Anyone seen this new HBO documentary?

[www.youtube.com]

‘Woodstock 99’ Documentary Clip: That ‘Mud’? It’s Shit

HBO’s Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage focuses on infamous music festival
By DANIEL KREPS



This Friday, HBO will debut Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage, a documentary about the infamous 30th anniversary staging of the iconic music fest. Ahead of the film’s premiere, Rolling Stone is debuting a clip focusing on one of the more serious and disgusting aspects from the festival: The lack of clean drinking water and the puddles of human sewage that festival-goers mistook as mud.

As seen in the clip [www.rollingstone.com], although organizers set up barrels of clean water for the attendees — which leaned heavily toward the young male demographic — to drink, the lack of water for showering and basic sanitary purposes forced many to turn those drinking stations into guerrilla bathtubs, instantly soiling their potability.

Frustrated festivalgoers soon broke the pipes leading to the basins to access clean water, which caused a more sinister situation: The flooding from the burst pipes soon mixed with the rapidly overflowing, untended Porta-Potties, creating a toxic cocktail of mud and excrement that attendees were only too eager to play in.

“Within the first 24 hours, you had kids rolling around in what they thought was mud, but was really human waste,” one witness to the mayhem says in the documentary as footage shows young people playing in the mud just steps from the backed-up Porta-Potties.

“Mud has curiously always played an important role in the mythology of Woodstocks,” director Garret Price tells Rolling Stone. “There’s legendary images of the muddy fields in Bethel during the original festival or the career-defining performances of Nine Inch Nails and Green Day covered in mud in the ’94 edition. So not surprisingly, the kids at Woodstock ’99 weren’t going to miss out on the tradition even though it was one of the hottest weekends in New York state that year and the festival primarily took place on a concrete tarmac. I’m still not sure to this day if they knew or even cared where the source of a lot of this mud came from.”

Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage, premiering July 23rd on the 22nd anniversary of the fest, is the first in HBO’s Music Box series of documentaries produced by The Ringer’s Bill Simmons. The film features interviews with Woodstock 99 performers like musicians, including The Roots’ Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter, Korn’s Jonathan Davis, Moby, Jewel, The Offspring, Creed’s Scott Stapp, as well as music journalists and festival attendees that were on hand for what ultimately turned into a full-scale fiery riot by festival’s end.

“It’s such a polarizing event, because I spoke to a ton of attendees who had the time of their life that weekend while others had a much different point of view,” Price says.

“For all the bad things that you can point out in the story of Woodstock 99, there’s also positive things that can be attributed to the festival as well. One example is that it was truly an egalitarian event as far as being a music fan. There were no V.I.P. tents, special ticket tiers or ‘glamping’ experiences at Woodstock 99,” Price adds. “Every ticket was a general admission making it a true populist experience for music fans. My biggest hope (and what I experienced myself while making this) is to draw in audiences with nostalgia, but provide them with a film that’s both entertaining and thought-provoking, a way to dig deeper and reckon with how our society and culture acted during this time.”



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2021-07-29 19:10 by tatters.

I watched this last week on HBO. Pretty interesting and what a disaster. Some of it is quite disturbing. Certainly was no peace or love present.

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masseywinos

I watched this last week on HBO. Pretty interesting and what a disaster. Some of it is quite disturbing. Certainly was no peace or love present.

I was forty in 1999, and being far too old to seriously consider going, or even to have been a fan of any of these bands, I never really paid much attention to it. All I remember hearing was that things got a little out of hand, and that there were some fires set. Watching this documentary last night, I was really shocked at just how demented and out of control it all was. But as was briefly mentioned in the documentary, 1969 was also quite demented and out of control. It's just that the filmmakers who put together the original 1970 Woodstock movie chose to tell a very different story.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2021-07-29 22:22 by tatters.

Fun Fact: Only two musicians who performed at the original Woodstock in 1969 also played at the third and final Woodstock in 1999. John Entwistle and Mickey Hart.

Much better than the Woodstock movie which was mostly bullshit.

ICP's Woodstock '99 one of my favorite concert videos!

Saw most of it last night. Nearly made me ill. “Knuckleheads” is being kind.

Didn't Krieger play both?

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masseywinos
Didn't Krieger play both?

No.

Is this on HBO MAX only ? or on HBO ?

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TheGreek
Is this on HBO MAX only ? or on HBO ?

I think it's just plain ol' ordinary HBO. Took me awhile to find it in the listings because it's actually the first episode of a series called Music Box, so it just appears in the listings under the title Music Box.

