Woodstock 99 was meant to channel the peace and love vibes of its 1969 original – until it became a violent, drug-fuelled pit of arson. Luckily, there were plenty of camera crews there …
Netflix’s Fyre festival documentary was one of those out-of-the-blue hits that seemed to dominate conversation for months when it was released in 2019. A film about a woefully organised festival that spiralled out of control with alarming ferocity, it was the sort of thing you had to watch through the cracks in your fingers. But something tells me that Fyre festival is going to be superseded, because Netflix is about to release a series about Woodstock 99.
Clusterf**k: Woodstock ’99, as it is aptly titled, is a three-part, chronologically told series about one of the most appallingly assembled music festivals in history. Held to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the original Woodstock, which has come to be seen as a benign force of positivity, Woodstock 99 became renowned for the consequences of its spectacularly bad decision-making. The original Woodstock? Held on a dairy farm. This one? An abandoned military base. The original Woodstock had free food kitchens. This one sold plastic water bottles at $4 a pop. The original Woodstock’s lineup included Ravi Shankar and Joan Baez. This one was a celebration of mindlessly aggressive nu-metal. No wonder it ended in flames.
