must sound as bad live as it does on paper.

could vote for any one of about 15 bands

I was about to say... I didn't remember the lineup being that abysmal.

I mean with like 2 Skinnee J's and ICP and G Love on the bill it's like a time capsule of late 90s A&R thinking funky white bonehead Becks are gonna svae the music industry. What was Scapegoat Wax and Bad Ronald busy?

voted limp biskit, but i imagine lots of these bands are the sort of bad bands that no one in england ever got to hear

england, you really missed out.

I can say there's at least 10 bands on that list worse than Limp Bizkit

Limp Bizkit is like the Jimi Hendrix of Woodstock 99 in relative terms

ugh fucking godsmack for sure

Full Devil Jacket if you forget...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6Iz5HCprkk

i still think 2 skinnee js were fun and ok

"wars of armageddon(karaoke version)" is a fantastic handle.

2 Skinnee J's
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeLMckmfiI8
uggggghhhh

Of the bands I've heard and remember Limp Bizkit is the worst, but I've heard only maybe a half-dozen of these.

and like g love isn't good but it's not particularly offensive either

it's hard to get past creed with robbie krieger

You guys need to stop being swayed by Limp Bizkit's reputation and "oi i'm a brit, i've only hear bizkit mate, we have bizkits and tea oi oi oi"

Reveille is SO MUCH FUCKING WORSE. Listen to this and tell me you'll still vote for bizkit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIvIj0HmdwM

"THE SCHOOL IN WHICH WE LEARN/IS THE FIRE IN WHICH WE'LL BURN"

UGH PARTICLE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtcYLIYB1Xk

we have bizkits and tea oi oi oi

*golf clap*

Whiney why would anyone want to listen to these bands? Just to prove that they are worse than Limp Bizkit? That's too masochistic for my tastes.

Ha! i forgot all about 2 Skinnee J's. They're one of the few bands my brother liked, so I heard "Super Mercado" a lot in the car.

Insane Clown Posse
Jewel
Kid Rock

Thank you alphabet for making these a trio.

I voted Everclear, they are such bullshit-uh-YEAH-yuh.

Rusted Root

^^^ Maybe they're worst, b/c they really do think they make Meaningful Music. In college the same friend who liked them also defended The Squirrel Nut Ziippers.

lots of these bands are the sort of bad bands that no one in england ever got to hear

I've only heard of nine of these bands. Meanwhile, England in '99 would have had plenty of crap indie to send the US.

i dunno, i bet if you looked at, say, Glastonbury's 1999 lineup it would look like heaven on earth compared to this.

were Gay Dad asked to play?

xpost

enjoying whiney's backwards pride in knowing really terribly music, not just terrible music.

I think G Love played Glastonbury 1999

the same friend who liked them also defended The Squirrel Nut Ziippers.

― Anatomy of a Morbius (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, August 13, 2009 4:54 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I love that first Squirrel Nut Zippers single. WTH.

Pyramid Stage
Friday: Bjorn Again, Ian Dury, Barenaked Ladies, Blondie, Bush, Hole, Beautiful South, R.E.M.
Saturday: Younger Younger 28's, Billy Bragg, Eliza Carthy, Beth Orton, Joe Strummer, Ash, Texas, Underworld, Manic Street Preachers
Sunday: London Community Gospel Choir, Delirious, Yothu Yindi, Al Green, The Corrs, Lenny Kravitz, Fun Loving Criminals, Skunk Anansie

Other Stage
Friday: The Doves, Moke, Queens of the New Stone Age, Everlast, Heather Nova, Gay Dad, dEUS, Wilco, Pavement, Gomez, Kula Shaker
Saturday: Witness, Fungus, Mishka, Straw, Hurricane #1, The Creatures, Travis, The Cardigans, Super Furry Animals, Cast, Paul Oakenfold DJ evening
Sunday: Glastonbury Town Band, Toploader, Dr Didg, Snowpony, Elactrasy, Dog Star, Delgados, Feeder, Tindersticks, Mercury Rev, Mogwai

gay dad were headlining the new bands tent

http://www.efestivals.co.uk/festivals/glastonbury/1999/stages.shtml

well, there's definitely plenty of crap there, but it's not a crapfest by any means.

i'm kind of amused that weingarten's "decent bands left out to thwart challopers" includes rage against the machine and red hot chili peppers

i think RATM is a great band and RHCP in 99 was pretty decent!

i actually own a Woodstock 99 comp (2 cd's!) don't remember if those were live tracks or studio versions.

