From Kid Rock to $4 bottled water, this
year's Woodstock catering to different
crowds
July 25, 1999
BY DANIEL RUBIN
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
ROME, N.Y. -- Forget Woodstock, this is Disneyland, a
rock-and-roll theme park. To survive it, you need a map and a plan.
There are 70 bands playing on stages that are 20 minutes apart, a
trek through a heat-scorched midway of mud, dope, flesh and $4
bottled water by Ogden.
Tuned Out? There are 40 movies screening 24 hours-a-day, an
extreme sports park, nightly raves, and booths to play videos, get
your e-mail, tattoo your triceps or paint your breasts.
It is 1990s-style niche marketing. Nothing unifies everyone, so
there's something musical for all, the girl-with-guitar poetry of
Jewel, the white heat of Metallica, the anger rock of Korn, the
hip-hop cool of Wyclef Jean.
"What struck me from reading all the talk on the Woodstock Web
site was that there are a ton of factions in pop," said Barry Maguire,
a musician who is to play on the emerging-artist stage Sunday with
singer Kirsti Ghoulson. "A Metallica fan and a Jewel fan want
nothing to do with each other. And in fact, Metallica fans want to
hurt Jewel fans."
When someone writes "Woodstock for Dummies" -- and someone
probably will, since these reunions seem here to stay now that the
promoters have found a way to keep the barbarians from storming
the gates -- some survival strategies are needed:
Apply plenty of sunscreen, pack light, bring toilet paper, leave the
dog at home.
Far different spirits were at play in separate pockets of the
3,552-acre former Griffiss Air Force Base where this festival runs
through late tonight, or whenever the tribute to Jimi Hendrix fades
away.
The East stage is where the punishing rock lives, the action is
wildest, the most soda bottles fly, and the craziest surfers ride the
top of the crowd to music by Offspring, Korn, Bush and Rage
Against the Machine.
Across the way, the West stage offered old-guard funkster George
Clinton, who celebrated his 59th birthday here, and older-skewing
acts like Bruce Hornsby, Los Lobos and Mickey Hart, the only
announced performer to have played both the original, 1969
Woodstock and its very different descendant, which is being aimed
at the gut of 18- to 25-year-olds.
"They are screaming just like we were screaming," Hart said
Saturday while Kid Rock finished up on the West Stage in a
shower of profanity that made Country Joe's once-edgy Fish Cheer
-- "Gimme an F!" -- seem like a nursery rhyme. "You can say
anything in music, and it's OK. Even if you don't know why you
are screaming, you want to outrage your parents. You want to
separate yourself from other generations," said Hart, former
drummer with the Grateful Dead.
With more than 220,000 in attendance and another 15,000 at work,
Woodstock 99 has become the third-largest city in New York State
this weekend. A 44-year-old man died of cardiac arrest. A woman
was rushed to the hospital to deliver the first baby of the newest
Woodstock Nation, but it was a false alarm. There were two
weddings, no word of divorces, and lots of evidence of love in the
air, on the grass, on the tarmac, in amazingly open view at a place
where nudity was, if not the norm, then something whose novelty
waned.
Even during the solemn incantation by a stand of Tibetan Monks
that officially started the events, women were baring their breasts as
the pay-per-view cameras descended and the crowds roared. This
continued through the gyrations of James Brown, the Godfather of
Soul, who at 71 is still all teeth and hair.
"This is sort of a take-your-top-off kind of day, is that what it is?"
singer Sheryl Crow asked between songs during her set Friday.
As thousands howled, she yelled, "Psyche!"
It wasn't just a girl thing. A guy roamed the crowds wearing only a
strategically placed tube sock, attached with duct tape. And when
someone snapped a water main during a set by Jamiroquai, that
gave hundreds of nostalgic crazies the medium they needed, and for
the remainder of the day, many wore nothing but mud, dirt and
grass.
"I sort of got pulled in," said a browned Fran Campillo, 17, of
Ogdensburg, N.Y., who wore a white bandage across a deep gash
on her left knee. The mud people stopped when it was clear she got
hurt. That didn't stop them from hurling clumps 20 and 30 yards in
the air to the gardens where people drank $5 beers.
