[star rating=”4″] TRAINWRECK – WOODSTOCK 99. Three-part documentary series. Directed by Jamie Crawford. Netflix
KAREN RUTTER reviews
You knew things were going to go wrong from Day One already, when the curtain rose on a dry, dust-filled strip with no trees or grass in sight, the temperature soared into heatwave territory, and water was being at sold at corrosive prices. Add to that no effective security, a seemingly unlimited supply of drugs and drink and a line-up of testosterone-drenched rock bands, and the perfect shit storm was inevitable. The only wonder is that the organisers never saw it coming (and ignored it when it did). The promised “festival of the decade”, Woodstock 99, was built on greed, fuelled by frustration, and destroyed by literally thousands of adrenaline-amped young men. Peace and love, it was not.
The Netflix documentary mini-series Trainwreck – Woodstock 99, traces what happened when a group of organisers with dollar signs in their eyes decided to “reinvent” the momentous Woodstock festival of 1969 – the epic counter culture concert where acts like Joan Baez, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix performed in front of around 400 000 chilled-out hippies.
Except the rebooted version had a few major differences. First off, the tickets were expensive (at the original Woodstock, tickets started at $18 but most people got in for free); nobody was allowed to bring food or water inside the festival compound, and had to buy them instead at inflated prices (in ’69, people distributed food for free from communal kitchens); the grounds (on a decommissioned military base) offered no shade or grass; the toilets were inadequate (and leaked into the drinking fountains); and the line-up of bands leant towards the heavy (rap-rock rabble rousers like Limp Bizkit, opposed to the more mellow Country Joe and the Fish and Ravi Shankar).
Off their faces
As the 250 000-strong crowd grew increasingly hot and troubled, so did the atmosphere. It’s fair to say that everybody there was off their faces on something. They were pissed, and they were pissed off. They were being treated badly, and they were going to act badly back. Gangs of aggressive, entitled young white men started doing what they always do when they’re drunk and aggressive – break things. This included the stages, the sound towers, cars, trucks, tents – and women. After three days, the site looked like a war zone. And the organisers – including a completely spaced-out Michael Lang, one of the original Woodstock founders – kept insisting to the press that the festival had been a success.
Trainwreck – Woodstock 99 features exceptional coverage of the event, mostly because there was so much media on site covering it from the start. Except the footage they got wasn’t quite expected. Instead of a rock concert, they got a riot. And as musicians and journalists were evacuated from the burning wreckage, nobody seemed to really know what had gone wrong.
Rape and destruction
Except it was obvious – bad planning, greed, toxic male energy. And the result was rape and destruction. The Guardian describes the series as “a festival documentary that doubles as a disaster movie”, and that pretty much sums it up. You can’t stop watching, even as it gets more grim. The worst part is, it’s all true.
What: Trainwreck – Woodstock 99
Where: Netflix
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