Insane Clown Posse or Live probably the worst from this list. Limp Bizkit ain't so bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCH_drbSA7k

What fucking dipshit booked these guys? Nothing against ICP's music, but their nihilistic music is like the polar opposite of everything Woodstock stood for. </geir>

No, these guys are fucking dipshits.

Whiney, I would've voted for RATM, I can't believe you altered the actual lineup to save their ass!

fuck you, he won't do what you tell him

as much as i may disagree with whiney's acts of censorship ratm most certainly should not get any "worst" votes even though they essentially blew.

If you think RATM is worse than Vertical Horizon, I feel sorry for you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEKQbjMWHMk

Also, more than 50 bands played Woodstock and wouldn't fit in the poll. I want to direct the conversation to the lesser known low-lights.

Like SERIAL JOE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA-WlaZd0lY

I do think they are worse than Vertical Horizon, who are a harmless MOR alt pop/rock act. RATM had much more unlistenable songs, not to mention influenced TONS of shitty rap/rock bands yet to come.

xpost

i'm voting for live. i don't really know why, i just read the list and realized that i really hate live and always have.

Full Devil Jacket sound hilarious. I bet they were not.

Guster, Our Lady Peace, Tragically Hip, Serial Joe

Why were there so many fucking canadian bands no one in America gives a shit about on this bill?

Like did the Canadian goverenment slip Woodstock a check?

"Full Devil Jacket was an nu metal band that started as the Voodoo Hippies when Josh Brown, Mike Reaves, Kevin Bebout, and Keith Foster all met at Josh Brown’s brother’s tattoo shop in Jackson, TN."

Promising!

"an nu metal band"

Apparently the lead singer od'd on heroin and then was born again. No more Full Devil Jacket. Maybe he'll run for president someday.

Kid Cock just really annoys me for some reason. Most of these are okay and y'all need to chill and not hate on kids' music.

i had to check the list to make sure there was not an artist called "kid cock" whose existence had passed me by.

Woodstock '99: Three days of mud, ketamine and tribal tats.

one good thing about this, somehow boob flashing was the thing back then (shit i just remembered in only recently remembered about flashing @ de Subjectivisten) anyway my 13 year old friends and i were like huhuhuh nekkid women. (this kinda thing didn't happen on European festival since 1971)

somehow boob flashing

i guess it boobs OR can you actually flash something else, or does it get a different name in that case.

the point should be clear.

Could it really be anyone other than Limp Bizkit? C'mon now.

^^ OTM

Alex did you even read the fuckn thread?

did you forget THE UMBILICAL BROTHERS played?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peLmnkqm6-Y

Alex you have never had to go on a road trip w/someone listening to String Cheese Incident bootlegs, apparently.

I hate Bizkit and RATM as much as the next guy, but there's something truly unforgivable about the perfected banality of Vertical Horizon.

Fetchboy gets it.

i vote g love. i really am offended by g love.

i don't think one person could say one good thing about him on this thread. it was unanimous!

Defend The Cringe-Worthy: G Love & Da Special Sauce

Wait, I think I'm mixing him up w/Eagle Eye Cherry. In my mind.

i will take "rollin'" over like 70% of the rest of this list

nah abbott hes the one who does a pomo eddie murphy doing buckwheat impression while playing the "blooooz" on his guitar.

i knew a number of OLP fans in HS, they also loved stuff like coheed and cambria

and i have been witness to an a capella group performing guster songs :(

uhhhhhhhh
sorry

Do you live in Canada?

grew up in nj

the a capella group was at lol nyu

Ha, I didn't even know Guster was Canadian. Didn't they have a song on the Wedding Crashers soundtrack?

OLP headlined the Fallfest at UB a couple years ago.

Alex did you even read the fuckn thread?

I'm answering the question, douchecake

http://www.bgassociates.com/images/GMDC%20TOUCHE.jpg

http://images.salon.com/ent/music/feature/1999/07/27/woodstock/woodstock.gif

http://www.hotflick.net/flicks/1999_Woodstock__99/999WST_Creed_004.jpg

Robbie Krieger not pictured ^^^^^

Did Pulp really play at Woodstock 99? and Muse?? really?

intended for the other thread

Everclear and Kid Rock are better than just about anything on the other list. Buckcherry not that bad either. Most of the other bands here are too inconsequential to hate; guess I'll vote Godsmack.

i realize i haven't voted

it's really between Full Devil Driver, Serial Joe and Particle for me.

