Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 / Woodstock ’99: Peace, Love and Rage

Title: Trainwreck: Woodstock 99 / Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage
Director: Garret Price / Jamie Crawford
Released: 2022 / 2021

Plot: Two Documentaries looking at the ill fated attempt to bring back Woodstock after a disastrous attempt in 1994 the documentaries look at 1999 attempt which ended in rioting and violence

Review: For years two of my big obsessions have been Action Park and Woodstock ‘99 and in the last couple of years we have been blessed with fantastic documentaries for both with Action Park being covered in depth by Class Action Park while Woodstock ‘99 I thought Musicbox had done a fantastic job of covering with their lengthy Woodstock ‘99: Peace, Love and Rage. Now surprisingly close to that release we have Netflix offering up their own account of the doomed festival with a three part documentary series Trainwreck: Woodstock ‘99.

Of course the initial fear was that it would be the same footage and talking head recycled for both documentaries which thankfully was not the case with one documentary complementing the other as the two when watched closely together provide the most in depth look at the festival than we could have hoped for and why I wanted to pair them together for this review. 

Right off the bat it’s clear that both documentaries are taking different approaches to the topic with Musicbox looking at the event from the perspective of the fans while Netflix chooses to follow the event staff from setting up and planning the festival were it soon become clear that the event organisers despite claiming they were working with an unlimited budget were more focused on making a profit especially when they lost so much money on Woodstock ’94. What’s more shocking is that event promotor John Scher openly proclaims how everything was about making money while clearly gives zero fucks about anything else all while rocking the same kind of self deluded ignorance that is usually reserved for political figures like Trump. Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang meanwhile is non the less deluded as he continues like the event photographer Lisa Law to convince himself that the legacy of Woodstock being a legendary hippy hangout of peace and love what nostalgia remembers it as when it was equally as problematic as the ‘99 event with it’s own bouts of violence as highlighted by the Musicbox documentary but strangely never brought up in the Netflix narrative. 

Both documentaries serve to highlight the many issues the planning had overlooked about holding the event on a disused air force base, especially when faced with soaring temperatures and most of the surfaces are concrete and asphalt with little to no shade being organised by the promoters who also gave the vendors free reign to charge what they want leading to as they gouged the attendees with $4 bottles of water while the security confiscated their water at the game but somehow none of their drugs which are being used and sold in plainview throughout the festival. 

Like any problem Scher never takes the opportunity to admit that he made a mistake and instead unflinchingly and without shame continually blames it all on the attendees for either not being prepared enough or not embracing the peace and love ideals of the festival. This of course like with Lang that they are not denying there was any problems or trying to convince the press that it was only a handful of anarchy seeking festival and not a mass uprising even as the festival is being torn to the ground and set on fire by hordes of pissed off festival goers. Of course when you consider that the festival goers were living in squalor and filth as the festival ground soon begins resembling a refugee camp as garbage piles ups and the sewage is spilling out of the toilets and the Netflix doc captures the first signs of unrest start to show as when Lisa Law attempts to hand out some black bags to one group only to be told to go f**k herself before they knock over one of the structures the celebs meanwhile are shown turning up in limos, staying in posh trailers and at one point being given free converse gear all while Scher fondly reflects on what a fun time they were having on their side of the wall, the zoned out teens laying against the other side proving a fitting comparison between the divide. 

Nostalgia is of course something not only held onto by the organisers as Musicbox highlights that for many of the acts its was equally a nostalgia kick with Wycliff Jean trying to channel his inner Hendrix while failing to set his guitar on fire while another band is faced with a group of nonplussed teens when they announce that they are playing with a member of the Doors. These kids are of course more drawn in by the lineup of bands than embracing the spirit of their hippy forefathers. At the same time the late 90’s music scene was also a loud and angry scene with Nu-metal on the rise which the assistant site manager Lee Rosenblatt states he tried to point out to Scher that perhaps including a line up with so many angry bands might not be the best choice only for Scher to inturn tell him to shut the fuck up. It’s almost comical later when Scher is blaming Limp Bizkit and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers for working the crowd up with their music especially when their sets are shown to be at the centre of some of the worst moments of chaos.  

Being a Xenial there is of course a great sense of nostalgia which comes from seeing the bands on the line up and the late 90’s fashions while at the same time it’s highlighted just how the era might have also not have been as rose tinted (much like any generational era) as I like to remember it, with college bro’s leaching on topless festival goers and branding signs requesting drugs and tits but then you only need look at American Juggalo which looked at Insane Clown Posse’s Gathering of the Juggalos to realise that such things are still as rife now as they were back then when we was in an era of everything being xtreme and pornstar being seen as mainstream celebrities. The darkside of this is especially exposed by Musicbox who give a decent focus to the large number of rape and assaults that happened at the festival with Scher of course being quick to blame the victims while going further to compare the number of rapes as being no different to the amount seen in any minor city of the same population as the amount of the people in the festival. The Netflix doc also highlights how the security was basically just local kids who signed up for festival access than any kind of trained security team an idea comparable to the Rolling Stones hiring the Hell’s Angels for their security which as the documentary Gimme Shelter focused on only proved to be as disastrous as the ill prepared team trying to deal with so many angry and riled up festival goers. 

Both documentaries really capture the chaos of the saturday when Limp Bizkit’s set is blamed as the start of the issues and the crowd from that point descend into anarchy and breaking up the site culminating on the candlelight vigil to protest gun control in the wake of columbine is instead used to start fires with anything the festival goers can find to burn. At the same time there is a wealth of fascinating footage in both documentaries pooled from news and MTV coverage of the event and the PPV footage which isn’t just focused on the chaos but the festival as a whole.

With both documentaries using different footage as well as opposite viewpoints to tell the story, by watching them both you ultimately end up with a more full picture of the event than if you watched just one of them. Unquestionably though these are fantastic documentaries and well worth checking out with the 90’s nostalgia only being an added bonus for those of us who remember the era even if it’s hardly painting the generation in the best light but then what generation isn’t without its problems with MTV host Ananda Lewis putting it into perspective when she looks at where society went from here and citing the rise of the #ME2 movement as a sign that compared to the victims that the organisers were so keen to ignore like all the problems of the event we are at least trying to improve ourselves as a society…..now if we could do somthing about the greed.