It's a horror movie.

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masseywinos
Certainly was no peace or love present.

A potential explanation :

Woodstock'69 = acid
Woodstock'99 = meth

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tatters

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TheGreek
Is this on HBO MAX only ? or on HBO ?

I think it's just plain ol' ordinary HBO. Took me awhile to find it in the listings because it's actually the first episode of a series called Music Box, so it just appears in the listings under the title Music Box.

Thank You Kindly Tatters

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Dan
Much better than the Woodstock movie which was mostly bullshit.

ICP's Woodstock '99 one of my favorite concert videos!

I’m glad the called bullshit on the original Woodstock in the doc. Bunch of hippie morons... I remember when Woodstock 94 was announced, I thought why are these old hippies trying to force 25 years ago on us. Music in the late 80s and 90s didn’t need that rubbish. There was a brilliant punk/grunge community going.

I don’t know how it went from Cobains type of personal politics to Fred Durst....

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Paddy

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Dan
Much better than the Woodstock movie which was mostly bullshit.

ICP's Woodstock '99 one of my favorite concert videos!

I’m glad the called bullshit on the original Woodstock in the doc. Bunch of hippie morons... I remember when Woodstock 94 was announced, I thought why are these old hippies trying to force 25 years ago on us. Music in the late 80s and 90s didn’t need that rubbish. There was a brilliant punk/grunge community going.

I don’t know how it went from Cobains type of personal politics to Fred Durst....

That whole "Nu-Metal" emergence which swiftly died was the driver of the attitude of the event. it was "I don't give a f&%k" a lot of younger siblings of the late 80's early 90's kids who were super pumped to "Go Off" and this was their chance, couple that with MDMA & Ice, then shit is going to get weird and messy.. hence the scenes and destruction.

Plus IMO General Admission or Festival Seating for popular youth orientated concerts is just too dangerous

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tatters

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TheGreek
Is this on HBO MAX only ? or on HBO ?

I think it's just plain ol' ordinary HBO. Took me awhile to find it in the listings because it's actually the first episode of a series called Music Box, so it just appears in the listings under the title Music Box.

I watched it on HBO Max.

I recall that in 1979, Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens and two more acts (forgot who they were) did a 10th Woodstock Anniversary package tour. I didn't attend any of the shows but saw a one hour feature on the tour in one of the youth programs back then, and found it utterly uninteresting. There was none of the vibe or energy of these guys's performances as transported in the Woodstock movie. Even only 10 years later, trying to revive the 1969 thing seemed quite out of place and just boring, and this whole tour looked rather like a first attempt to make some money off of the fact that these guys had performed at Woodstock (which was certainly not far from being correct).

Somewhen in the mid-to-late 70s I met a guy who said he was at Woodstock 69 (there weren't too many such folks to be met in Europe back then), and he described the whole event rather as utter chaos, from the traffic jams to freezing in the rain, insufficient toilet facilities, dirt and pollution, lack of food and water, and so on, also saying that the sound wasn't exactly great and that once you were a bit away from the stage you couldn't really hear much of the music any longer. So I guess that even back then, people experienced the event quite differently (although possibly not as violently as in 1999). The movie certainly did quite well in helping to turn the thing into the hippie myth it has since become.

When watching the Woodstock 99 docu I just felt like I wouldn't have had a good time there. I wouldn't even be suprised if many of today's festivals aren't that different, like, tons of drunk people and all that. I attended a few (free) local festivals in the late 70s, never enjoyed standing in the mud when it was raining, and after the third band I always felt like I couldn't take yet another band now even if the bands were good and I liked their music. It was good to be able to simply go home when it became too much.

Festivals in the late 80s and early 90s were usually chaos of some description. There was always drugs. But people policed themselves by and large back then. I think Woodstock 99 had a lot of people not there for the music and there just to say they were at some iteration of Woodstock. I always thought Altamont was a purer expression of Woodstock. It’s what you actually get when you try to live in that hippie way.

Back in the sixties we were making the best of a bad situation, a lot of them actually, and Woodstock was an example of that. Despite how f'ed up it was, the overflowing toilets, lack of food, parking messes, shit sound, shittier weather, everyone was in it as one and that made it more manageable.

But if you were not there (I was not) the only thing you really know about it is through the filmmakers lens and the stories that were published about it. Some people had fun, some people were probably bummed out, a lot of people hung around for a while but ultimately decided to split if they could, and a lot of people just tolerated it because they were there for the music or comraderie or something.

