Woodstock III

Woodstock III is a music festival that was held in Rome , New York in July 1999 . It was held on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival and, with Woodstock II, was the second festival in the 1990s that saw itself in the tradition of the 1969 festival.

The festival was overshadowed by violent clashes and rape. The mood was heated up from the start due to the heat, the high entrance fees and the cost of food and drinks. Some artists, such as The Offspring , heated up the atmosphere and the 250,000 visitors with their stage show, in which so-called "Backstreet Boys-Dummies" were destroyed. On the other hand, it was also the singer of The Offspring, Dexter Holland , who demanded on stage during the concert that the sexual harassment of women in the audience should stop. In the mosh pit several visitors were seriously injured. When the sun went down on Saturday and Limp Bizkit came on stage, the mood reached its boiling point and the first tumult began in the crowd. During the Limp Bizkit performance , several men raped a woman in front of the stage. There were also rapes elsewhere on the festival site. Toilets were destroyed and barrier gangs torn out and used as surfboards for crowd surfing. One day later, at the end of the festival during the Red Hot Chili Peppers performance, visitors again rioted on the premises. The second stage on the festival site called "East Stage" was destroyed by the audience and went up in flames. The MTV crew present, including Kurt Loder , had to be evacuated by helicopter. In the surrounding area, spectators destroyed cars and stands. A police operation had to end the riots.

The riots at the festival were later seen as a sign of the violence and misogyny of modern rock music, but above all of nu metal . The music magazine Spin made Korn , Eminem and Limp Bizkit responsible for the violence. The January 2000 issue reads:

“Woodstock became the defining event of the year because it expressed an overwhelming desire to establish the rock music of the angry white rappers as the voice of rebellious youth. Tragically, this happened at the expense of everyone, especially the women who happened to get in the way. "

- Charles Aaron in January 2000, quoted in Harte Brocken .

Performers

Arlo Guthrie James Brown Buckcherry Bush The Chemical Brothers George Clinton & the P.Funk All-Stars Collective soul Elvis Costello Counting crows Creed Sheryl Crow DMX Everlast Everclear Fatboy Slim Godsmack Guster Mickey Hart - Planet Drum Bruce Hornsby Ice Cube Insane clown posse Jamiroquai Wyclef Jean with the Refugee Allstars Jewel

Kid rock grain Limp Bizkit Lit. live Los Lobos Dave Matthews Band Megadeth Metallica Moby moe. Alanis Morissette Willie Nelson Mike Ness The Offspring oleander Our Lady Peace Rage Against the Machine Sevendust Red hot chili peppers The roots Rusted Root Brian Setzer Orchestra The Tragically Hip The Umbilical Brothers

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Police investigate alleged rapes at Woodstock '99. CNN , accessed January 9, 2009 . 

literature

• Tommy Udo: Tough chunks. Brave Nu World - The triumph of Nu Metal . Koch GmbH / Hannibal, Höfen 2003, ISBN 3-85445-228-4 .

Web links

• long article about Woodstock III ( Memento from February 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive )