Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 doc

You're last point is spot on. There have been hard rock and metal fests all over the world for decades, many featuring acts much, much more hardcore than what was at Woodstock (some of these fests were part of a doc a few years back called Global Metal that's worth trying to hunt down for those interested in metal scenes around the world) with none of this mayhem.

 

If you would also like listeria/covid/norovirus to go with your metal, there's always 70,000 Tons of Metal.

 

Dan Flynn, the former Marietta (Ga.) police chief, is from the NY area and was the security director for Woodstock '94. They wanted him back for '99, and Flynn -- not wanting to do it again -- said he threw out some exorbitant number ($100,000) as his fee, thinking the promoters would scoff at it. Instead, they hired him on the spot.

AROUND TOWN: Ex top cop takes a trip back to Woodstock '99

 

That is so great. I laughed at a line in every paragraph.

 

Just finished the HBO doc. What it did well over the Netflix one was give a holistic view of the concert and society. Netflix did better documenting the build up.

Michael Lang comes off terribly but John Scher is a complete piece of shit.

 

Lang is right there with Scher imo for what went down.

 

100 percent, Lang is right there. I just mean Lang comes off as a guy who did way too many drugs in the 60s and can’t comprehend his fuck up. Scher victim blaming and being combative when people called him on his shit is just that greedy asshole who should have been sued into oblivion.

 

Hey if you didn't want your boobs touched, keep your shirt on!

 

Watched it over two nights with my wife. With the caveat that I haven't seen the HBO doc, it was a really effective piece of content. Even with the benefit of time and hindsight, the organizers come across as comically unaware of the chaos they were enabling. Hell - It's crazy that they fucked up the first night so badly, and Gavin effing Rossdale of all people managed to realize this and bail them out with Bush's performance, which seemed to bring the temperature down from Korn appropriately.

Along those lines - Limp Bizkit probably shouldn't be your "closer" for night two... except that I look up the night's lineup, and, uh, they weren't. From the doc, you'd think it went Limp, end of live performances, and the pent-up energy of the mob led to the riot at the Fatboy Slim show in the rave tent. Limp Bizkit was followed by Rage Against The Machine *AND* Metallica! While I understand Fred Durst's whipping boy status among music critics now, it's hard to imagine there wasn't a bunch of footage of people tearing shit up during the RATM and Metallica performances as well.

 

I thought the HBO doc had a good clip of The Offspring singer calling out people mid-show for sexually assaulting crowd surfers.

 

Yeah he did his best. I liked his line at the end of his speech telling the women to grab the dudes by the balls as they went by.

 

For sure. Never been an Offspring guy, but as I cringed watched the HBO I gained many, many levels of respect for them.