One Woodstock Perspective

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Posted by Adam DeMarco on July 28, 1999 at 11:41:19:

The following was originally an e-mail telling my buddies I survived Woodstock '99 after they saw the news. But it turned "editorial" on me. I'd like to share it. Thanks, ~Adam

Hi all! Thanks for the concern (especially to John/Fussy- what guys!) but I'm at work, safe, sound, and comatose. Did you SEE all those fires I started on Sunday night?! (KIDDING!) I took yesterday off and got in from Rome (Woodstock) in the afternoon, so I didn't get your e-mails 'til today or I would have allayed any concerns earlier.

All in all, Woodstock '99 was a phenominal experience that I'll be clinging to even after Alzheimers has forced me to forget my name, address, and that a car seat is not a toilet. The bands, the side-features, the strong communal feel, and the post-Woodstock media idiocy were/are all thoroughly enjoyable.

First of all, Amy called last night to tell me she was taping Fox's headlining story: "Festival or Riot: Festival of Peace GONE BAD." In a time where EVERY news headlines has the superlative words, "hero, tragedy, saga," or the like, they filmed the fires at the end and ran with it instead of just saying the festival ended on a sour note due to a few brats because that wouldn't ahve been earth-shattering enough. I've already heard rumors that the entire place was rioting/looting because concessions cost too much, that people turned over porta-potties and threw sh*t at each other, there was a major rumble between "the mud-people and the beer people," and even that the entire Woodstock compound was quarantined! I can't wait to see the report; we must look like a Rambo-couple escaping a war-crushed demilitarized zone from their perspective.

To get the negative news-stuff out of the way, sure some was true:
1. the porta-potties were EVIL-NASTY by Sunday morning.
2. people packed every area, everywhere.
3. you had to walk everywhere, and the place was miles long n' wide.
4. the sun was an evil bastard for most of the weekend.
5. people got muddy, naked, and a bit surly at the end.
6. concessions were a major rip-off.

But we had our remedies:
1. we brought a TV-sized porta-potty and a second tent, so we were golden.
2. we made lots of friends in packed areas.
3. sore feet build character.
4. anyone who tried hard enough could stay wet, hydrated, and in limited shade.
5. if you didn't WANT to get muddy, or naked, or mean, you could easily avoid it.
6. if you expected to spend bucks and didn't OVER-spend you'd survive (albeit slightly poorer).

We got there LATE on Thursday night and were forced to camp in the grassy part of the parking lot because all of the campsites within the compound were already packed. We thought this sucked at first because we'd have to do the mile-plus walk twice a day (including after a grueling 12-hour stretch at the shows) but soon learned how good we had it. We were in tents right next to our cars so we could lock everything up safe and sound, had PLENTY of room to lounge/walk, had the woods RIGHT near us for makeshift showers/etc, and got away with everything we weren't supposed to bring but did including booze, lounge chairs, extra tent, porta-potty, and so forth. Meanwhile, everyone in the sites were PACKED together with not enough room to get out of their tents without leaning on the one in front of them and tripping over ropes n' pegs to get out, and couldn't even hang around near their tents due to having NO space, let alone sneaking in items they were told not to bring. So in the end we lucked out big-time with the camping situation. The only problem there was that our tent got soaked on Sunday due to the rain but our buddy/co-attendee Bob let us use his/Nikki's while he volunteered to crash in the car- WHAT A GUY! And since Nikki (the fourth of our group) was busy with Buck, the buff New Zealand construction god for a night or two, she didn't even KNOW we used the tent 'til it was 7:30 yesterday morning and we were chucking everything into our trunks to get outta there while the roads were empty.

The first day was daunting, as nobody knew where they were going and what to do, so it was rather sedate 'til the evening. The second day was easier for everyone there because we were oriented and more relaxed (though the hottest and toughest of the three days) so everyone was groovin'. The third day was the coolest (as it was sometimes cloudy and even rained off n' on for an hour), allowing everyone to feel extra good, oriented, and ready to torch things.

