I was at Woodstock '99 and it destroyed my innocence (2022) | Hacker News Reader

I was at Woodstock '99 and it destroyed my innocence (2022)

kerrang.com

85 pointsSirLJ29 comments

Woodstock 99 was my very first concert. Ever. I was 17 and quite anxious but I would have done anything for my high school crush so off we went. Weeks of working in a grocery store to pay for this event I had absolutely no expectations around, beyond maybe being able to see some great bands.

This all happened in a time of my life before I was “awake” due to other life circumstances, but what a slap to the face. Our tent was trampled. Everyone was filthy. The limp bizkit show caused absolute chaos. There wasnt enough food or water but I barely noticed because I couldnt afford anything. They had minimal security. No cell phones. Friends fully separated. Total and absolute madness. I dont even remember leaving or getting home. Must have fully disassociated by that point.

My parents would have been angry but I got home in one piece and I think their relief overrode any negative feelings. Pretty sure I spent a solid month inside on my computer after that.

>Our tent was trampled. Everyone was filthy. The limp bizkit show caused absolute chaos. There wasnt enough food or water but I barely noticed because I couldnt afford anything. They had minimal security. No cell phones. Friends fully separated. Total and absolute madness.

All of the above sound as intended part of the fun for a rock festival, and would have been seeked and cherished back in the day! I know I and friends did.

Including the: "I dont even remember leaving or getting home." which people who try to achieve on purpose by getting drunk/stoned/high (and even be proud of it, like the saying: "If you can remember Woodstock, you weren't there!").

Yeah I think at this point in my life Id appreciate an intentional bout of chaos but at the time I was just in a stupor.

I guess it makes sense to ease in to those kinds of things (go to simpler local shows first, progress to more chaotic ones, etc).

Maybe 20-22 is the better age for those bigger events.

Is your username the way to ask for beer after-hours in Chinatown?

I might be missing something obvious but what do you mean by “awake”?

Possibly a reference to: Helen Keller on her life before self-consciousness (1908) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40466814

I cannot speak to the above comments intent, but felt their words deeply. I assume they meant living with self-awareness. Consciousness of one’s own place in the world contextual beyond oneself. Becoming suddenly and irrevocably aware of one’s own inevitable mortality, rather than continued enjoyment of adolescent bliss. Evolving beyond liminal, secondhand awareness of suffering and injustice to an instant and innate understanding of the brutality and brevity of life itself.

reality came knocking.

So you’re describing what sounds to me to be an amazing concert.

Huge crowd gatherings are always best enjoyed from afar.

This was in 1999 but if you go back to the stories of Motley Crue, Guns N'Roses, Metallica etc. during the 80s they are not too dissimilar

They were the guys on stage (and I would add not ordinary people, high on fame and dozens of different drugs) meaning separated from the crowd both in terms of height and distance and there are testimonies of them becoming extremely scared and agitated by the crowd pushing and charging each other and the barriers.

All in all, the story telling about surviving it and being able to enthusiastically tell people you know about the scare and relief is much better than actually living such experiences (although of course you have to live them to be able to do so)

Another documentary about the St. Louis riot in 1991 during Guns n Roses UYI Tour :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qVzAA-v3qM

> Huge crowd gatherings are always best enjoyed from afar.

That's just limiting your experience. I have been in plenty of huge crowds that were incredibly fun. And that includes huge death metal concerts.

Picking out a few exceptions about riots isn't just the usual experience, at festivals.

Take a look at “electric daisy carnival Las Vegas 2024” that’s been going for years now. Latest number was 500k people attending per day on a race track field stadium.

Yoga and pool party during the day then party with live music/DJ all night long.

Good time to be a helicopter pilot charging for rides to the show and able to see the views.

(2022) Discussion at the time [0] (112 points, 153 comments)

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32357433

I had a similar experience at Woodstock '94, though the level of violence was certainly much lower than at ‘99.

(I just wrote up a huge expose on my experience, but the comment was waayyyy too long to put here, so i'm just putting this much-smaller note, maybe I'll post the longer one in a blog writeup somewhere).

It was an awesome road trip of three dirt-poor college students the summer after freshman year, trying to get by with minimal budget and having no plan or idea how to get there.

We couldn't afford the tickets, but on Saturday concert organizers got rid of the fences and gates, making the concert effectively free! So my friends and I made last minute plans to go to the show on Sunday, 300 miles away.

Many adventures getting there, and we got separated at the actual show, so I spent the entire day by myself in the crowds. It was a total juxtaposition between MC's on stage saying "let's hear it for peace and love" and the crowds cheering for peace and love.

Versus the realities of the crowds hitting and pushing each other for stepping wrong into their space, throwing mud around, mass groping of any girl who dared to go topless, food venders selling way overpriced food and drinks, people making racist comments, etc.

