Everybody talks about the Fyre Festival these days, or at least they did for a very brief stretch a while back when they talked about literally nothing else, but it was hardly the first music festival disaster in this country. Woodstock ‘99 also wasn’t the first music festival disaster, but it is the one we’re going to be talking about here at least. As reported by Deadline, Netflix is teaming up with production company Raw—the studio behind Netflix’s own Don’t Fuck With Cats and Fear City: New York Vs. The Mafia—for a new documentary series about Woodstock ‘99. Deadline says the series will be about “the culture that created Woodstock ‘99" and “the real story” behind how an attempt to recreate a celebration of peace and love turned into a celebration of fire, destroying property, and Limp Bizkit.
The event, largely organized and endlessly covered by MTV, was brought down by multiple factors, specifically terrible organization, terrible weather and greedy vendors. It was extremely hot, but water bottles were extremely expensive and there weren’t enough free fountains (or bathrooms) for the hundreds of thousands of attendees, so people got mad and sick and violent. There were also sexual assault allegations that led to lawsuits against promoters. It was, at the risk of putting too fine a point on it, a disaster.