The bands we saw were incredible. It was tough juggling what we wanted to see because there were always at least two well-known artists performing at the same time so we also had to sacrifice a couple of events, and because the two stages were almost two miles apart it was tough getting here to there without missing SOMEthing. But we caught at least the majority of most acts whether seen on a gigantic screen we watched from one of the beer gardens or up REALLY close and personal. Here's my personal line-up though I missed parts of some of these concerts: James Brown, G-Love and Special Sauce, the Offspring, Korn (only a little), Buckcherry (that "I love you cocaine, I love you cocaine" band), Insane Clown Posse, George Clinton/Parliment/Funkadelic, (a bit of) Bush, Kid Rock, Alanis Morissette, Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine, Everclear, Collective Soul, Brian Setzer Orchestra, Elvis Costello, Jewel, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Our Lady Peace, and Godsmack. The ONLY negative scheduling problem was that we blew off the majority of Metallica so that we could sleep for a few hours and be up by 1:30AM for the Fatboy Slim rave, but slept through it by accident, missing both as a result.

There were plenty of other things set up (like "Action Park" which was acres of extreme-sports, a cyber park with e-mail and tons of video games, an emerging artists stage which seemed to only get attendees because it was inside a hangar that provided shade, a 24-hour film festival, a mobile Hendrix tribute/museum, etc.) But we didn't bother with more than glancing at them because we were busy juggling two stages of big-deal shows, returning to the beer gardens often, and saturating ourselves in fountains whenever possible.

Memorable attendees included:
- Swirly Naked Guy who wore 18 different body-paint colors from head to toe and nothing else.
- THE Naked Chick who sat on a guy's shoulders at Clinton for over an hour trying to convince everyone to strip down completely
- Orange Guy who was painted neon-orange from head to toe, sporting only a black speedo and skateboard
- Father Woodstock who had to be at least 87 and looked like he crawled straight out of the woods to get there (got a pic with him)
- Bubble Guy who ran walked around the mellower concerts with wands making bubbles for all
- Mike the MudMan (covered with the best sunscreen available for free, who came with a waitress from the Warwick Boston Billiards)
- Tract-Mark Guy who offered acid and when asked if he was a cop said, "Hell no. Look- I've got tract marks!" (like this made us thing, OH- he's one of the GOOD guys)!
- ChickenHead who walked around with a hat that looked like a chicken with LONG legs hanging down, and an inflatable woman on his shoulders
- MuppetHead (same idea but with no inflatable woman)
- The guy wearing a sign on his chest, "'Shrooms for bl*wjobs."
- More painted breasts, bare breasts, and generally naked humans than you could shake an erection at.
There were plenty more, but between the sun, the blending of shows, and mass confusion I'm already a little hazy on other memorable attendees.

There were some horribly priced things that weren't worth griping about because we were so overheated n' wiped out, but to give you an ACCURATE idea (considering some of the wrong reports I've heard on the radio) there were:
- $12 small pizza like any Ellio's.
- $4 cold sodas
- $4 cold water
- $5 beers, cups of fries, barbeque beef sandwiches, kabobs with "beef-meat or pork-meat," etc.
- $3.50 ATM charges per $100 withdrawn
- $50 1/8s of pot
- $28 Woodstock shirts that dropped to $20 on the last day (or a mysterious $10 if you were an attractive female).
However, this is NOT why people "rioted" like the news said; nobody was ORGANIZED enough to get everyone riled about one particular issue there!