Limp Bizkit was pretty much a big nasty zit on the face of music.

i will take "rollin'" over like 70% of the rest of this list

― The Collected Works of Fun Fun (donna rouge), Thursday, August 13, 2009 5:18 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

my vote goes to our lady peace. i'm being patriotic.

This was the worst concert in the history of music.

This is gunning for my fave ILM thread of the year. Thanx WGW! What needs to happen now is for some DJ Shadow type to sample a bit of this inconsequentiality and give us another Endtroducing...

Everclear and Kid Rock should not be here and Limp Bizkit is freakin' New Order + New York Dolls + New Pornographers compared to most of this landfill. I guess I'll go with Creed since they had more opportunities to annoy me.

What was Scapegoat Wax and Bad Ronald busy?

Ha! I had high hopes for that Bad Ronald album cuz I loved the single. But yeesh - turned out to be low boil "party" raps about being afraid of girls.

Does Joe Carducci like any of these bands?

Djoliba Athletic Club (Djoliba AC) is a Malian football club and one of the two biggest teams in Mali alongside the Stade Malien.

?

Limp Bizkit was pretty much a big nasty zit on the face of music humanity.

Fixed.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Creed and Robbie Krieger robbed.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/part-10-1999-by-the-time-we-got-to-woodstock-99,52164/

it's funny how Woodstock '99 has almost completely made people forget that the Woodstock '94 lineup was pretty terrible too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock_'94

Were there any decent artist playing woodstock 99? Looking at this list makes me think of a giant frat party that feels like the opposite of the 1969's spirit.

Aphex Twin's performance was cut short when promoters "disconnected" him mid-show for signing a fake name on a contract, which would forfeit PolyGram's rights to his performance

I left out most of the decent bands to thwart challopers

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Thursday, August 13, 2009 11:58 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

James Brown, George Clinton, Elvis Costello, The Roots, etc. to answer Moka's question

this could be a hilarious poll thread in and of itself:

Emerging Artists Stage

Big Sugar[6]
Cyclefly[25]
Indigenous[25]
John Entwistle[6]
John Oszajca[25]
Moe Loughran[31]
Muse[37]
Pound[25]
Pushmonkey[25]

Beyond the cheapskate charges, the people behind Woodstock 99 were accused of negligence when it came to addressing instances of sexual assault. Among the festival’s most shameful statistics—which included 44 arrests and a staggering 10,000 people receiving medical treatment—were reports that eight women had been raped, often by multiple people in the middle of mosh pits that raged as bands performed.

Two weeks after Woodstock 99, the National Organization For Women staged a protest outside of Scher’s New York office, asserting that he and fellow promoter Michael Lang intended to “deny the rapes occurred, to dismiss their importance, and to blame the victims.” Spin reported that a Woodstock employee had told NOW that “security, production staff, and promoters knew about the rapes” as they occurred during the festival and “refused to alert law enforcement because of the ubiquity of drugs on site.”

Scher denied the claims, insisting instead that the ugliness of Woodstock 99 reflected a larger moral chasm in the souls of the attendees. “I think, in some respects, the generation was irresponsible and they gave me and themselves the finger,” Scher told Spin. He wasn’t the only one who felt that Woodstock 99 amounted to a big “fuck you!” from legions of incorrigible kids. More than one writer likened Woodstock 99 to The Day Of The Locust, the 1939 Nathanael West novel about wanton sin and alienation in Los Angeles that ends with mob violence.

Others rushed to blame the bands for pushing the audience to commit random acts of depravity. “What caused this powder-keg to blow, unlike its sister festival 30 years ago?” asked the San Francisco Examiner’s Jane Ganahl, nudging heavily in the direction of “the worst perpetrator,” Limp Bizkit, who was widely pilloried in the press for playing songs like “Break Stuff” as fans were dismantling the 12-foot security fence circling the grounds and crowd-surfing on the plywood pieces. “Irresponsible: There’s no other word for Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst” Salon.com’s Jeff Stark wrote. “He’s goading the crowd, pumping them up, higher and higher. It’s beyond working them into enjoying the show. He’s encouraging the pit, working them into a frenzy.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ywuYC0n5cNg#t=207s

i thought that kind of thing would be considered 'a lively day with the soccer hooligans' to you

Why is Algerian Goalkeeper posting Onion A/V Club articles all over

it's funny how Woodstock '99 has almost completely made people forget that the Woodstock '94 lineup was pretty terrible too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock_'94

― some dude, Thursday, March 1, 2012 11:58 AM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Woodstock 94 lineup was awesome!

