When in Rome . . . Woodstock, again - riot at Woodstock 99 music festival - Brief Article

National Review, August 30, 1999 by Christopher Caldwell

The second commemoration of Woodstock, at the former Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, N.Y., resulted in two rampages. Both of them had the Sixties chant of Peace-Love-and-Understanding as a pretext.

First, a frat-boy-saturated crowd groped-and perhaps raped-a number of the bare-breasted girls being passed over the mosh pit and, once the music had stopped, emptied a couple of 18-wheelers full of souvenirs and smashed a handful of automatic-teller machines. Second, Richard Cohen and other columnists keen to defend the "spirit" of the original Woodstock reaffirmed their willingness to achieve Peace-Love-and- Understanding, by force of arms if necessary. In tones that would make a drunken Serb plead on his knees for moderation, Cohen looked at a Wirephoto of teenagers looting a souvenir truck and announced: "I want these guys arrested. . . . I want everyone else in the picture arrested also."

In the rush to assign blame for the greatest incident of rock wilding since a dozen were stomped to death at a 1979 Who concert, the bands were first. Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine, and (my compliments on the name) Insane Clown Posse were singled out early. Not wholly without reason. Rage Against the Machine ended its set on the eve of the riots with the novel send-off: "F*** you. I won't do what you tell me."

Here's where Cohen and his like are trying to have it both ways. One can be appalled at the mayhem that ensued, but still admit that it's hard to think of anything more in the spirit of the original Woodstock than Rage's taunt. The '69 concert, held at Max Yasgur's farm upstate, was defined not just by what it was for (Peace-Love-and-Understanding) but also by what it was against (Vietnam, conformity, and capitalist exploitation). But as the decades have passed, the "Woodstock Experience" has come to be-for most of its members-indistinguishable from the American Establishment Experience.

Evidence of the mellow way in which the former counterculture has bled into an establishment culture comes from the loudly proclaimed disappointment of Woodstock '99 promoters John Scher and Michael Lang (who helped set up the original Woodstock) that the festival didn't end more quietly. "Concert officials had planned to end the show on a more reflective note," the Boston Globe reported. But Scher and Lang's idea of "a more reflective note" was Peter Gabriel's closing of the first Woodstock commemoration, five years ago, with his ballad "Biko." The song is about anti-apartheid politician Steve Biko, killed in 1977 by South African special forces. To think that a song about a democracy activist murdered by an authoritarian regime is supposed to lull an audience to sleep indicates the quiescence that has settled on the counterculture between 1969 and now.

Michael Lang explained the riots by saying, "I don't think the kids were making an anti-Woodstock statement. I think it was an anti- establishment, anti-everything statement." What he missed was that, now, Woodstock is the establishment. Fifty-two-year-old Tom Fall of Putney, Vt., had been at the original Woodstock, and he relived old memories while working as a vendor at the 1999 one. He professed himself shocked at the turn events took. "This was supposed to be peace, love, and harmony," he said. But he was wrong, too. This was not about peace, love, and harmony. It was about making tons of dough for the Woodstock Generation by exploiting the Woodstock Generation's children.

But there was a political protest at Woodstock '99, and Don Waslelewski of Hudson, N.H., had no hesitation in proclaiming what it was about. "I blame Michael Lang," he said. "He totally overpriced everything. He forgot what Woodstock is all about . . . It's 95 degrees outside and the guy is selling water for $5 a pop." This didn't cut much ice with such tribunes of the privileged class as Richard Cohen. "The economic justification given by some is just plain lame," he wrote. "If the Woodstockians thought the price of a hot dog was excessive ($5), they need not have bought one. If they thought $4 was too much to ask for a bottle of water, they are right. But these prices are in line with what's charged at standard rock concerts."

But Woodstock was not a standard rock concert. It involved holding kids incommunicado for several days at the height of a heat wave that killed hundreds up and down the east coast. Woodstock's promoters charged $10 for burritos and $12 for mini-pizzas, all of it going into Michael Lang's pocket. It wasn't just that water cost four and five dollars a bottle-it was that the concert promoters appear to have shut off the water in order to promote sales. And they didn't clean the toilets! The port-a-potty doors were wedged open all weekend by sloping hills of turds. "They were expected to live like animals but spend money like kings," is how the New York Times described the gripe of an angry 47- year-old Woodstock-nostalgic, standing there with her 2-year-old granddaughter.

"If I were a Woodstock promoter," says Cohen, "I would offer a reward for the names of the looters and I just might hire some bounty hunters to look for these kids." I'll bet he would. The italics are mine, and I hope they remind Cohen that he sounds like a copper boss sending his thugs in to take out the union organizers shaving profit margins at the Upper Peninsula mines he rules from his midtown desk.