Worst Band To Play Woodstock 99

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