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Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage

Started by privatefriend, July 28, 2021, 01:10:26 PM

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privatefriend

Recently released HBO documentary film. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jul/22/woodstock-99-peace-love-and-rage-documentary

Godawful music and people, but the documentary does a good job of covering it for the most part.

I think you could draw a line between the end of grunge, the "attitude era", Columbine, Woodstock '99, Jackass and eventually the Iraq War. The connections are interesting to think about anyway.

steveh

Mention of this led me to Woodstock 94 where there's this nugget:

QuoteAphex Twin's performance was cut short when promoters "disconnected" him mid-show for signing a fake name on a contract, which would forfeit PolyGram's rights to his performance.

Several websites claim he had signed the contract with the name "Richard Flabbychucks".

peanutbutter

Quite looking forward to seeing this. Have always been a bit fascinated with these 90s Woodstock gigs, they capture shit that feels like it was completely consigned to the dustbin after 9/11. Even as a kid I remember some news coverage of Woodstock 99 and being totally bemused by it and sorta struggled to make it fit with the America I would be a lot more familiar with after getting the internet (2004 or so)
Amazing time capsule lineup


Woodstock 99 and American Beauty, combined capturing the sum total of pre-9/11 US-culture for me.

kngen

Watched this last night. Some of it is genuinely horrifying, for a variety of reasons, but I laughed out loud when Limp Bizkit started 'Break Stuff', which I'd seen widely blamed for lighting the touch paper on the descent into feral madness (the truth obviously being far more complex). It sounded so laughably weedy at first; immediately made me think of Indie Club on The Fast Show.

But wow,
Spoiler alert
what a total cunt that angry old bald man who co-organized it was. 'Scratch a hippy, find a fascist' indeed!
[close]


Rizla

Look forward to seeing this.

Quote from: peanutbutter on July 28, 2021, 02:13:51 PM
Woodstock 99 and American Beauty, combined capturing the sum total of pre-9/11 US-culture for me.

I'll never forget my mate's disgusted rant after he'd seen AB, describing the whole plastic bag in the wind shit as the director's wank fantasy about the sort of tortured teen genius he wished/reckoned he'd been at that age. It really is a pile of shit, disgraced wankbeast got it spot on too.

Quote from: Rizla on July 29, 2021, 04:29:24 PM
Look forward to seeing this.

I'll never forget my mate's disgusted rant after he'd seen AB, describing the whole plastic bag in the wind shit as the director's wank fantasy about the sort of tortured teen genius he wished/reckoned he'd been at that age. It really is a pile of shit, disgraced wankbeast got it spot on too.

You mean the writer not the director? Feel like it was sort of inspired by Buddhist/eastern philosophy, what exactly was wrong with it? its presentation?

gilbertharding

It's interesting that recently I've been hearing the phrase 'the long 90s'. Most people who use the phrase seem to be saying that we're still living in the long 90s... but we're also very much not, I think. The 90s ended pretty abruptly on 11/9/2001, surely.


Other thing about Woodstock 94/99 which occurs to me is this film out soon about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival: "Why doesn't anyone remember black Woodstock?" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-57803091

Junglist

Quote from: gilbertharding on August 02, 2021, 06:36:08 PM
It's interesting that recently I've been hearing the phrase 'the long 90s'. Most people who use the phrase seem to be saying that we're still living in the long 90s... but we're also very much not, I think. The 90s ended pretty abruptly on 11/9/2001, surely.


Other thing about Woodstock 94/99 which occurs to me is this film out soon about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival: "Why doesn't anyone remember black Woodstock?" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-57803091

Summer of Soul is the best thing I've seen this year. If you have interest in music of any kind its a much watch.

gilbertharding

I'm sure it's brilliant.

Is it me, though, or does the tag 'Black Woodstock' a bit... I dunno...


Is it a film about the festival, or is it a film *of* the festival?

Junglist

Quote from: gilbertharding on August 03, 2021, 03:42:40 PM
I'm sure it's brilliant.

Is it me, though, or does the tag 'Black Woodstock' a bit... I dunno...


Is it a film about the festival, or is it a film *of* the festival?

I'd say 70/30 in favour of the festival aspect.

The term 'Black Woodstock' was used to explain the festival at the time so its not somme tacked on hype language. It was for the insanely poor population of Harlem.

There is a hell of a lot of concert footage and some outstanding music. There's also discussions on how important it was at the time alongside race and politics.

Its stated at the start that the footage just sat in a basement for 50 years as nobody was arsed about, nor saw a market for it. Which once you've watched it will make you realise what an absolute travesty that is. Seems like a seminal moment for those at the time, just swept under the rug. One dude almost convinced himself he dreamt it, as he was so young at the time.

gilbertharding

Cool.