Peter Gabriel, Nine Inch Nails, Salt-N-Pepa, Primus, Green Day, Gil-Scott Heron, WOMAD stage, Arrested Development, pre-One Hot Minute Chili Peps, Cypress Hill, Rollins Band, Metallica, APHEX TWIN IN MY VAGINA, Violent Femmes, you are tripping

he was reading a pamphlet about how to interact with other humans and it said that sharing links from satirical newspaper 'the onion' was a good way to establish a humorous rapport with people (xpost)

holy shit

soccer

lol yank

i didnt read the onion piece but i scrolled down to see the last two lines and LOL'd

i didn't scroll down the onion piece but i saw the Hold Steady lyric somberly quoted at the top and LOL'd

~what is past is prologue~

They got Wavy Gravy to introduce some of the bands, apparently, as a link to the original WS. Poor old geezer thought the crowd were yelling for Chuck Berry. Buck Cherry? They probably named themselves that just to confuse him.

kinda bogglin at john entwistle on the "emerging artists" stage

algerian goalkeeper's really making his way through that steve hyden series

oh i see you guys made that joke too

Watched the Woodstock '99 Documentary on Hulu last night. Funny to see the promoters backstage patting themselves on the back for another successful weekend full of peace, love and music just hours before it went completely off the rails. And to see them still to this day, trying to place the blame on Kurt Loader, Fred Durst, Anthony Keidis, or whoever for the rioting and sexual assaults when by all counts, the volunteer "peace patrol" that they hired for security just vanished into the crowd once the festival started and the horrible location, lack of amenities and testosterone fueled lineup had doomed it from the start.

That’s the same one that’s on HBO Max? “Music Box” or whatever?

Oh yeah HBO Max, sorry. I have too many streaming services and always get them confused.

And to see them still to this day, trying to place the blame on Kurt Loader, Fred Durst, Anthony Keidis, or whoever for the rioting and sexual assaults

That fucking piece of shit John Scher put the blame for the rapes and sexual assaults on the victims, with that "they dressed provocatively" bullshit.

We watched it too; was really something to see all the footage. Didn't think the doc itself was that great – it leaned into heavy-handed "context setting" and psychoanalyzing the '90s that felt like a stretch or was flat-out contradictory (a few of the talking heads were particularly bad in this regard). You had to kind of read btw. the lines to get at the reasons why the fest was such a disaster (tho Sheryl Crow seemed to sum most of it up in a single-sentence postmortem interview clip).

Was kinda "funny" for the doc to end with holding up Coachella as a glorious enlightened counterexample, considering the sexual assaults there too.

I wonder if he would say "yes, absolutely" there was a 1:1 relationship between those two things ("provocative" dress/sexual assault) when pressed, because how can you be on the defensive for this many years and not at any point along the way realize that's a disgusting oversimplification? "I'm going to go say this on camera for this documentary and everyone watching will nod their heads in agreement just like my golfing buddies do when I bring this up in conversation, and they say 'alright, John, sure but you don't have to yell' and 'why don't you sit down for a minute?' and 'take it easy ok? We were just trying to figure out where to get lunch later' because they all agree with me, see."

xp

morrisp otm

Unfortunately the doc never passes up an opportunity to show footage of women exposing themselves, so viewers already inclined to agree with Scher will probably fail to read between the lines despite the other footage of women being groped while crowdsurfing etc being v disturbing

will never watch this bc steve hyden sucks so much, assuming he’s one of the talking heads morrisp is talking about

The Chapo episode where they did backboard-breaking dunks on this with Street Fight Bryan for 90 minutes was great

idk, I've been catching a lot of feelings lately because I feel that history has ultimately proven me correct with opinions I had 20 years ago like "the Strokes are not interesting or important" and "nu metal had some jams" and the only real $$$ in music journalism right now is parroting 20 year old received wisdom about these things in HBO docs and oral histories. Like the narrative changed but the narrators didn't...

I watched this today and have until now, luckily, never heard Limp Bizkit's music *too* closely.

Now I'm completely fascinated at how Fred's voice was/is so squeaky and feeble when he's rapping, I thought I was hearing things at first.

