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 Yes, I made it out of Woodstock '99 alive. Despite all of the negative media coverage the festival got, I had a great time. Of course there are always some idiots at every show who like to cause trouble. But what do you expect when you get over 200,000 people together in one place for three days enduring the heat at a poorly organized event. When you think about it, one out of ten people are complete idiots. So in a crowd of 200,000 to have about 500 idiots decide to burn the place down, it pretty much makes mathematical sense.
You can't blame the high price of food and the commercialism that surrounded Woodstock for the riots that ensued. I don't know what people were expecting in this day and age where you rarely see a concert tour not sponsored by Pepsi. Did people actually expect peace, love and free food? Yeah, the prices were ridiculous, but you don't go to a concert festival for the food. People also complained about the lack of water, but somehow, I managed to find all of the free water I needed. Except for the morons running around tearing down the walls and jumping through fires, for the most part, what I saw at Woodstock were people helping each other out. I saw concert goers sharing food & water, I had strangers looking out for me in the mosh pit, I saw security guards handing out water to dehydrated fans and above all, I heard some damn good music. I never expected Woodstock to be anything like the original, that would be impossible. The only thing that Woodstock '99 had in common with the original was the name. After all, as Ed Kowalzyk of Live put it "This is the music of our generation." So despite the negative press about the show and the focus on the hardcore acts like Korn and KidRock, I acutally heard some quality performers who didn't encourage the crowd to destroy the place. My only disappointment was missing Rage Against the Machine. Rage, in my opinion is the only hardcore act who actually has someting intelligent to say. I guarantee, next year acts like KidRock and Limp Bizkit will be long forgotten. So in my estimation bands who put on great shows were LIVE, Offspring, Mike Ness, Rusted Root, Chemical Brothers, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Our Lady Peace. Also deserving honorable mention were Creed, Alannis Morisette and Dave Matthews Band. |
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 Here's my man Ed Kowalzyk of LIVE. I made my way up to about the third row for LIVE and by far they put on the best show I saw at Woodstock. They played a lot off of Mental Jewelry and a new song from their new album which they announced will be out this September. |
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 Here I am among the dirty grounds they called Woodstock. Ok, I do have to complain about the lack of garbage cans in the place. After the first day you'd be hard pressed to find a piece of grass that wasn't littered with trash. |
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 Here I am (on the left) with my older sister Carla who was mortified every time I made my way to the mosh pit. Ok, I only lost her once during the three days, that's not bad considering at one point there were 12 children who had lost their parents in the crowd. That's pretty smart, to bring a young kid to a festival like this and then take off to have some fun while your kid wanders around among a bunch of naked people. |
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 This was the West Stage or better known as, the stage that took 45 minutes to walk to. Yeah, the organizers definitely screwed up on the layout of the place. I mean, how could you possibly catch all the bands you wanted to see when you had to trek all that way? Anyway this stage area was generally cleaner and calmer. It was here that I saw Mike Ness, Rusted Root, Our Lady Peace and the Chemical Brothers-- All great shows. |
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 Ok, here's the man, Mike Ness, lead singer of Social Distortion who put on a fantastic show. A security guard was nice enough to take this picture for me, not bad. I was damn close. |
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