Woodstock, Woodstock 99. It was promoted as "2 More Days of Peace and Music". And that's not an exaggerated figure, by the way. 11. Because lacerated feet, heat exhaustion, and people getting run over by tractors just wasn't enough to keep them all busy, the medical team also had to set up separate tents just to treat people who were having bad trips. A 1995 article in the Times Herald-Record said the hill where the teen was sleeping was covered in a "pile of soaked garbage and sleeping bags." Sign up for our newsletter. Meanwhile, would-be festival-goers looked for places to camp along the road, which sometimes ended up being people's backyards. The Woodstock festival was a generation-defining, epic historical moment, which became enshrined in musical history and the collective consciousness of America. Woodstock was a music festival held August 15–18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, 40 miles (65 km) southwest of Woodstock. We want to hear from you! They were all in their 20s, and the only real qualifications they had were green with pictures of presidents on them. After all, the memories of 500,000 stoned hippies may fade, but film is forever. Some of the big performers had to be flown in via helicopter because they couldn't get in by land. People were told to be cautious in taking anything that they did not open themselves. Everyone remembers Joan Baez, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Keef Hartley Band, and Quill. Unless they maybe just didn't think of Max Yasgur's dairy farm as "Mother Earth," necessarily. So, by the time headliner Jimi Hendrix got on stage, the crowd had dwindled from a peak 500,000 down to around 180,000. Some were smashed in frustration, causing minor flooding in the area. According to History, it got so bad that the festival was nearly canceled, because by Saturday some of the performers were having temper-tantrums and demanding upfront pay, in cash. For many, it showed the counterculture of the 1960s and the "hippie era". Now, there were a lot of positives, and not just the unforgettable musical performances (provided you were close enough to the stage to actually see and hear them) but also the part where the world found out that it's actually possible for half a million people to get together without a single fistfight, at least not as far as anyone can remember. Woodstock is popularly known as the music festival that involved a lot of drug use. Post Woodstock . It might be the most famous rock concert and festival ever held. The Hog Farmers had developed a technique for talking down bad trips, which was remarkably successful and also saved them from having to use Thorazine, a seriously hard-core tranquilizer and anti-psychotic drug commonly used to treat bad trips in emergency rooms. In fact, essentials like ticket booths, gates, and fencing to cordon off the grounds were nowhere near completed when the masses began trickling in. We have a really serious situation out there,” a stark contrast to “the brown acid that is circulating around us isn’t too good” announcement 30 years earlier. Electrical problems and ankle-deep water on stage cause Grateful Dead to get shocked when they touch their microphones and electric guitar strings. 14. The scene on the roads leading to the festival was roughly similar to that long shot they used to play in the opening credits of The Walking Dead, with lines of abandoned cars clogging the freeway out of Atlanta. In one version, Hoffman looked at his assailant and then jumped off the stage and walked away; in another version, Townshend actually hit him hard enough to knock him off the stage. Woodstock 50 Neue Probleme für das Festival 17.07.2019, 22:32 Uhr Auch für Liebe und Frieden braucht es eine Genehmigung: Das Festival "Woodstock 50" hat mit weiteren Problemen zu kämpfen. By the end of the festival, medical staff reported they had treated 797 bad trips, 23 epileptic seizures, 57 cases of heat exposure, and 176 asthma attacks. 19 Worst Things About Woodstock ’99 1. The event was rife with problems: Bands performed hours after they were scheduled (the Who went on at 5 a.m.); an anarchist group tore down the fencing so … Today, everyone knows there's no better way to make a few thousand bucks in a weekend than to make people wait in ridiculously long lines for crappy, overpriced food. Which is pretty wise, although getting high would have at least taken his mind off all the money he was losing. There were some free fountains, but the lines to use those often resembled a Disneyland ride. The traffic impacted the festival in more ways than just making everyone cranky. At Woodstock, there was one toilet for every 833 people, which means standing in the bathroom line was about 18 and a half times suckier than standing in the bathroom line at a modern stadium, and that's if you're only taking into consideration the standing-in-line part. But that doesn't mean that the festival was all dancing, holding hands, and putting flowers in everyone's hair, either. Women’s groups immediately criticized the site’s webmaster, and even Woodstock ’99 co-promoter John Scher called Woodstock.com’s actions “repugnant.”