If Woodstock had happened in ‘67, would we have gotten Woodstock ‘97 with the Cherry Poppin Daddies and Less Than Jake?

Barbara Kopple made a doc called "My Generation" about the similarities between the '69, '94 and '99 Woodstocks. (Iirc Woodstock organizer/corporate overlord Michael Lang was directly involved, as co-producer or something.) I saw its premiere, and I guess what turned out to be a rare screening, due to the cost of music rights, at the Toronto International Film Fest in 2000, and I remember being really put off by how much it glossed over the uglier side of '99 (maybe because it focused more on consumerism?). There was stuff about the rioting and fires and whatnot, but I actually asked Kopple at a Q&A why there was not even a mention of the numerous reported sexual assaults, and at least as I remember it she bristled and gave a pretty boilerplate, toothless answer.

xpost Reel Big Fish, with signature song "Sell Out", which would have been a little 'on the nose'

There was a a Woodstock '97, and it happened in Fort Worth TX

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRXMcYpSMy1ngPAlBBDw42Fl_fNLwqpE7jDRQ&usqp=CAU

hueg

https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/rewind-rock-of-ages-1997-rockfest-concert-fort-worth-tms-texas-motor-speedway/287-e5530aa2-235e-46fe-a593-9a618fb7fbe6

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsb6UEj6wxk

Ha, I was at Rockfest (alongside half of my 10th grade class). It was hell.

imho a much more defensible lineup despite their lack of street cred

Now I'm completely fascinated at how Fred's voice was/is so squeaky and feeble when he's rapping, I thought I was hearing things at first.

it also gets incrementally squeakier over the course of the first three records

XPS It's pretty wild that before HUGE festivals became a thing in the US, Blockbuster-then at their VHS height-decides to throw a show with 15 or so of the least-offensive major touring Alt-Rock bands of the day*, then giving away all the tickets as point of purchase bonuses at their stores nationwide, and then drawing almost four times the projected attendees to a racetrack in Texas in the Summer.

*No Doubt, Bush, Collective Soul, Wallflowers etc. all then capable of selling out summer sheds on their own.

Rockfest '97 Archived Line-Up:

Counting Crows
the nixons
Jewel
No Doubt
Soak (US)
Sugar Ray
Third Eye Blind
Bush
Collective Soul
Souls
Matchbox Twenty
Paula Cole
The Wallflowers

Some of these bands also appeared at the '90s Woodstocks.

don't make me list the merge 10th anniversary artists

only the third worst time I've had at that racetrack

Strictly speaking, Rockfest wouldn't be Woodstock '97 it would be the Texas International Pop Festival '97 right

Except no act really 'broke' because they were there ala Hendrix/Joplin/Otis.

BTW, was trying to figure out who Soak were, found this article on them, a real interesting look at the Alt-Rock business circa '96-7.

Really if you want imagine what a '97 Woodstock would have looked like, kitbash from Rockfest and whatever was going on that year package tour-wise (Lolla, Warped, H.O.R.D.E. etc.) and add some boomers.

I wanted to watch the Woodstock '99 doc with my friend while we were hanging out last weekend but didn't realize it was on HBO Max, so we ended up on YouTube watching the performances instead. ICP's music is even more annoying than I remembered – like a xerox of a xerox of a xerox of Cypress Hill, only synth sirens and vinyl scratching remain – but they put on a good show!

I don't remember them showing a second of that performance (could be wrong tho), but they do show some juggalos in the audience

Unfortunately (and in contrast to the ample hi-res footage of the weekend's other acts) I could only find this VHS-looking version of the ICP set: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKkyR3TRiPM

idk, I've been catching a lot of feelings lately because I feel that history has ultimately proven me correct with opinions I had 20 years ago like "the Strokes are not interesting or important" and "nu metal had some jams" and the only real $$$ in music journalism right now is parroting 20 year old received wisdom about these things in HBO docs and oral histories. Like the narrative changed but the narrators didn't...

― my Least Favorite Writer (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, 23 August 2021 16:43 (yesterday) link

I had these opinions at the time too but no platform. In fact for many years I've had this imaginary all-numetal dj party set forming in my head (I don't dj) which prominently features the LB cover of Faith, and also involves a very long segment of looping and playing with the breakdown from Down

TBF though critisphere making a huge deal out of some artist or band that no one cares about anymore in five years was more the rule than the exception in the late 90s/early 00s.

same as it ever was

Yeah for sure, but that time period really felt like the crest of a big internet music criticism wave.

