VERY GOOD WOODSTOCK TRIP

VERY GOOD WOODSTOCK TRIP -MICHKA ASSAYAS

On August 15, 16, and 17, 1969, in a vast pasture lost in the southwest of New York State, the largest music festival ever organized in the world took place. During these three days, a real city of 500,000 people suddenly sprang up, populated entirely by very young people. Attracted by the announcement of a festival of folk, blues, and psychedelic rock, young people from the East Coast of the United States, from all walks of life and origins, converged on this site, in unprecedented numbers, to listen to, among others, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, the Who, and Jimi Hendrix.

Those who attended Woodstock had an experience in the full sense: collective, of course, and even unanimous, but also existential, mystical, even religious. The Woodstock experience was full of chaos, fervor, joy and even delirium, far beyond those famous "three days of love, music and peace", too often limited to a fashion statement and a superficial message.

Thirty years later, on July 23, 24, and 25, 1999, another Woodstock, of the same magnitude, brought together a new generation around the bands Korn, Rage Against the Machine, Metallica, and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Alas, this Woodstock '99 was a "very bad trip," unleashing a storm of bestiality and destructive rage. Far from the utopian dreams of a universal mutual aid society, Woodstock '99 was, in a way, an anti-Woodstock, revealing the grimacing and cracked face of the American empire. Michka Assayas, in 2024, gives the astonishing account of this apocalyptic event.