Woodstock 99

In a new Netflix documentary, DJ Norman Cook is told about the chaos that unfolded during his headline performance.

Looking devastated, he says: “That is just hideous to think that in the midst of all those people having fun, and me wanting to make everyone love each other, that was going on literally under our noses.” “That was literally the moment when everything started to look a bit less fun,” he said. When stage manager, A.J. Srybnik, finally got to the van, he found someone wielding a “rusty old” machete, and an unconscious teenage girl with her clothes pulled off alongside a boy pulling up his pants. Aptly, Cook launched into his set with Fucking In Heaven, and had only got a few tracks in when he noticed something large moving into the hangar. In the documentary, one member of staff working that night said: “I remember shining my flashlight on the floor and literally seeing people on all fours having sex”, while another said it was more debauched than the dark room at Berghain: “I saw from the stage one wall of the hangar several naked people lined up with their hands up against a wall and a line of people behind them… And while people are still talking about it 23 years later, unfortunately, it’s not for the reason he hoped.

This tense, brisk watch inspires a sense of dread as it lays bare the rape, riots and arson that destroyed a 1999 festival. Sadly, the deeper questions ...

In the end, it doesn’t have the heart to go there in any depth, following the adrenaline-inducing spectacle of the fires and the riots instead. Was it the culture, or the environment? The biggest questions are why it turned, and why in such a particular and grotesque way. The crowd was – by many accounts and from the plentiful footage of the time – macho and aggressive, a “frat boy” culture dominating the event. A cardboard sign saying “show us your tits” – which someone had taken the time to make – is waved at female artists from the crowd. Each episode follows a day of the festival, from an optimistic start on Friday through to the apocalyptic scenes in the early hours of Monday morning, using a ticking clock to count down to each fresh catastrophe.

What was supposed to be an event celebrating the 30th anniversary of the iconic 1969 festival filled with peace, love, and music, devolved into a chaotic, ...

Throughout Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99, attendees, organizers, and several of the artists that performed share their experiences from the festival. This direction not only creates a more “in the moment” feel it also helps distance the new docuseries from the 2021 HBO documentary Woodstock ’99: Peace, Love, and Rage, which looked at the festival from a more modern view. Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 takes what other documentaries and news specials have done over the years and turned up the volume to provide an unprecedented look at the notorious event.

Its tone captures a bittersweet rush that you must have had to be there to truly get.

So much in this story could have been prevented, and predicted, and this documentary shows its collapse with one compelling passage after the next. The purpose of going to this story is to be amazed at how obvious these developments are. Trainwreck" is quickly paced with one episode for each day; its different themes, pop culture references, name-drops, and general schadenfreude always pop, but that acute nature can make it guilty of glossing over some of the more significant or curious pieces in the big picture. The series is especially compelling with behind-the-scenes footage, starting with VHS footage of planning meetings that went from nostalgic optimism to complete negligence. Similarly, this documentary is dedicated to humanizing those who were treated as animals and then perceived as such when they started to rebel, destroying the grounds by its closing Sunday night. They hired a bunch of popular acts who are paid to be angry (Korn, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock) and then they gave thousands of concertgoers numerous reasons to be angry at them.