Quote:
Originally Posted by Lisnaholic
Yeah! Even I knew their music was different,SGR, although I still managed to spell "Bizkit" wrong 
Your work colleague was right in many ways: I think the original Woodstock sent a message that, left to itself, the counter culture could organise and gather in a positive spirit in which women and children were both safe and welcome. The ยด99 Woodstock showed the counter-culture descending into anarchy in just a couple of days, with women abused and the vulnerable suddenly more vulnerable than usual.
I don't remember hearing your comments word-for-word like that in the documentary, Carpe, but it was pretty much like that. (Welcome back, btw)
Along with their other mis-steps, the organizers failed to foresee how a huge crowd, cranked up on Korn and Limp Bizkit would behave. It was very touching to see how some other artists were also caught, trying to compete with those big name acts. A tough crowd in many senses of the word. |
I think something that the documentary doesn't explicitly mention (maybe they do, I haven't watched the last episode) is that '69 and '99 were very different times in a particular way - in '69, many young men who may have been predisposed to aggression and violence were off in Vietnam fighting a (stupid, bull****) war. In '99, men who otherwise may have been off doing a similar thing were instead stewing in their anger and testosterone listening to Korn and Limp Bizkit. Chaos ensues. It's just one aspect of it among others.
I didn't live through the sixties, but the feeling I get is that there was a fairly unified counter-culture movement back then (again, the war provided a nice focal point) - the counter-culture in '99 was instead rather fragmented. People's feelings of anger, isolation, and disillusion with their place in society and the "American Dream" was more atomized. You had hip-hop music, grunge, big beat, post-grunge, pop-punk, and nu-metal all catering to different feelings.
The '90s was an interesting time - the fact that they had a festival that included artists like the following in the same place is really damn cool, just too bad about how it all turned out.