Yeah, those fires and more importantly, the destroyed vehicles, WERE fueled by negative people... We were standing only 10 to 15 feet away from a bunch of kids who turned over one of the only cars inside the compound while Red Hot Chili Peppers were finishing up their set and the bonfires were already blazing. Then they started spinning the car on its roof (we moved a bit further away at this point). Then we all watched as they tried setting the interior of the car on fire. Then we ALL fanned out, running, when it seemed to finally catch. But while the Chili Peppers came out to do Hendrix's "Fire" as an encore, we were still close enough to know if it had exploded, and it didn't. WORST OF ALL is that all weekend and even beforehand they were touting some special guest leading a Hendrix tribute at the end of Sunday night (first we heard Prince, and later the Rolling Stones), and after the Peppers ended they showed some lasers and a big screen of Jimi playing the national anthem from the first one, and a cheesy laser-image of him with wings floating sky-ward... and then we hear, "Goodnight Woodstock! See you in another five years, maybe." So I'm guessing the WORST part of the fires/ugliness is that the special guest, whomever it was SUPPOSED to be, cancelled or was skipped as a result.

Other events were/are portrayed as ugly on the news but were friendly up close. For example, they WERE tearing down the plywood mural-wall on the last day, but only because people wanted momentos that were from the actual walls, not because they were planning to torch the place that night or rioting. And while they were tearing down the walls, they'd be nicely negotiating over who got which piece and saying hi/asking for help from passers-by, not throwing wood at 'em.

I think the lead-singer of Godsmack made a statement that encapsulated the entire Sunday night fiasco perfectly. He said that 30 years ago everyone walked around waving their hands in a peace sign. This festival had us not doing that, or giving a thumbs-up, or an okay sign, but raising our middle fingers in some sort of defiant gesture at all times. And I mean EVERYONE had us doing it for one reason or another, from Collective Soul giving it to the critics for calling them a one-hit wonder who attended in '94 and supposedly wouldn't get anther hit, to Everclear having us give it to the fat guy who wouldn't let the lead singer out on stage the night before, to Limp Bizkit saying it to the concessionaries, to Rage in the form of burning the flag. Not your cup of tea and the mellower bands wouldn't do that? How about Jewel's F-U to the guy who picked her up hitchhiking years earlier and "didn't treat me real nice," or Elvis Costello having us scream F-U to the airlines for losing his guitars and screwing up his show, or Alanis for one angst-ridden reason or another (I don't remember)? See- no matter WHO was playing, they had us raising our fingers and swearing at one form of authority or another. And the fires/looting at the end? I believe it was just the less-tame attendees displaying their final, obligatory F-U for the world to see in the form of burning tons of empty pizza boxes and yeah, even breaking open some trailers, stealing from, and torching 'em. I don't think it was spawned from anything more organized, worthwhile, or spiteful than that.

So what does your average couple do when they look up at the end of a weekend festival and see there are a bunch of fires/kids trashing food tents in their path back to homebase? Walk AROUND them, thank you very much. Big deal- we saw some fires, maybe threw in a couple of pizza boxes on the way back, glanced into the stripped and trashed tents while walking by, and eventually made it back to our sleeping bags without a scratch. That was the best part of that disaster; if you didn't want to be part of the ugliness, it was SO easy to make sure you weren't. And yeah- we got back to the campsite to find out that one of the other two friends that we attended with had joined in on torching one of the towers outside the compound, but why? Because others had already started doing so and it was more fun than trying to put it out. That's it- just part of the big Woodstock F-U Finale. And incidentally, this was the same nice guy Bob who lent us his tent. And said we were pretty cool... for yuppies. And actually met/got a ride on four-wheeling ATVs from the Offspring on Saturday night while in town getting supplies!

We saw band after band after band put on incredible shows. We got all sorts of wasted. We ate plenty of interesting or at least palatable foods. We took the tough elements and enjoyed ourselves despite 'em. We met tons of people with great attitudes, styles, and personalities. We even had our own little Woodstock interlude out in the woods! And we had one hell of a life-long, memorable time- sunburns, blistered feet, semi-permanent headaches and all.

