Woodstock ‘99: Peace, Love, and Rage (2021).
“People were rolling around in piss and shit.”
Directed by Garret Price
The Stage(s).
Pictured above, John Scher, a man who takes no responsibility for creating this disastrous event.
This HBO documentary covers the three days of Woodstock ‘99, an event that went from a bunch of angry early third white males rocking out to a bunch of very angry early third white males raping women and burning the festival to the ground.
The Review.
Wonder Bread, as far as the eye can see.
Watching this 22 years after the event happened gave me anxiety. I’m not a music festival person. Even if I like the artists, you have to imagine that the sound quality is going to be shit just based on acoustics alone. And with festival crowds, you have to compete with people who don’t care about the artists you do, a lack of things like food, water, bathrooms, and shade, and from personal experience, large crowds of rowdy people are generally filled with assholes. Woodstock ‘99 had all of those things…and Limp Bizkit.
Now, you find this kind of anger in video game lobbies, but in 1999, they gathered in Rome, New York for the perfect storm of white angst. 400,000 men with their hats on backwards who didn’t give a shit about the original Woodstock, were angry about who knows what and ready to snap…and then they did. The festival infrastructure failed, the security guards just seemed to leave, and these nu-metal loving dickheads tore the place apart, looted the joint, set fire to everything, and sexually assaulted women left and right. It’s a disgusting reminder of what humans really are and it made me feel ashamed.
Limp Bizkit played ‘Break Stuff’, and the crowd happily obeyed.
To this day, the organizers, particularly John Scher, take no responsibility for the events of that weekend. Twenty years later and this clueless fuck is still blaming things on Fred Durst for egging the crowd on while playing Break Stuff. Hyping up a crowd is what Fred Durst was paid to do in 1999. He was the head of one of the biggest rock bands in the world. What the fuck did you think was going to happen when you had him come on stage? The documentary leaves out Durst telling the crowd not to let people get hurt, but did show him supporting the destruction of the scaffolding and structures. I don’t blame Fred Durst. Durst did what he did as the lead singer of Limp Bizkit.
The End.
Way to ‘stick it to the man’, kiddo.
This documentary plays out like a real life horror film, a modern day Lord of the Flies enclosed by a painted “peace wall” and stands selling overpriced water and tomato soup. It displays the white privilege that’s still prevalent today and the unfortunate side of humanity when white people are angry and don’t have a war to direct it at or a red hat directing them towards something to feel mad about.
The shots of the crowd are simply insane, and the director has interviews with many attendees and artists. Most of the musical acts that talk in this doc have one or two lines about their experience. We get a lot more from Moby, who comes across as a bit of a weenie, especially when he’s whining that his name isn’t on a small plywood sign. It’s well put together, flows at a good pace, and tells a solid story, even if some of the drama (namely the stuff about the DMX performance) feels a bit manufactured for the current climate. Woodstock ‘99: Peace, Love, and Rage is a really good documentary and definitely worth your time.