. Instead of being remembered as a generation-defining, epic historical moment, Woodstock could have been remembered as one of the great tragedies of the 20th century. They didn't have any choice." But the fact that there was no way in for emergency services just sort of highlights the miracle of Woodstock — that there weren't considerably more deaths and/or serious injuries. It was billed as "three days of peace and music," but it's probably more accurate to say that it was "three days of mud, rain, and food shortages." Four months after Woodstock, Max Yasgur was sued by his neighbours for property damage supposedly caused by festival-goers. However, Wyclef’s attempt at recreating Jimi Hendrix’s celebrated guitar rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” from Woodstock ’69 was an act of desecration almost on par with Rage Against the Machine burning an American flag. Politico calls Woodstock one of the top 10 worst traffic jams ever — the traffic was jammed up for 10 miles on the New York Thruway for the entire three days of the festival. Assessing the music of Woodstock is easy, since you can see and hear it any time on the DVD. According to Today, the Grateful Dead's sound engineer remembered Bob Weir "jumping back five feet from electrical shock when he went up to touch the microphone the first time." Während das Festival im Chaos zu versinken drohte, klappte es mit der Inszenierung der Bilder. At least there were more bathrooms per capita what with all the houses around. According to the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Security guards said they were confiscating fake passes at the rate of 50 an hour at just one gate.” Although the festival didn’t sell out — the amount of tickets sold were capped at 250,000 — it’s impossible to know how many festivalgoers snuck in and how that tampered with what organizers planned logistically. According to one account, a motel in Rome, New York was forced to turn away Alanis Morissette, Howard Stern and George Clinton because there were no vacancies. The situation was so bad that, after the festival, lawyers for some festivalgoers threatened to sue organizers for negligence. 13. Creed, voted by our readers as The Worst Band of the Nineties, played the festival’s penultimate set on Sunday night. Modern stadiums have flush toilets, and Woodstock had porta-potties, so you can add an exponential amount of suckiness to the basic standing-in-line suckiness when you consider that that many people using a single porta-potty is going to create some seriously disgusting problems. Hasłem przewodnim było: Peace, Love and Happiness. There were a ton of people who said the Grateful Dead was one of the worst acts at the festival — even Jerry Garcia's friend Phil Ciganer couldn't be charitable, later declaring, "It was the worst show of theirs I'd ever seen." The stage, parking lots, concession stands, and a children's playground got finished just in time, but for some reason organizers didn't think to prioritize gates and ticket booths on their list of "top money-losing mistakes we might make" and by the time 50,000 people just walked right in and camped out next to the stage, it was a problem that could no longer be fixed. From the horrific to the just-plain-lame, the most terrible things about one of modern concert-going’s biggest debacles. The Baltimore Sun reported that halfway through the weekend, “More than 700 had been treated for heat exhaustion and dehydration.” Deactivated hangars provided some of the only shade, so huge crowds gathered at the “Emerging Artists” stage and had to endure sets by artists like Bijou Phillips simply to escape the sun. But residents of Wallkill basically said, "Hell, no, we don't want a bunch of hippies in our town with their acid and their mary-ju-wanna, let's pass a law." So many people flooded into the festival grounds that the promoters had to stop checking tickets and just make the concert free because they were … A modern stadium might have one toilet for every 45 or 50 seats, which is a great system in the fantasy land of "not everyone is going to have to go at the same time," but it doesn't take into account the fact that during intermissions, everyone goes at the same time. Unfortunately