Thats actually the same vibe that was, overall, at Altamont, which I did attend, its just that the story was told in a certain way, and certainly being there if you were anywhere near the stage you knew a lot of shit was coming down for one reason or another, yet the vast majority of people there were watching out for others as much as they could, and were basically having a good time despite the chaos up front. There were people with picnic baskets of food giving it away, and the spirit that would have presumably prevailed at Golden Gate Park was there if you looked at it. It was a bad situation in every way, disregarding the "security" force, nothing else about it was very bright other than the music. Despite that, a lot of people left there thinking they had a good time, I was amongst those, though I did leave with a lot of thoughts in my head about what I had seen that day...way different than I would have imagined.

Having been at Altamont, though, I can tell you, you do not see everything in the movie about Altamont; one good example is the naked fat mexican dude you see getting smashed with pool cues, and appears to be a sympathetic victim.

What you don't see, and what I recall clearly, was the guy had previously been up "dancing" in the packed crowd of mostly people trying to sit down, first with clothes on but wildly swinging his arms and fists and acting belligerent, then he took off his clothes and continued to "dance" in a completely wild and uncontrolled and actually threatening manner, and everyone was having to back off and move away from him, again in a very packed area where there was no where to back off to.

You do not see that in the movie and to me standing there watching this dude, there was a feeling of almost relief that someone took care of the guy; who did not seem to be simply flipping on acid or something, but was more of a gangster greaser dude making trouble. I distinctly remember the guy there swinging his arms and acting out and just thinking it would not be long before he slugged some dude or worse some woman and there would be a big fight.

The only other really brutal thing I saw that day was some cat went over and just flat kicked an HA motorcycle right in the tank, and the owner was right there with his buddies and of course some kind of brutality followed. But the guy straight asked for trouble and he got it...you do not see that sort of provocation in the movie. I remember I saw him kick the bike and I just walked away, there is no fixing stupid.

And consider I was on about 500 mics of Owsleys finest, being given away at the soundboard, which made a strange day even stranger. But the thing is, I never felt that intimidated or in danger there really because I was mostly minding my own business and trying to be cool and be able to process what was going on around me. Most people there were doing that, trying to make the best of a real mess. There always seemed to be good and concerned people around it wasn't like a den of thieves or something like it was kind of made out in the movie. People were helping people out in general.


So my point is really, there was overall a lot more spirit of "we are all in this together" back then even if examples of the contrary can be found but by the time of this later Woodstock, most of that general good will had pretty much vanished from the contemporary youth culture. And it showed in how the inconveniences of a thing like this are handled differently than they were back in the day (backer in the day as it were).

Now you wanna see spoiled brats at a failed "elitist" festival check out that one failed gig of a few years ago now out in the Bahamas or somewhere. Now there was a real mess. Not a lot of rage though, I guess, just a lot of digital shaming.

jb



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2021-08-02 03:02 by jbwelda.

It’s the new thing go back 20 years or so snd either try to rewrite history or try to view it from today’s perspective. It was an accurate reflection of the times. And the lineup wtf?

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doitywoik

I recall that in 1979, Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens and two more acts (forgot who they were) did a 10th Woodstock Anniversary package tour. I didn't attend any of the shows but saw a one hour feature on the tour in one of the youth programs back then, and found it utterly uninteresting. There was none of the vibe or energy of these guys's performances as transported in the Woodstock movie. Even only 10 years later, trying to revive the 1969 thing seemed quite out of place and just boring, and this whole tour looked rather like a first attempt to make some money off of the fact that these guys had performed at Woodstock (which was certainly not far from being correct).

The closest thing I remember to a Woodstock 10th anniversary show was a very small scale event at a racetrack on Long Island, New York, attended by around 20,000 people. Other than whatever was left of Canned Heat, they really didn't have any of the bands that played at Woodstock. What they had was individual members of bands that played at Woodstock. So instead of Santana, you just got Michael Shrieve. Instead of the Band, you got Rick Danko. Instead of the Airplane, you just got Jorma Kaukonen. Instead of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, you got Stephen Stills. And you got a lot of the people who appeared at the original Woodstock as solo performers. Havens, Sebastian, McDonald, etc. It all seemed pretty lame and I decided not to go. An easy decision since I already had tickets to see The Who the very next week, and knew that seeing them play a selection of material from Tommy would be far more evocative of Woodstock than anything I might have heard at a ramshackle anniversary show.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2021-08-02 21:38 by tatters.