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BRAIN TUBA: Back To The Bunker (Yet Another Article About Woodstock)
by Jesse Jarnow - jesse.jarnow@oberlin.eduGood fucking Lord, Bubba, I'm back in the bunker and I'm staying here. I've ordered my manservant to double bolt the three sets of stainless steel bomb-proof doors that remain between me and the charred battlefield that sits dormant above. I'd just returned from a brief inspection tour of the Phish coagulation when I heard the news: teenagers, gone savage with torches and "peace" candles, looting ATMs and vendor trucks. Hilarious. Simply fuckin' hilarious. Is it regression or a perfect byproduct of mutated evolution? I haven't quite decided yet. Either way, the blame must be put somewhere. And, as an observer locked safely away underground, I put the blame squarely on you, the reader.
You see, during the eight Phish shows I got to see this summer I was looking for something to sink my teeth into, something to raise my defiant fist in anger against, something to shout hopeless curses into the howling wind about, something... that sucked. It didn't arrive. It just never came. Everything wasn't lovey-dovey, mind you, but it was definitely pleasant. There were complaints, to be sure: the sun sucked, the security at one or two of the shows were mindless, bumbling twits who thought they were hip to our super secret lingo. In the latter case, it was just amusing. In any situation, there was nothing terribly wrong on any level. With a bit of common sense one could enjoy the music. I had nothing to complain about. It's your fault!
This situation with Woodstock reminds me of a rather lame movie that I somewhat willingly subjected myself to as a youth. Twins. The basic premise is such: Arnold the Aryan portrays a biologically engineered man, the flawless result of years of scientific development. However, when he is born, there is a slight problem. All of the perfect traits that have been used in Arnold have their opposites. These opposites have been saved up and conclude in the afterbirth... the child who comes out after Arnold, Danny DeVito's character. This is why it's your fault. In Oswego - and Plattsburgh and Limestone, for that matter - Phish managed to put on some dandy festivals. They were quite amazing. Things ran smoothly, in retrospect. There were some births and deaths -- but there are everywhere, don't ya know.
That's where the problem is. Everything's gotta balance out, Bubba. I might be idealizing this to a huge extent - I might be slapping us all on the collective back to a huge extent as well - but all the good shit that happened had to have an evil twin somewhere. Science has not yet conclusively proved - at least to my satisfaction - that alternate dimensions and parallel universes exist. With this debacle in Rome I can, quite frankly, stop caring. I haven't lost faith science, but humanity has proved to me that these twisted forms of reality exist right in our own backyards. We might not be getting down to one-on-one mathematics quite yet -- that is, evil men with goatees in black turtlenecks. Nonetheless, it seems that the broad strokes are about ready to be defined.
I don't really mean it. I'm not mad at anybody. Woodstock '99 was supposed to be the entertainment spectacle of the summer and that's exactly what it was. Honestly, I'm content to leave the whole thing to the dumbasses who were involved all the way through. If you were evil enough to charge $150 a ticket and $4 for a bottle of water on a burning hot day... so be it. If you were dumb enough to pay $150 a ticket and tip over port-o-lets to create the proper mud-soaked atmosphere... so be it. You deserve each other. No blame can be assigned other than to the people who let this thing exist. Promoters and concert goers alike fall into this category. Again, of course, I'm speaking in broad strokes. There were some good times at the festival, apparently. I'm paid to generalize, though.
The problem is such: people are stupid. Well, gentle reader, I hope you knew that. Woodstock '99 was not about the music performed, nor was it about peace or love any other such bullshit. It was about several more days of "peace, love, and music" (in quotes). It was about a motto. In that, Woodstock '99 was about itself. The deep groans I am emitting as I type this are apparently echoing throughout my bunker, as my manservant has just come to inform that he believes this place might be haunted by the ghost of a miner who once died upon this very spot. I laughed and reassured him that it is not, in fact, haunted and that it was none other than myself who made such a ghastly noise. I continue to make noise as I type the following: Woodstock '99 was a meta-festival.