One of the disappointing things about the actual Woodstock film is how bad a lot of the footage is. Want 5 minutes close up of Alvin Lee's face while he widdles away? How about Joe Cocker sweating and gurning? You don't get to see anything else for the duration of the film... and here's Sly and the Family Stone in the same style.

I noticed that the Family Stone are in the Summer of Soul film too - so I'll look forward to that.

steveh

Quote from: Junglist on August 03, 2021, 04:50:38 PM
Its stated at the start that the footage just sat in a basement for 50 years as nobody was arsed about, nor saw a market for it.

That's not entirely true it seems, with footage appearing in hour-long ABC and CBS specials in 1969 and some clips had been licensed since for other programmes, although most did remain unseen as it was too much of a challenge to clear the rights.

https://gregmitchell.substack.com/p/was-summer-of-soul-footage-really

Have a vague memory of MTV Europe having coverage of Woodstock 99 but it being abandoned, though I can't find any reference to that anywhere.

Shit Good Nose

#12
Quote from: gilbertharding on August 03, 2021, 05:27:47 PM
One of the disappointing things about the actual Woodstock film is how bad a lot of the footage is. Want 5 minutes close up of Alvin Lee's face while he widdles away? How about Joe Cocker sweating and gurning? You don't get to see anything else for the duration of the film... and here's Sly and the Family Stone in the same style.

I do LOVE the Woodstock film exactly as it is (both original theatrical and now-more-common director's cut), BUT it has always frustrated me that instead of the likes of The Band, Mountain, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Winter brothers, Paul Butterfield and Keef Hartley we get Joan fucking Baez warbling away and mostly sub-par Hendrix.  The later Woodstock Diaries anthology and subsequent re-releases have filled in those gaps, but dear christ why on earth didn't anyone do that first time round?

Summer Of Soul looks an absolute banger, but at less than 2hrs I can't help but think it might be a bit of a wasted opportunity.  Hopefully more of the raw original footage (without talking heads) will make itself known as well.

I'd also really like a Woodstock-like film for Woodstock 94 (particularly as a lot of the footage that IS out there is either from the original TV broadcasts, or some twentieth generation VHS).  At the time a lot of people were quite sniffy and critical of it for trying to recapture past glories with and for a younger generation, but looked back in retrospect it's really gained a lot of historical cultural importance, featuring very very notable late performances by The Band, Traffic, Gil Scott Heron, Allman Brothers Band, Bob Dylan (who famously didn't make the original), as well as now legendary performances (amongst the respective fans at least) by Peter Gabriel, Arrested Development, Jimmy Cliff, Blues Traveler, and of course most of the new bands and artists who were massive at the time. 

gilbertharding

I must admit, I haven't seen Woodstock properly - just the copy I taped off the telly - so it was on two VHS cassettes, with a bit of a gap somewhere in the middle. I saw the bits I liked, over and over again, and ignored/fast forwarded the other 60 per cent.

Actually - I had a similar thing with the soundtrack album, except with no gap. I had it on a couple of C90s from a kid at school, and no track list. If the announcer didn't say who the act was, I still couldn't tell you. Is that Jefferson Airplane near the end, just before Jimi?

As with lots and lots of things I quite liked before I was 20, I'm still not quite ready to renounce my previous denial. If that makes sense. I decided it was pretty much all shit when I was 21, and I haven't changed my mind. Of the entire thing, I'll take Hendrix, Sly, and CSNY and you can stick the rest.


peanutbutter

Chapo Trap House tore this apart, does it actually try and blame Limp Bizkit for both the riots and Trump?
I mean, you could draw some pretty solid parallels between the climate in the US over the last few years and the festival (music that courts an angry audience at a venue with massive systemic issues that were chosen for extremely cynical and self-interested reasons) but to try and pin it on Fred Durst is pretty ridiculous.
Was def an intense crowd but what I see in the Limp Bizkit set is an act that's hit a point where it's extremely obvious they're on the verge of being absolutely massive and the crowd is pretty excited about it.

Will get around to watching this later in the week I'm sure.





I liked the doc of the original woodstock, not sure how much of that was just enjoying the weird editing though.

chveik


Quote from: peanutbutter on August 03, 2021, 07:46:29 PM
Chapo Trap House tore this apart, does it actually try and blame Limp Bizkit for both the riots and Trump?
I mean, you could draw some pretty solid parallels between the climate in the US over the last few years and the festival (music that courts an angry audience at a venue with massive systemic issues that were chosen for extremely cynical and self-interested reasons) but to try and pin it on Fred Durst is pretty ridiculous.
Was def an intense crowd but what I see in the Limp Bizkit set is an act that's hit a point where it's extremely obvious they're on the verge of being absolutely massive and the crowd is pretty excited about it.