Given the size of the tent city whose inhabitants began arriving
Thursday morning, it was a wonder to State Police Maj. James
Parmley that there had been only 16 arrests as of Saturday
morning. Most were for drugs, from marijuana to crack, and one
man was charged with sexual assault. Hundreds also were treated
for heat stroke.
The third time seems to be a charm for the Woodstock trilogy.
While gate-crashers have been as much a part of the Woodstock
history as the mud, good fences promised to make this $35- to
$37-million event profitable, said its promoters, who include
Michael Lang, creator of the original, and John Scher of
Metropolitan Entertainment. From event to Webcast to
pay-per-view to CD to movie, they're banking on a multimedia
score.
Ossie Kilkenny, one of the partners putting on the festival, said the
question of whether he takes home any money is "all tied up in the
multifarious complexities of pay-per-view."
There was no question people were spending. "This Woodstock is
nothing more than someone making a lot of money," said Justin
Dicks, 21, an electrician from Rochester, N.Y., figures four days of
fun and music will cost him $500. Fans groused about $4 water,
$12 pizzas and tickets that began at $150 and jumped $30 that day
of the show.
The town of Rome welcomed the expected infusion of $30 million
into the local economy. "We need a good shot in the arm," said
Rob Taylor, 35, an Army accountant who was dancing shirtlessly to
James Brown on Friday morning. Twenty minutes earlier, he and
the other workers on the converted base were told they were free to
check out the concert. Colleagues had come to work in tie-dye
T-shirts to mark "Woodstock Day," he said. He also noted that gas
prices had climbed 10 cents a gallon in the last week.
The roads to Rome were paved with $50 parking spaces, $20 cases
of beer, and campers and tents up for rent.
One local not interested in going is Maurice Isserman, who was at
the original Woodstock in August 1969, when he was 18, on
summer break from Reed College, and hoping to change the world.
What he remembers was being hungry, being wet and being
curious.
"I think it's the third that was most important -- I didn't know what
the event was going to be," he said by phone. "Those who go to
this Woodstock probably won't go hungry, they probably will play
in the mud, but I don't think anybody's gonna be very curious. The
script has already been written. It was laid down in 1969. There
isn't any room for surprise any more."
Isserman, a professor of American history at Hamilton College,
says he's trying hard "not to be the aging baby boomer," but the
gathering of tents and tie-dyes reminds him less of Max Yasgur's
farm than the Civil War re-enactments he drags his 4-year-old son
to.
"The re-enactors are really good," he says. "Their curses are
authentic, they handle their weapons authentically, they flop down
on the field and lie in the grass authentically. But ultimately, a Civil
War reenactment is not the battle of Gettysburg. I think something
similar is happening here. People will look authentic and they will
behave authentically, and do all the things they imagine happened at
the original, but ultimately, it is an re-enactment, it isn't
Woodstock."
There was lots of talk about the generations. A 1968 VW van with
the Pennsylvania plate DAYJA VU pulled into the compound
Thursday, making its third Woodstock appearance. Nancy
Stouffer, 48, has given the camper the full psychedelic treatment,
with the words "Far Out," "Groovy Kind of Love," "Magic Bus"
and "Flower Power" written on surfaces not covered with a rainbow
of flowers and waves.
As she talked about 1969 -- "Traffic, starvation, craziness, then it
rained and we got out" -- her 17-year-old son, Vance, played
Frisbee in the field with two friends from Camp Hill.
"There was a lot of emotion back then," she said. "The kids who
are doing things today, it's not driven by emotion; it's driven by
trends." She hissed the word.
She called over her son to ask him what he thinks about the '60s.
"Drugs," Vance Stouffer said.
"A big party," added his buddy, Noel Carroll.
She shook her head vigorously. "In the '60s, that's not what drove
things. It was the camaraderie. Why do you think they hang on to
that era? They've got nothing to hang onto."
Young Stouffer and his buddies were hanging onto a long weekend
of music by bands like Dave Matthews, DMX, Limp Biskit, Creed
and "what's his name?" -- Willie Nelson. "They rock," he said.
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Copyright � 1999 The Beacon Journal Publishing Company
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