The original festival was a poorly organized affair. If anything has become abundantly clear over the years, that certainly has. Nonetheless, something happened. If you want to call it magic and life-changing and all that, go right ahead. There were some cool tunes, mud, and naked people. The government declared it a national emergency area. In '94, it rained again. Concert goers dove in the mud. People hopped the fence. All in all, there were little bits of healthy anarchy. It takes two events to establish hopes for a third and the beginning of a pattern. By this summer - the year of our Lord, 1999 - the Woodstock brand name had been well established. On that and that alone, people attended the festivities. Tickets went on sale for the event considerably before any of the bands playing had actually been announced.
Society is based on norms. That's how it works. Put somebody in a situation that he has been exposed to for his entire life (though has never experienced first hand) and he will act accordingly. There are certain rules that guide situations. For example, if I were to unscrew the hatches above me and walk downtown right now - and I live in a fairly normal little suburb - and start ululating at the top of my lungs, I would likely be looked at funny if not outright arrested. There's nothing inherently wrong with high volume ululation. As far as I know, it's not an affront to anybody's religion, it's not crossing any boundaries of political correctness, and it does not offend the tastes of most contemporary critics of contemporary music. Yet, when the thought of actually doing such a thing crossed my mind, I immediately checked myself. Why? Because I'm expected not to ululate.
Now take the example of a rock concert. I hate rock concerts. Within the parameters of a rock concert it's perfectly acceptable to ululate (or, at the very least, make some sort of loud vocal noise), though it's not functional. In fact, it's almost expected. It just happens. Take someone to a rock concert who has never been to one before and, likely, he will do the same thing. Why? Because that is one of the norms of a rock concert. At least, that's one of the norms of a run of the mill bombastic sonic assault that one is expected to pay upwards of $50 or more for these days. If John Scher and Michael Lang, the promoters of Woodstock '99, had simply announced they were having a festival in upstate New York - and really wanted it to be about peace, love, and music - they should not have called it Woodstock '99. They should've booked bands and advertised that they were having a festival.
Instead, they chose to call it Woodstock '99 -- and people chose to buy into the fact that it was Woodstock '99. With that brand name comes, first of all, the image of the 60s. With the systematic deconstruction of that decade by Republican asswipes over the course of the past two decades, the image of the 60s as a time of peace and love has gradually been replaced by the image of active rebellion. That's not wrong, per se - it's another way of looking at it - but it seems that this revisionist attempt at history has characterized this rebellion as something genuinely wrong across the board, as opposed to something that was only genuinely wrong in the sense that it attempted to dismantle the way of life that those in power had worked (and continue to work) to perfect. In doing so, on some levels, they've actually done the opposite of what they (perhaps unconsciously) set out to do. By highlighting the extremities of the original Woodstock, they've managed to portray the festival as more of a revolution than, perhaps, it actually was.
Thus, the Woodstock '99 brand name equaled the most rebellion for your dollar. By the end of the third day, people began to realize that there was definitely a large chance that this year's festival wasn't going to live up to the its promise of "peace, love, and music" -- even if it had been interpreted quite literally up to that point. Ergo, rioting. The riots served a double purpose. First, they expressed a general sense a pissed-off-ness that the festival hadn't lived up to the brand name. Second, they served to live up to the aforementioned brand name -- a self-fulfilling something-or-other.
Of course, everybody and their manservant has an opinion on what happened in Rome this summer. My manservant, for example, has, for example, blamed the gypsies. There has been much pointless bickering about who is to blame for what happened. I was being facetious above. The people whom I actually blame are anybody who cares enough about Woodstock '99 to debate its merits with a straight face. By looking at the festival with anything but a kalediscoped monocle, they have, in a sense, justified its existence by looking at it as anything other than a sign of the coming end times.
On the other hand, I have a vested interest in what happened on the Griffiss Airforce Base. You see, I myself am entering the world of concert promotion. Between now and December, I will engage in a bevy of transmissions from this fully wired bunker -- faxes, emails, teletype, tickertape, and telephone calls will radiate out from here on a regular basis as my manservant operates the old-style plug-and-play switchboard that is at the heart of our operation. In December, all of our tedious activities will culminate in the staging (at a presently undisclosed location in northern California) of Altamont '99. I hope to see you there. In the mean time, I'll be here... safe... for the moment.
Jesse Jarnow is not kidding.
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