Of course there are irritants at a music mega-festival like Osheaga. Don’t go away on style glitter makeup Euphoria in Saint-Jérôme, the angry crowds that form in the traffic corridors (move on, ordeal!), the $15 aperitif spritz that tastes like water or the omnipresence of clothing sponsored by Garage boutiques.
Posted at 7:15 a.m.
But at least Parc Jean-Drapeau isn’t crumbling under mountains of plastic waste, security watches over festival-goers, and chemical toilets aren’t pouring into a sea of brown mud that stoned music lovers take for a bath. purifying clay.
In short, nothing to do with the Woodstock fiasco of July 1999, as shown in the troubling documentary miniseries from Netflix Trainwreck: Woodstock 99 (Classic Chaos: Woodstock 99), which can be devoured in French, in English and in one evening.
Barely three one-hour episodes, each telling a day in the anxiety-provoking story of this gigantic gathering orchestrated on a military base in the city of Rome, in the State of New York. It is both captivating and revolting. It’s better than Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rageoffered on Crave.
The construction of the episodes of Trainwreck: Woodstock 99 Deftly reproduces the tension that soared over the scorching asphalt of a former airstrip that hosted Korn, Metallica, Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine, Megadeath and Kid Rock, among others. On Fridays, it smells not of patchouli as in 1969, but of optimism. The youngsters pitch their tents, sip beers and roam around happily like their parents 30 years ago.
On Saturday, things get bad, especially when the singer Fred Durst, of Limp Bizkit, encourages his 250,000 fans – already cracked to the maximum – to make mayhem on the notes of the piece BreakStuff. The collective mood darkens. And on Sunday, it turns straight into chaos and destruction. Riots, rapes, vandalism, gigantic fires, the immense land of Woodstock is transformed into a war zone.
Even today, the organizers of Woodstock 99 pass the buck when it comes to designating those responsible for the disaster. A handful of spoilsports poisoned the atmosphere! These were just isolated incidents, frankly! The aggressive music groups themselves caused the overflows!
This excellent Netflix documentary rightly highlights the greed of the Woodstock 99 organizing committee, which siphoned off young people’s money and then abandoned them on a vacant lot. By cutting corners on garbage collection, hiring incompetent security guards, raising food prices to ridiculous levels and neglecting to provide basic sanitation, the festival’s masterminds struck the first match in front of a huge barrel of powder filled to the lid.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY NETFLIX
A number of Woodstock 99 festival goers are seen covered in what looks like mud…
To these irritating elements must be added the suffocating heat, the consumption of drugs, the exhaustion, the contaminated drinking water and the absence of adequate security so that everything explodes with violence. The third episode looks like a horror movie.
Archive footage from the Netflix miniseries extensively shows a problematic and majority group in the Woodstock 99 crowd: angry young white men. You know, those who walk around in belly, in cargo shorts and who scream at women: show me your balls, tabarnak! Them there. Surely members of some fraternity, these “bros” with atrophied brain took advantage of the bacchanalia spirit to attack women and demolish everything. Nice bunch of champions.
On camera, these young specimens are seen waving, destroying, jumping, vociferating and spitting their anger. They contaminate their comrades with their poisonous energy, which spills out at the sound of nookieLimp Bizkit, or Freak on a Leashby Korn.
We get along: the “testosterone” and “nu metal” poster did nothing to instill love and peace at Woodstock 99. When Jewel and Sheryl Crow took to the stage with their softer pop-rock, they were copiously booed and insulted. Boo, get out, ladies, we want to see your breasts!
And worst idea in the world: the organizers handed out 100,000 candles during the performance of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the last to sing at Woodstock 99. Of course, the candles were used to light fires, hello. Instead of calming the crowd, Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers followed up with the cover Fire, by Jimi Hendrix. Spectators saw it as a sign of scrapping encouragement, while Kiedis swears he wanted to honor Jimi Hendrix’s sister by replaying this classic.
Trainwreck: Woodstock 99 doesn’t watch itself with a laugh like the documentaries that were fabricated on Fyre Festival. There is a gloomy and sordid aspect in Woodstock 99 which makes you sick. Perched on her guitar neck, the little dove of 1969, who nevertheless saw others in her time, had to close her eyes very tightly before this sad spectacle of debauchery.