Overall I'm glad I went, got to see Dylan, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Peter Gabriel, Porno for Pyros, and Spin Doctors. And learned some interesting aspects of human nature too.

As I’m similar age, this was pre cell phone? Yeah losing yourselves in that sort of crowd for a day without a phone is a different experience nowadays (it’s like how 50% of Seinfeld episodes would resolve in 5 minutes if everyone had a cell phone).

As young college students, did you forgot to the the parent-style meeting point, or you all just didn't want to bother waiting around by $landmark for someone to wander back?

Actually the crazy part was finding my friends at 3 AM after walking a few miles in the dark from the concert grounds to where we parked the car, with only a rough sense of where I was going. Amazingly we found each other!

On the way in, a few miles away from the venue traffic just “stopped” and we had to park on the roadside and walk the rest of the way, cutting through fields and woods, following others who seemed to know where they were going. We left the issue of getting back to the car as a problem for “future us”.

Not sure why we didn’t pick a meeting spot, or maybe we got separated too quickly before thinking we needed one. Though actually I think we just weren’t too bothered, figuring it would all just work out. And it did.

Yeah, this was all pre-cell-phone (well, “car phones” were a thing, but mainly for the rich). If we had had phones, the adventure would have been much less interesting. We’d have gotten there much quicker w/ sat-nav, we’d have found each other and cut all anxiety wondering where we all were when the last set ended at midnight.

I was there as it was nearby to where I live, and it was one of life's great "Lord of the Flies" moments alright. Nature red in tooth and claw.

We were there throughout, taping to DV and streaming the event live, our (emedia, ibeam, windows media) footage on CNN when it got “newsworthy”.

The whole event all seemed almost exactly what you'd expect. The reputation now seems outrage machined and overblown.

I was there the week before, I was with a group of students on our way to the Niagara Falls and we stopped there for a snack. All I remember is that there seemed to be very little preparations made at the time, and that it was mostly a bunch of old hippies selling handmade sculptures made out of Coca-Cola cans. We later saw the pictures of the aftermath in the local papers and TV. Quite unreal. It was my first trip to the Americas and that visit plus getting to watch The Phantom Menace before it was released back at home were the cultural highlights of the trip (spent mostly upstate NY).

Reading festival 2006, which I attended, age 17, sounds incredibly similar. Drugs, fun, violence, sex, overdoses-a-plenty, physical/ verbal abuse to the few police/ security present, the ritual burning of tents on the last night, the horrific state of the toilets. A kebab food truck being surrounded by hungry, angry teenagers and shook until it tipped over. Meanhwhile the angry mob shouting 'The Greeks want their kebab back you fucking turks'. No police/ security in sight. And in the end...no free chips or kebabs. I planned to see tens of different bands that weekend but only just managed to drag myself to see Kings of Leon and Bloc Party. I too, like thinkingkong, spent probably a good week or so, inside, in front of my computer recovering. I never camped at a festival again, and never will. I regret nothing though and cherish what little memory I have of the event, as strange as that might sound.

Article mentions Sheryl Crow "...maybe it was the weed...I remember thinking that Sheryl Crow sounded incredible, crushing tunes like If It Makes You Happy and..."

If you ever have a chance to see Sheryl Crow live, I promise you that she and her band will blow you away. Weed not required.

Did not attend, was 13 and in Canada.

I did however watch the PPV feeds on my black box I had setup on the tube TV in my room.

Never seen casual nudity like that before in my life, the blatant sexual assaults in the crowd (clearly visible on camera), and the later the destructions.

Blown away by the scale, on TV... cannot imagine live.

Definitely was polarizing and never seen anything since

> I did however watch the PPV feeds on my black box

Cheers, didn't know this existed - https://www.youtube.com/@woodstockpoland6317/videos (Also on the torrents)

FWIW, it's all on the Internet Archive (there are 34 DVDs!): https://archive.org/details/ws99dvd

Yeah. Woodstock '99 was basically the Fyre Festival, but with more burning.

I'm pretty amazed someone didn't try to burn something down at Fyre Festival. Maybe because there was nothing to burn.

I don't see the comparison. The fyre festival never really started and it had very few people, most of them trying to get back home.

>I was at Woodstock '99 and it destroyed my innocence

Isn't that exactly what a rock show was supposed to do?

Though the original would have been much more effective in that, than the over-marketed over-commerciallized '99 version.

>overflowing toilets, flaming buses, and bare breasts

Oh, the humanity!

>My friends and I had run into some other kids from our high school – not exactly upstanding citizens back home, either – who bragged about looting a snack booth, their arms filled with pretzels and soft drinks. The whole scene looked like something from Lord Of The Flies.

Kids looting an (overpriced) snack booth evokes to the author "something from Lord of The Flies" instead of good fun? Oh how far the wild spirit of the 60s/70s has gone...

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