Still abuzz with the energy, mild pain, and intense fun of Woodstock,
Adam "Starlight-Areola" DeMarco

Follow Ups:

Re: One Woodstock Perspective UFFDADDY 7/28/99 (0)
Thanks. Chris 7/28/99 (2)
- Re: Thanks. Adam DeMarco 7/28/99 (1)
  - More to come Chris 7/28/99 (0)

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: The following was originally an e-mail telling my buddies I survived Woodstock '99 after they saw the news. But it turned "editorial" on me. I'd like to share it. Thanks, ~Adam : One Woodstock Perspective : Hi all! Thanks for the concern (especially to John/Fussy- what guys!) but I'm at work, safe, sound, and comatose. Did you SEE all those fires I started on Sunday night?! (KIDDING!) I took yesterday off and got in from Rome (Woodstock) in the afternoon, so I didn't get your e-mails 'til today or I would have allayed any concerns earlier. : All in all, Woodstock '99 was a phenominal experience that I'll be clinging to even after Alzheimers has forced me to forget my name, address, and that a car seat is not a toilet. The bands, the side-features, the strong communal feel, and the post-Woodstock media idiocy were/are all thoroughly enjoyable. : First of all, Amy called last night to tell me she was taping Fox's headlining story: "Festival or Riot: Festival of Peace GONE BAD." In a time where EVERY news headlines has the superlative words, "hero, tragedy, saga," or the like, they filmed the fires at the end and ran with it instead of just saying the festival ended on a sour note due to a few brats because that wouldn't ahve been earth-shattering enough. I've already heard rumors that the entire place was rioting/looting because concessions cost too much, that people turned over porta-potties and threw sh*t at each other, there was a major rumble between "the mud-people and the beer people," and even that the entire Woodstock compound was quarantined! I can't wait to see the report; we must look like a Rambo-couple escaping a war-crushed demilitarized zone from their perspective. : To get the negative news-stuff out of the way, sure some was true: : 1. the porta-potties were EVIL-NASTY by Sunday morning. : 2. people packed every area, everywhere. : 3. you had to walk everywhere, and the place was miles long n' wide. : 4. the sun was an evil bastard for most of the weekend. : 5. people got muddy, naked, and a bit surly at the end. : 6. concessions were a major rip-off. : But we had our remedies: : 1. we brought a TV-sized porta-potty and a second tent, so we were golden. : 2. we made lots of friends in packed areas. : 3. sore feet build character. : 4. anyone who tried hard enough could stay wet, hydrated, and in limited shade. : 5. if you didn't WANT to get muddy, or naked, or mean, you could easily avoid it. : 6. if you expected to spend bucks and didn't OVER-spend you'd survive (albeit slightly poorer). : We got there LATE on Thursday night and were forced to camp in the grassy part of the parking lot because all of the campsites within the compound were already packed. We thought this sucked at first because we'd have to do the mile-plus walk twice a day (including after a grueling 12-hour stretch at the shows) but soon learned how good we had it. We were in tents right next to our cars so we could lock everything up safe and sound, had PLENTY of room to lounge/walk, had the woods RIGHT near us for makeshift showers/etc, and got away with everything we weren't supposed to bring but did including booze, lounge chairs, extra tent, porta-potty, and so forth. Meanwhile, everyone in the sites were PACKED together with not enough room to get out of their tents without leaning on the one in front of them and tripping over ropes n' pegs to get out, and couldn't even hang around near their tents due to having NO space, let alone sneaking in items they were told not to bring. So in the end we lucked out big-time with the camping situation. The only problem there was that our tent got soaked on Sunday due to the rain but our buddy/co-attendee Bob let us use his/Nikki's while he volunteered to crash in the car- WHAT A GUY! And since Nikki (the fourth of our group) was busy with Buck, the buff New Zealand construction god for a night or two, she didn't even KNOW we used the tent 'til it was 7:30 yesterday morning and we were chucking everything into our trunks to get outta there while the roads were empty. : The first day was daunting, as nobody knew where they were going and what to do, so it was rather sedate 'til the evening. The second day was easier for everyone there because we were oriented and more relaxed (though the hottest