the Woodstock medical team wasn't really that experienced with LSD "freakouts," so they enlisted the help of the Hog Farm, yes, the same people who passed out all the granola. Bhad Bhabie’s 18th Birthday Account Raises Questions, Prince’s Sister on Honoring Her Brother’s Vault of Unreleased Music, Taylor Swift Carefully Reimagines Her Past on ‘Fearless: Taylor’s Version’, The Wallflowers Announce First Album in 9 Years, ‘Exit Wounds’, Phoebe Waller-Bridge to Star Alongside Harrison Ford in ‘Indiana Jones 5’. Evidently it was enough of a problem that there was a whole medical area devoted to treating burned eyeballs, though no one says whether the damage was permanent. Gr… Imagine going to a concert and having to wait in line to use the bathroom. So Woodstock became a free festival — a mistake that would turn out to be financially devastating for its organizers. But, you know, peace and music. … It was raining. Dave Matthews: HornballThe amount of flashing in the audience during the Dave Matthews Band’s set inspired their namesake singer to remark, “Today, there’s an abundance of titties.” Yes, Dave Matthews said that out loud, into a microphone, in front of thousands and thousands of people. Wyclef’s Horrible Hendrix ImpersonationPerhaps no one tried to conjure up the spirit of Woodstock ’69 as much as Wyclef Jean. According to History, Hendrix had a clause in his contract that virtually guaranteed most fans would miss his performance. The nurse did say there were "five or six or seven [patients] at a time," so it was either a very big made-up story or a very minor epidemic. Bathrooms, concession stands, and a pavilion for the professional performers were likewise utterly lacking before showtime. There was no security, so it was easy to bring drugs to the festival. Hot TarmacIf the late-July heat was absorbed by greenery like at most fests, the temperature wouldn’t have been as much of an issue, but much of the Griffiss Air Force Base was tarmac and concrete — materials the sun’s rays just bounce off of. Insane Clown Posse’s Money GiveawayInsane Clown Posse created a little mayhem during their set at Woodstock ’99. But then, traffic became such a problem that they had to contract helicopters to fly in food, supplies, and their very expensive performers. They were holding her arms; you could see she was struggling.” That gang rape occurred during Korn’s set. Please, help the medical team get them out of there. Not only does it remain the most famous festival … The experience at the Woodstock Festival indicates that organized, supportive therapy can effectively manage such a situation, even for hundreds of patients. With temperatures hovering from the high 80s to, in some accounts, hitting the 100s, water became a necessity. But at Woodstock, would-be vendors just didn't have the foresight to recognize how much money there was to be made. Woodstock… 3. Let's rank them in order of things we'd better not accidentally do," then maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't have lost a million dollars. But it does seem strange that a random nurse would make up a similar story, unless she was so horrified by the drug use that she felt a little extra fictionalized horror might dissuade future "travelers.". Despite the lack of big-name talent — besides The Who’s John Entwistle, who inexplicably performed a solo set on the Emerging Artists stage despite being only one of two artists at Woodstock ’99 to have performed at Woodstock ’69 — the Emerging Artists stage was frequently packed, if only because the airport hangar that served as the venue was one of the rare shade providers at the festival. The Woodstock Music and Art Festival was a rock music festival at Max Yasgur's 600 acre (2.4 km²) dairy farm in the town of Bethel, New York from 15–18 August 1969. The 1969 Woodstock festival was famous for the mud and the music, but it might have been even more famous for the drugs. It's probably safe to say that the four guys who put the festival together really had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Perhaps the only recorded incident happened on-stage, as Abbie Hoffman rushed the stage during a break in The Who’s set. Even the captions — “Nice pair” and “Show your tits” to name a few — were tasteless. Verne TroyerWhere Woodstock ’69 had Abbie Hoffman and Wavy Gravy, Woodstock ’99 had Austin Powers‘ “Mini-Me” serving as emcee on Saturday. Woodstock's Effect on Music Woodstock had both positive and negative effects on the rock groups of Counterculture. A dispute among Woodstock 50 organizers over whether the upcoming anniversary concert is canceled or not marks the latest issue to plague concerts linked to the famous festival …