Capitalising on the success of Woodstock ’94, the 30th anniversary of the 1969 music festival was designed to be a massive event, with headliners including Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, The Roots, Ice Cube, DMX, Alanis Morisette, Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, and Korn, as well as legends like James Brown, Willie Nelson, and George Clinton & the P.Fink All-Stars.
3 comments:
It is always a shame when I hear about music festivals that go so wrong that they become the opposite of what they were supposed to be. Woodstock was supposed to be a happy place about peace and love, but it looks like this was not the case in ‘99. I guess it could have been like this before then and the myths and legends of it have just clouded the truth, but I would like to think it was not. It is hard to say what could make a festival go so wrong, but I guess the main issue would just be gross mismanagement. It is strange to me to think that people would try to put on a festival like this without fully understanding the parameters and thoroughly making sure they were covering their bases before bringing people onto the scene. It just goes to show that when you are dealing with huge crowds that are inherently going to be hard to control, you have to do everything in your power to make sure it will be handled safely and effectively.
Wow I knew about the ‘94 Woodstock, but I had no idea that there was a 30th anniversary festival in 1999. It’s so disappointing that Woodstock ‘99 was such an absolute disaster. My parents went to the ‘94 festival and told me stories about what a mess it was. Apparently by the time they got there on the second day there weren’t even people manning the gate so they just walked right in. Everything was covered in mud and there were people lying on the ground covered in sheets of plastic because they had passed out the night before and the EMS went around and threw plastic sheets over them so they wouldn’t freeze. There werent any security guards around so people were just walking around backstage. Woodstock ’99 sounds like it was even worse. The amount of utter chaos and mayhem sounds absolutely terrifying. I am not surprised that they decided to cancel the 50th anniversary of Woodstock.
It's fascinating to me how nostalgia takes over and attempts to recreate something that sprang out of the spontaneity of an entirely different time, culture, political atmosphere, musical background, etc. Even more surprising is that it continues to do so! Altamont Free Concert...was an attempt to recreate Woodstock, and that CLEARLY failed as well. How did they not get the idea, decades later, that it's impossible to recreate such an event? Music is so very much a creation of its time, and Woodstock was such a unique event, that attempt to hearken back to the days when is foolishly naive and unpractical. Needless to say, Woodstock itself had its problems, which are, of course, forgotten amidst the love, music, and drugs that it would later be known for. But even so, I believe that the only way to create more iconic events and memories is not to hearken back to older ones in a desperate attempt to hold on to the past, but rather to react in an organic way to the feeling and needs of the time, and begin afresh.
Post a Comment