and toughest of the three days) so everyone was groovin'. The third day was the coolest (as it was sometimes cloudy and even rained off n' on for an hour), allowing everyone to feel extra good, oriented, and ready to torch things. : The bands we saw were incredible. It was tough juggling what we wanted to see because there were always at least two well-known artists performing at the same time so we also had to sacrifice a couple of events, and because the two stages were almost two miles apart it was tough getting here to there without missing SOMEthing. But we caught at least the majority of most acts whether seen on a gigantic screen we watched from one of the beer gardens or up REALLY close and personal. Here's my personal line-up though I missed parts of some of these concerts: James Brown, G-Love and Special Sauce, the Offspring, Korn (only a little), Buckcherry (that "I love you cocaine, I love you cocaine" band), Insane Clown Posse, George Clinton/Parliment/Funkadelic, (a bit of) Bush, Kid Rock, Alanis Morissette, Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine, Everclear, Collective Soul, Brian Setzer Orchestra, Elvis Costello, Jewel, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Our Lady Peace, and Godsmack. The ONLY negative scheduling problem was that we blew off the majority of Metallica so that we could sleep for a few hours and be up by 1:30AM for the Fatboy Slim rave, but slept through it by accident, missing both as a result. : There were plenty of other things set up (like "Action Park" which was acres of extreme-sports, a cyber park with e-mail and tons of video games, an emerging artists stage which seemed to only get attendees because it was inside a hangar that provided shade, a 24-hour film festival, a mobile Hendrix tribute/museum, etc.) But we didn't bother with more than glancing at them because we were busy juggling two stages of big-deal shows, returning to the beer gardens often, and saturating ourselves in fountains whenever possible. : Memorable attendees included: : - Swirly Naked Guy who wore 18 different body-paint colors from head to toe and nothing else. : - THE Naked Chick who sat on a guy's shoulders at Clinton for over an hour trying to convince everyone to strip down completely : - Orange Guy who was painted neon-orange from head to toe, sporting only a black speedo and skateboard : - Father Woodstock who had to be at least 87 and looked like he crawled straight out of the woods to get there (got a pic with him) : - Bubble Guy who ran walked around the mellower concerts with wands making bubbles for all : - Mike the MudMan (covered with the best sunscreen available for free, who came with a waitress from the Warwick Boston Billiards) : - Tract-Mark Guy who offered acid and when asked if he was a cop said, "Hell no. Look- I've got tract marks!" (like this made us thing, OH- he's one of the GOOD guys)! : - ChickenHead who walked around with a hat that looked like a chicken with LONG legs hanging down, and an inflatable woman on his shoulders : - MuppetHead (same idea but with no inflatable woman) : - The guy wearing a sign on his chest, "'Shrooms for bl*wjobs." : - More painted breasts, bare breasts, and generally naked humans than you could shake an erection at. : There were plenty more, but between the sun, the blending of shows, and mass confusion I'm already a little hazy on other memorable attendees. : There were some horribly priced things that weren't worth griping about because we were so overheated n' wiped out, but to give you an ACCURATE idea (considering some of the wrong reports I've heard on the radio) there were: : - $12 small pizza like any Ellio's. : - $4 cold sodas : - $4 cold water : - $5 beers, cups of fries, barbeque beef sandwiches, kabobs with "beef-meat or pork-meat," etc. : - $3.50 ATM charges per $100 withdrawn : - $50 1/8s of pot : - $28 Woodstock shirts that dropped to $20 on the last day (or a mysterious $10 if you were an attractive female). : However, this is NOT why people "rioted" like the news said; nobody was ORGANIZED enough to get everyone riled about one particular issue there! : Yeah, those fires and more importantly, the destroyed vehicles, WERE fueled by negative people... We were standing only 10 to 15 feet away from a bunch of kids who turned over one of the only cars inside the compound while Red Hot Chili Peppers were finishing up their set and the bonfires were already blazing. Then they started spinning the car on its roof (we moved a bit further away at this point). Then we all watched as they tried setting the interior of the car on