The critics' tide will turn with the 2025 John Mayer Smack It Around nu-metal LP.

Waiting on the World to Bleed

I'm as far as you can get from a Limp Bizkit fan, but watching their performance of "Break Stuff" in the Woodstock doc, it was like – they sure "brought it" (for better or worse). That band was clearly in their element on that stage, feeding off (and nurturing) the vibe. The contrast was especially striking after the clips of Alanis et al. wandering the stage, seemingly uncomfortable and obv not at their best.

Nü Süch Thing

Except no act really 'broke' because they were there ala Hendrix/Joplin/Otis.

Texas International Pop Festival, not Monterey.

The TIPF was a good lineup (Janis was there, Sam & Dave, etc.) but a notable step down from the legendary festivals.

The only performance in the HBO thing that exceeded my low expectations was Korn, as well as Jonathan Davis' commentary. The performances by established acts all felt overripe (like the Alanis and RHCP) and I can totally see that Limp Bizkit brought it, and they were the very center of the mood of popular rock in 99, but I can't believe that glaring Dominos delivery guys were eye of the storm. Nearly the entire bill is a narcissism of small differences as to my taste. I've got G Love, Brian Setzer and Offspring records I doubt I'll ever spin again. I tried to like the music of the era in the era, but the late 90s were a dead zone for me. So much clawing for fusions that never successfully fused. The answer to rap and hard rock fusing was downloading both from Napster, not trying to fit both sounds on the Judgment Night soundtrack. Even revisiting I haven't found much outside of what played on MTV Amp that I continue to like. Even in that subzone, Moby is less than the sum of his parts.

Hey, John Entwistle played the Emerging Artist stage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFOkeK-4_Xw

wait, so there was one band at Rock Fest called "Soak" and another just called "Souls"

Idk who Souls were. Soak was a real band from Austin that had just put out a debut on Interscope.

huge LOL at John Entwhistle's 1st spoken line in that video, not what I was expecting him to say at all

Soak seem like the quintessential replacement level 90s band. Despite the hype, the Interscope album seemed to get no traction anywhere, and they are apparently dropped despite the two-album deal. They move on to another major label for their even less buzzed-about second album. Their final album is self-released in 1999. Next stop, breakup.

Soak was just the name of the water station. You know, where you cool off by walking under a hose spraying out mist?

Souls was the same, although with the incorporeal spirits of human beings.

Ugh, Entwistle had such shit bands in the '80s-'90s. But all he wanted to do was play live, and when the Who weren't touring, he financed all his solo tours out-of-pocket. He'd go $1 million into debt, the Who would tour to bail him out, he'd do more solo tours, go into debt, do another Who bailout tour, rinse and repeat.

funny to think that the Who member onstage emoting the least was the one enjoying it the most

Has anybody seen Trainwreck: Woodstock 99 yet? Because apparently one shitty Woodstock 99 documentary that blames the bands instead of greedy concert promoters wasn’t enough.

I didn't watch the HBO one, but this one def blames the greedy concert promoters

Well that’s good! Maybe I’ll check it out then.

Yeah, there's like fans of the music and everything!

oh maybe I'll finish this. John Scher being interviewed did not inspire confidence.

HBO one was dreadful

Korn 0
Jewel 0

should've teamed up

G. Love was robbed

No bizkit fan here but they’re not even in the top 20 worst bands on that list

If we re-polled this today, surely Kid Rock would take it

Rusted Root are to blame for the fires. How else we're we supposed to send them on their way

LMAO OLEANDER?

Yeah, the latest documentary lays the blame pretty squarely at the promoter's door and John Scher especially hoists his own ass way over the horizon at regular points and comes across as a completely reprehensible piece of shit.

In fact, right at the end he basically says that in a situation of 200,000 people gathered together for a few days, a few rapes here and there are probably to be expected and didn't cause any 'on-site issues'.

Does it have different performance clips than the HBO doc?

I can't quite recall personally, it doesn't show very many of the artists, only the moments of drama.

In fact, you'd be forgiven for thinking there was only one big stage and the rave tent.

I've seen Limp Bizkit and ICP live and had a blast at both shows

Did the HBO one have the story about the stolen van driving through the rave tent, that shit was insane

Even though lots of shit went down at the Second Stage, I really did enjoy the Netflix doc sort of taking the temperature of the day based on who was on the main stage

Wondering how many attendees are watching this now and realizing they're naked in a Netflix movie.