Will get around to watching this later in the week I'm sure.





I liked the doc of the original woodstock, not sure how much of that was just enjoying the weird editing though.

No it doesn't, one of the guys who runs the festival blames it on Limp Bizkit but also suggests the sexual assaults were partially the fault of women not wearing many clothes, and is definitely the villain of the film. Limp Bizkit's performance is contextualised amongst the wider music scene and culture of the time and is fairly balanced.

kngen

Quote from: thelittlemango on August 03, 2021, 11:03:24 PM
No it doesn't, one of the guys who runs the festival blames it on Limp Bizkit but also suggests the sexual assaults were partially the fault of women not wearing many clothes, and is definitely the villain of the film. Limp Bizkit's performance is contextualised amongst the wider music scene and culture of the time and is fairly balanced.

Yeah, thought Chapo were way off the mark on that. The footage (and many, many talking heads) makes it clear the game was a bogey long before Limp Bizkit took to the stage. I tend to tune them out these days when they try to parse obviously mainstream musical trends through a countercultural lens, as it's pretty obvious they haven't a fucking clue what they're on about[nb]Even that Chris fellow, who seems to be a bit more clued up than the rest. I can't exactly remember the context, but I had to laugh when he cited Fugazi as exemplars of a genuine concern for crowd safety, when anyone in the DIY scene who's dealt with them will tell you that their shtick is just as performative as Kid Rock in a mink coat. [/nb]. Otherwise they wouldn't crap on about Every Time I cunting Die so much.

SteveDave

I've never knowingly heard a Limp Bizkit song before and I was laughing my head off at how high his voice was for most of that "Break Stuff" song. The entire band looked fucked to be fair.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

Quote from: SteveDave on August 04, 2021, 01:05:25 PM
I've never knowingly heard a Limp Bizkit song before and I was laughing my head off at how high his voice was for most of that "Break Stuff" song. The entire band looked fucked to be fair.

Fred Durst has two "singing" voices. There's his normal high pitched squeak one, and then there's this sort of attempt to do a deep death metal "roar" that he does to put emphasis on a line.

Quote from: gilbertharding on August 03, 2021, 05:27:47 PM
Cool.

One of the disappointing things about the actual Woodstock film is how bad a lot of the footage is. Want 5 minutes close up of Alvin Lee's face while he widdles away? How about Joe Cocker sweating and gurning? You don't get to see anything else for the duration of the film... and here's Sly and the Family Stone in the same style.

I noticed that the Family Stone are in the Summer of Soul film too - so I'll look forward to that.

One thing that everybody I've talked to who's seen the Woodstock film remembers is the chap in the audience with the big ginger hair during the Jimi Hendrix set. He just stands out like fuck, and looks like he's forgotten who he is and what he's doing there.

Is this Woodstock 99 thing going to be on NowTV at any point?

Egyptian Feast

Quote from: kngen on August 04, 2021, 12:42:10 PM
[nb]Even that Chris fellow, who seems to be a bit more clued up than the rest. I can't exactly remember the context, but I had to laugh when he cited Fugazi as exemplars of a genuine concern for crowd safety, when anyone in the DIY scene who's dealt with them will tell you that their shtick is just as performative as Kid Rock in a mink coat. [/nb].

Fascinating footnote! Surprised to hear that, though admittedly I don't know much about them other than their reputation/legend.

I enjoyed this, although perhaps it helps to have been a hoodie-wearing teenage Korn fan like me - I saw a review that criticised it for treating the music itself with both contempt and disinterest, but it you were a fan it's easy to fill in the analytical gaps. It does a good job of ratcheting up the queasy intensity along the timeline of the festival itself. Could have done without Moby as the voice of reason though, like the living embodiment of the 'Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point' meme. But I enjoyed his existential plywood crisis.

Quote from: kngen on August 04, 2021, 12:42:10 PM
Yeah, thought Chapo were way off the mark on that. The footage (and many, many talking heads) makes it clear the game was a bogey long before Limp Bizkit took to the stage.

Haven't listened to the Chapo ep but I totally agree - no idea how they could reach that conclusion, unless they think we're supposed to be nodding along with baldy organiser cunt.

The sheer amount of footage of topless women, (in some cases seemingly being actively assaulted) did give me pause - I don't really understand how that's kosher to show consent-wise, how does that work? Certainly hope it's not as rum as it seems. Purely on a cinematic level it does give the cumulative effect of being Bored of Tits though - an effect even voiced in one of the diary entries they use IIRC.

