See, fear Netflix ‘Woodstock’
DIRTY LESSONS: 1999 SAW FATEFUL ATTEMPT TO RECREATE LEGENDARY SIXTIES FESTIVAL
About magic that doesn’t strike twice in same place ...
It is dirty and muddy, and drunk, and high, with people dive-bombing into muddied poo infested water and may not be the sexiest thing on television. But the Netflix documentary Trainwreck is a must-see, must-focus documentary about the regurgitation of Woodstock in 1999.
It is a lesson in three parts. Coaches’ tip number one reads: Do not try and reinvent or reprise in any form or manner a successful once-off event that remains immortalised in history, and do not even consider the notion that magic may just happen for a second time. Donald Trump made that mistake and America gave us Joe Biden.
Tip number two: Never underestimate crowd psychology and hive behavior of people, especially when you piss them off. Tip number three: Deliver on your promises, otherwise you will piss off your customers, voters, and event attendees.
South African cabinet ministers should watch this documentary. Trainwreck is an exceptional documentary, and although much of it complies to the Netflix playbook of documentary formula, it feels fresh and well-conceived, and the narrative is told through the voices of organisers, festival-goers and artists that performed during the three-day event.
This includes Gavin Rossdale of Bush, Fatboy Slim, Jewel and MTV host Ananda Lewis, among others. And there is a ton of home video footage taken during the festival that keeps it real, current and not just a retrospective set of talking heads that analysze something we cannot see much of on screen.
Woodstock 99 was an attempt to recreate the peace and love festival of the sixties, and it attracted more than two hundred thousand hopefuls looking for good music, fun, peace, love and all those good things that made the original event legendary.
Problem is, the documentary shares, the Nineties was three decades on, and the post-cold war psychology of the world had changed it.
Musically, mindsets were post-and-middle-of grunge, the youth were restless, and the drugs had changed.
Peace and love were out the window a long time ago and angry rap-rockers like Limp Bizkit, partly blamed in the show for stoking up the collective psyche into a violent frenzy, mirrored the angst and ginormous ego-centric persona of the era.
Add to this the organisers who did not allow anyone to even bring a cup of water onto the grounds, vendors who overcharged for food and drink, poor trash collection and cleanups, and way too few porta potties for a quarter of a million people – and you have a recipe for disaster.
This means frustration, brewing anger and a whole lot of drunk and high people getting sick, sleeping among layers of rubbish and so on, and so forth.
And when you try too hard to turn something into what has been, and into what it really was not, it adds to the mental frustration. And the audience tried extremely hard, it seems, to relive the experiences of a generation past. Many people were hightailing it around topless or naked, sexing one another openly and in 99’s case, groping women in unwelcoming ways.
And the result of a druggedup, drunk, sexually charged and angry mob can only end badly. At Woodstock 99 the word was written in all caps, and it became a three-day sentence.
The temptation to retell the entire storyline is huge, because the three-part series (each episode dedicated to a day in the timeline) is so damn good. But you must watch it, to feel it, to experience it, and to fear it.
And it should make you afraid. T I could not help but contemplate last year’s eruption of violence and looting in South Africa. President Ramaphosa, you should watch this show.