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Ive been watchingThe Sopranosalmost every night this summer.
Soprano, the surly son of the shows titular boss.
A.J.s parents dont get him; none of the shit hes into existed when they grew up.
Their approach is all wrong, too lax one week and too harsh the next.
The kid acts up in school and lounges in metal merch at home.
He lovesSlipknot, whose singer-songwriterCorey Taylorworks through the fallout of abuse and addiction in his younger years.
wont: He feels alienated, misunderstood.
Hes finding acceptance and expression in the art of troubled kindred spirits.
Thats what it was made for.
They we briefly felt seen.
Now, the archival footage is damning.
That doesnt makeWoodstock 99any less heavy-handed.
New YorkTimeswriter Wesley Morris likens the sound to a swamp.
Pawning it off as an objection toBritney Spearsand Backstreet Boys is looking at it throughTRLblinders.
There was a hunger for this music independent of anything else in culture.
Kurt and Eddie Vedder and others spoke up because people were being murdered outside abortion clinics.
Omissions and obfuscations abound.
We are told that weird and angry rock music showed up one day yucking everyones yum.
The closest we get is the minute they let the intro to Korns Blind rip.
The thing is, only four nu metal bands played Woodstock 99.
(Twice as many jam bands were present!)
And concurrent tours with lineups more firmly rooted in the angrier stuff didnt suffer similar fates.
In limiting its purview to Langs festivals,Woodstock 99jettisons valuable context.
It doesnt come up that Beastie Boys Ad Rockcriticizedthe Woodstock 99 promoters onstage at the VMAs the next month.
Waves of death at EDM festivals in the 2010s go unmentioned.
But the message of the documentary isnt How do we confirm this never happens again?
Its Look at these naked morons.
Instead,Woodstock 99feels drunk on chaos.