I enjoyed this but the treatment of that period of music and how it related to the culture was quite annoying. At one point they try and make a case for the carnage being caused by anti-capitalist sentiment and that Kid Rock coming out wearing a big mink coat and strutting around was some kind of key moment in highlighting this, as opposed to a rock star just doing what rock stars do and giving it the billy big bollocks for entertainment purposes.

I also found it funny when they talked about how meatheaded the nu-metal scene is, with none of the inward-facing analysis of grunge, and to highlight it they flashed up pictures of Limp Bizkit, Korn and Deftones, the latter two (and Deftones in particular) having albums worth of self-analytical material. It made me think they'd made this big point without actually knowing much about the music.

As above, this is more of creeping horror film than a music documentary, and is probably best appreciated with that in mind.

Noodle Lizard

We're only halfway through, but finding it weirdly conservative and prudish in some ways, as well as somewhat unfocused. It seems to jump all over the place, and I'm not quite sure why we're listening to some of the talking heads' opinion on things they had no experience of (a lot of millennials talking about what the original Woodstock was actually like - couldn't find a couple of fogeys who went to both?) Some of their takes are laughably weak as well.

It's a great subject for a documentary, though, and I'm sure with the success of the Fyre Festival documentaries it made sense to give it a similar treatment, but I wonder if there's a more "to-the-point" one already existing?

Magnum Valentino

I think maybe it's less about Woodstock exclusively than a sort of holistic look at the 90s and why what happened was able to happen. That habit of jumping all over the place was exactly what I loved about it.

It wasn't as simple as being badly organised, unexpectedly hot and far too expensive. It was about ten years in white American culture.

lankyguy95

Quote from: thelittlemango on August 04, 2021, 02:42:47 PM


I also found it funny when they talked about how meatheaded the nu-metal scene is, with none of the inward-facing analysis of grunge, and to highlight it they flashed up pictures of Limp Bizkit, Korn and Deftones, the latter two (and Deftones in particular) having albums worth of self-analytical material. It made me think they'd made this big point without actually knowing much about the music.
It's weird as well because at the same time Woodstock happened, the Ozzfest 99 tour was just finishing up and the lineup for that (aside from Black Sabbath - Deftones, System Of A Down, Slipknot, Fear Factory, Godsmack, Hatebreed, Slayer, Hed PE, Static-X and a bunch of other bands) was exactly the sort of lineup these people would sneer at. I've never heard anything about that tour being plagued with the problems Woodstock 99 was.

peanutbutter

Thought most the cultural analysis was easily as bad as Chapo made it out to be but not much in the ways they seemed to think, just really cowardly filmmaking where they're unwilling to give any opinions at all (including via their editing) so they're entirely at the whims of the quality of first hand accounts they've gathered up. Even with that it seems a bit bizarre they'd devote so much time to infamously deluded bullshitter Moby when there were a few others that seemed far more attuned to the situation (e.g. Jewel seemed to have a good perspective on it all).

The bald organiser guy seemed like someone they could've far more clearly painted as the villian (and he obviously is) if they wanted to, he seemed more than happy to provide them with some atrocious soundbites. Skimming over the extreme cynicism of the venue choice is a _colossal_ misstep.




Considering how gripping the footage is in terms of how absolutely insufferably 1999 it all is I feel like a straight linear account of events would've been far better and a lot less effort than (what seems like) a fairly strained effort to find decent first hand accounts. Either that or the filmmakers needed to take a more vocal role, countering some of the bullshit either directly to the interviewees or via a voiceover.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

I don't quite get why you'd hold it on an old air force base in the first place, with all that concrete on the floor. Was the mosh pit concrete? I wouldn't fancy falling over on that. Maybe the base was still wired up to the mains, so they didn't have to use as many generators? Who knows. The organisers always came across as crooks anyway, even going back to the first festival. Cutting every corner they could in order to generate a profit, quite often at the expense of people's safety and well being. As long as they covered it over with a layer of peace and love shit, they hoped nobody would notice how incompetent and greedy they were.

peanutbutter

Quote from: Elderly Sumo Prophecy on August 07, 2021, 03:04:15 PM
I don't quite get why you'd hold it on an old air force base in the first place
They covered it super briefly, made it a lot easier to prevent gatecrashers breaking in and to price gouge they people who were already in.


There was probably also a sense that because the venue technically hit a bunch of minimum requirements for what's needed wrt water supplies and shit that they didn't have to do any effort on that end because they figured the blame would fall onto the venue.