Worst Band To Play Woodstock 99

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

xxp Yeah, that was funny -- Scher's big on saying that he told someone to go f themselves

The worst of this festival were a handful of the forgettable HORDE tour jam bands on the 2nd stage like Rusted Root or Moe. The most boring loud rock set was probably Godsmack.

His music is shit, but Kid Rock's set was actually really exciting and fun.

The HBO doc (and I'm guessing the Netflix doc) never mentions the George Clinton set because it was actually dope.

the hbo doc was probably the most i enjoyed a doc while simultaneously disagreeing with every take being presented

Yeah, the "culture" takes were bad... this new series has very little of that.

I think Muse did alright for themselves

I did a double take looking at the list and realizing it really was them.

I imagine an advantage to playing the Emerging Artists stage was that it was the only one that was relatively indoors.

A funny detail in a new doc that I just remembered: when Jewel is about to go onstage, and they warn her that Sheryl Crow was pelted with mud, Jewel nods and says (very seriously), “…She always does.”

Ctrl+f for "Wyclef" brings up nothing -- not even nominated. Guessing this means no one whose posted has seen it yet?

I can't say it was the worst set of this festival, but 100% no bullshit -- it's the most fascinatingly cringe on-stage trainwreck from that weekend, which is really saying something.

One thing that is kinda baffling to me is that both documentaries almost entirely ignore that Rage Against the Machine and Metallica played main stage after that Limp Bizkit set. Like the entire narrative seems to be the place erupted into a riot after the Bizkit set (which started when it was still light out) and skips directly to the rave zone chaos at, what, 2 am? Like it was one clean movement. And then people burned the place down during RHCP the next night.

I don’t know how you can properly document an absolutely massive and fundamentally fucked enterprise like this fully, but both docs obv angling hard for the most titillating narrative and neither of them felt entirely honest.

I wonder if Metallica refused the use of any of their footage? Until you mentioned it, I didn't realise that Metallica played Woodstock '99 and I was... well, I was alive in 1999. The Wikipedia article has them but only in passing. And yet they played an hour and the footage at least suggests nothing went wrong, although the comments mention someone dying of heatstroke or something:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsJqQQzv58E

Was that the height of their anti-MP3 phase, or was it slightly too early? Weren't they massive in 1999? Skimming the list I had completely forgotten about the Supersuckers. I used to fancy the angel on the cover of Sacrilicious Sounds of the Supersuckers. And I still do! But I used to as well.

it was pre-Napster. they appeared on the cd that Woodstock 99 put out ("Creeping Death"), but they didn't play up their involvement there quite like they did in 1994

Were there W99 attendees who just went, had a good time, and were oblivious to any of the big problems (until seeing the news)?

I don’t think you could attend and not be aware of the problem of roasting on a hot tarmac with no water unless you were a Gila Monster or something

Beyond the water prices, obv. I mean the kind of problems that spawned two docs…

Like did everyone walk out thinking “That was a nightmare”; or did some folks just chill to the second stage, leave early on Sunday, and not know about the awful stuff happening?

(You don’t really get a sense of that from the docs, because their scope is so limited, as mentioned above. And even the woman in the Netflix doc, who was like 14 at the time, said she had a great time despite everything, I guess)

I’m saying the stuff that caused people to rage against the fest — expensive water, ridiculous ticket price, no shade, overflowing toilets, airport tarmac instead of grass — would have been pretty evident to anyone who attended. If you’re talking about the fires and lack of medical personnel specifically then sure

And plus something being a total shitshow and you having a good time are not mutually exclusive!

Yeah, sure, I’m taking about the actual “raging” – riots, fires, assaults, the stuff that W99 is notorious for. I don’t know anyone who went (a Metallica-obsessed coworker says he almost went, but backed out the week before).

Politer UK version:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/aug/29/reading-festival-violence-tent-burning

The festival has become popular with 16-year-olds as it falls on the weekend after GSCE results.

A-ha!

Aaron Bates, a Leeds festivalgoer, tweeted that one of the camps was “a literal warzone”.

I mean it wasn't was it