"see that's my Weiner"

I think the whole showing your boobs/weiner at shows dropped precipitously after Woodstock '99

Though it's probably more about the rise of camera phones/internet but I'm sure it didn't help

Dicks Out 4 Oleander

It certainly became less encouraged: in the doc they point out there was (and have footage of) a $10 body-painting booth that certainly helped things along.

Man, I thought they revived Woodstock just one time. I had no idea there were a bunch of these, much less two of them in the '90s.

Given the enormous number of artists who showed up, the 1999 line-up is the pits. They're really spread out, but there were some potentially great sets - James Brown, George Clinton & The P-Funk All-Stars, The Roots, Moby, Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Ice Cube, Los Lobos, Elvis Costello, Willie Nelson...

Also John Entwistle was programmed as an "emerging" artist?

They were even trying to do one in '19! But the advanced ticket sales were abysmal and it was cancelled.

Elvis Costello was extremely incongruous, as he still doing his acoustic thing with Steve Nieve then.

I think the two in the ‘90s (and the failed 2019 attempt) were the only “official” revivals…at least to the extent Michael Lang and his company were involved.

I wish there was more of a detailed epilogue re:the violence. I mean, FUUUUCCCK @ this from wiki:

A supervisor of two state troopers who had posed with naked female attendees was suspended; a New York State prison guard was charged with sodomizing a 15-year-old girl during the riots; 253 people had been treated at area hospitals. The official numbers of fans treated on-site is between 4,000 and 4,500, yet Dr. Richard Kaskiw, one of the few area doctors who worked the medical tents, says that he was told by Vuoculo—who issued the official stats—that the numbers were far higher, the 8,000 to 10,000 range.

Just watched all three episodes. I guess it was better done than the HBO doc, though not necessarily in a slam-dunk way…. I remember that one showing/talking about the music a little more, exploring how few female artists were booked, the demographics that the festival catered to, etc.

Lang and Scher are real pieces of work…

(As another point of comparison, I feel like this one had more behind-the-scenes interviews/footage on the festival production side, while the HBO doc had more crowd footage.)

im not going to watch another thing about this but the scene from the hbo one that sticks out in my mind is that freekin gosh darn press conf. they threw during the shit storm. just amazing footage.

The press conferences were bizarre w/ Lang & Scher talking about how smooth everything was going all 3 days like they had never left the secure backstage artist compound... until Monday when Lang said that he'd personally gone out & witnessed a group of 10-15 instigators going around setting fires and riling people up on Sunday night. Then it cut to the guy running the vendor village who talked about how excited he was to finally meet his hero, Lang onsite that Monday as he came out to inspect the damage but Lang just ignored them and everything they had just gone through and walked away like he didn't care.

Scher consistently blamed everyone but himself throughout both docs, displaying a Trump-level commitment to his selfish lies.

The footage of Bush meekly, shirtlessly following Korn's set in the Netflix doc was pretty funny. Why weren't they in the poll? Whiney considered them too decent?

Lang just ignored them and everything they had just gone through and walked away like he didn't care.

Lang was always a slimy shit. Once Woodstock (the original) was declared "free," the bands were told they wouldn't get paid (though Lang and the other festival producers had already collected $1 million in film and recording advances and ticket sales). If a band refused to play without getting paid first, Lang threatened to announce to the crowd, "____ just said they won't play for you until they get their money!" The Who called Lang's bluff: did Lang really want to risk pissing off half a million people, and possibly creating an extremely dangerous situation? So one of the producers woke up someone at the local bank at 3am and the Who got their bread.

Maybe Entwistle being shunted to the "emerging artists" stage at Woodstock '99 was Lang's revenge.

Woodstock 99 had the same standoff over paying James Brown in full before he opened the show & Scher proudly declared in his Netflix interview that he told James Brown's manager to go fuck himself. Then he says the same thing about another interaction later that weekend with I forget who, but he sounded so trumpy bragging about telling people to go fuck themselves. Funny that entwistle is the only recognizable name from the emerging artist stage now too, I guess the rest of them immediately regressed after emerging there.

I think Muse did alright for themselves

Its still so, so fucking funny to me that the HBO doc was trying to claim DMX activated Trump-era aggrieved white male aggression like the Manchurian Candidate because he said the N-word

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).