fire. Then we ALL fanned out, running, when it seemed to finally catch. But while the Chili Peppers came out to do Hendrix's "Fire" as an encore, we were still close enough to know if it had exploded, and it didn't. WORST OF ALL is that all weekend and even beforehand they were touting some special guest leading a Hendrix tribute at the end of Sunday night (first we heard Prince, and later the Rolling Stones), and after the Peppers ended they showed some lasers and a big screen of Jimi playing the national anthem from the first one, and a cheesy laser-image of him with wings floating sky-ward... and then we hear, "Goodnight Woodstock! See you in another five years, maybe." So I'm guessing the WORST part of the fires/ugliness is that the special guest, whomever it was SUPPOSED to be, cancelled or was skipped as a result. : Other events were/are portrayed as ugly on the news but were friendly up close. For example, they WERE tearing down the plywood mural-wall on the last day, but only because people wanted momentos that were from the actual walls, not because they were planning to torch the place that night or rioting. And while they were tearing down the walls, they'd be nicely negotiating over who got which piece and saying hi/asking for help from passers-by, not throwing wood at 'em. : I think the lead-singer of Godsmack made a statement that encapsulated the entire Sunday night fiasco perfectly. He said that 30 years ago everyone walked around waving their hands in a peace sign. This festival had us not doing that, or giving a thumbs-up, or an okay sign, but raising our middle fingers in some sort of defiant gesture at all times. And I mean EVERYONE had us doing it for one reason or another, from Collective Soul giving it to the critics for calling them a one-hit wonder who attended in '94 and supposedly wouldn't get anther hit, to Everclear having us give it to the fat guy who wouldn't let the lead singer out on stage the night before, to Limp Bizkit saying it to the concessionaries, to Rage in the form of burning the flag. Not your cup of tea and the mellower bands wouldn't do that? How about Jewel's F-U to the guy who picked her up hitchhiking years earlier and "didn't treat me real nice," or Elvis Costello having us scream F-U to the airlines for losing his guitars and screwing up his show, or Alanis for one angst-ridden reason or another (I don't remember)? See- no matter WHO was playing, they had us raising our fingers and swearing at one form of authority or another. And the fires/looting at the end? I believe it was just the less-tame attendees displaying their final, obligatory F-U for the world to see in the form of burning tons of empty pizza boxes and yeah, even breaking open some trailers, stealing from, and torching 'em. I don't think it was spawned from anything more organized, worthwhile, or spiteful than that. : So what does your average couple do when they look up at the end of a weekend festival and see there are a bunch of fires/kids trashing food tents in their path back to homebase? Walk AROUND them, thank you very much. Big deal- we saw some fires, maybe threw in a couple of pizza boxes on the way back, glanced into the stripped and trashed tents while walking by, and eventually made it back to our sleeping bags without a scratch. That was the best part of that disaster; if you didn't want to be part of the ugliness, it was SO easy to make sure you weren't. And yeah- we got back to the campsite to find out that one of the other two friends that we attended with had joined in on torching one of the towers outside the compound, but why? Because others had already started doing so and it was more fun than trying to put it out. That's it- just part of the big Woodstock F-U Finale. And incidentally, this was the same nice guy Bob who lent us his tent. And said we were pretty cool... for yuppies. And actually met/got a ride on four-wheeling ATVs from the Offspring on Saturday night while in town getting supplies! : We saw band after band after band put on incredible shows. We got all sorts of wasted. We ate plenty of interesting or at least palatable foods. We took the tough elements and enjoyed ourselves despite 'em. We met tons of people with great attitudes, styles, and personalities. We even had our own little Woodstock interlude out in the woods! And we had one hell of a life-long, memorable time- sunburns, blistered feet, semi-permanent headaches and all. : Still abuzz with the energy, mild pain, and intense fun of Woodstock, : Adam "Starlight-Areola" DeMarco

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