TV review: Woodstock ‘99 was so bad, you’ll watch some of this through your fingers
Trainwreck: Woodstock '99
Jimi Hendrix pushed them over the edge. The crowd at Woodstock ‘99 was cranky enough coming into the final day, thanks to 100-degree heat, $12 bottles of water and the toilets from hell. But at least there was supposed to be a big surprise act coming on at the end, after Red Hot Chili Peppers.
When it turned out to be a recording of Jimi Hendrix playing guitar on the giant screen, some of the crowd started ripping apart and then burning down the venue. This provides the iconic image for a must-watch three-parter on Netflix, .
It’s must-watch because the ‘bad guys’ agreed to take part. Every show like this has a designated bad guy or two, who we are invited to dislike. In this case it’s Michael Laing and John Scher — two of the people behind the mega-festival in up-state New York during the summer of 1999.
As the name suggests, it was no match for the original Woodstock in 1969. And it really wasn’t, unless you think Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock are in the same universe as Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. (Limp Who is a better name for them now.) Laing and Scher obviously thought this was unfair and came on to defend their 1999 festival. They’re some double act; Laing the serene hippy entrepreneur who co-promoted the 1969 festival, Scher the cold-eyed business guy who dresses and acts like he lived on a golf course.
steps through the three-day festivals, guided by people who worked there, people who played and people who watched. It starts with James Brown refusing to go on until he’s paid his full fee, and goes downhill after that.
Drinking water was confiscated on the way in, along with more refreshing drinks, leaving the crowd at the mercy of the concession stands, who started the bottled water at $4 and pushed it up to $12 on the final day, when it had become dangerously scarce in the belting heat.
Instead of Max Yasgur’s farm in 1969, this festival was held on a disused air-force base. Instead of peace and love, we had moshing frat boys in baseball caps. Far worse, there were multiple stories of horrific sexual assault on women.
Laing and Scher were shown playing down the negatives using press conference footage from the time, and they still see the festival as a broad success.
I always thought that Woodstock and the 60s were over-sold. But the footage from both festivals shown here suggests we’ve been on a 50-year downslope.
A 1969 veteran hands out rubbish bags at the 1999 event in the hope that community spirit will keep the place clean. A festival goer tells her he paid $150 dollars for the ticket, and would expect the place to be cleaned for that. Greed is cool man.
The most revealing segment is John Scher’s rationalisation of the high number of reported rapes in 1999. I nearly had to watch it over again to see ‘did he really say that?’.
Woodstock ‘99 was so bad, you’ll watch some of this through your fingers. But it’s well worth it.
