Taking Stock

Tomorrow Lazerfest hits Iowa, and I hope metal fans will have a great time. I love the metal genre, but even if I wasn't a Dad with a 20 month-old daughter, and I wasn't married to a Mom I need to celebrate, I'd be staying home. I'm a bit jaded on musical festivals.

Here's why:

In August of 1994 I was about to begin my third year of teaching, and I was holed up in my apartment jealously watching the MTV coverage of Woodstock '94. I wondered what it would be like to be cool enough to attend such a historical music event? All those great bands, all those girls in swimsuits (or less)...  Woodstock just had to awesome.

Five years later I flew out to New York to attend Woodstock '99 with my friends Cory and Kyle Moss. Here's my ticket.

Oh man, I was pumped! This was going to be a three day vacation with 200,000 other music fans.  I'd be watching almost 50 bands rocking the three live stages that were strewn about Griffiss Air Force Base. Like myself, 60,000 other people would be sleeping in tents on the provided camp grounds, and when the stages closed down at 1AM, all-night raves would start in the airplane hangers...

Too bad the male to female ratio was about 20 to 1, and the food prices were criminal: $12 for a mini pizza and $4 for a bottle of water. Here's a fuzzy closeup from a vendor's sign.

There wasn't any shade on the air base, and the average heat index for the three days was over 100 degrees. I refilled my four dollar water bottle over 15 times on Friday, and I never had to go to the bathroom. That's a lot of sweating, but it was a better than visiting kybo-land.

By the way, that's not water on the ground.

On the second day I discovered the porta-potties were cleaned out between 5:30 and 7:00 AM, and I set my watch. Too bad I wasn't the only one to notice.

This is where I realized that 99% of all people who try nudism should never, ever have made the attempt. After brushing my teeth on Sunday morning I bent over to spit out my toothpaste and ended up eye level with an old man's junk. "Cover that up, dude," was all I could think to say. He grumbled something about freedom of expression, and then turned to show me his butt. I'll spare you that picture, but here's the scene of the crime.

There was an alternative to the porta-potties: the blanket potty. You know the kybos were disgusting if public pooing was the better option. I saw quite a few people do this. Notice all the garbage in the background, and notice I am wearing shorts. This picture was for demonstration purposes only.

(2012 Reality Check: That R.H.C.P. t-shirt is now part of a quilt my mother-in-law made me for Xmas, and we're using that quilt tomorrow when we have our Mother's Day picnic at Union Park. I bought a season pass to the Heritage Carouse, so I'm gonna need a season's worth of Dramamine.)

As for the main concert area, in the morning the grass in front of the stages was so crowded you couldn't stretch your legs out when you sat on the ground; you had to sit with your knees pulled to your chest. From Thursday night to Sunday afternoon I didn't sit on anything except the ground. It felt awesome when I was finally able to sit in a real chair on Sunday night.

By the afternoon there was just too much humanity to even sit down. Those are speaker towers above the crowd, and I heard a rumor that the mass of people was a half of a mile wide, and a full mile deep. I don't know if that's true, but it sure felt true.

Each band tried to outdo the others by getting the crowd to participate in some way. Kid Rock was able to get the crowd to pelt the stage with plastic water bottles. For the better part of 15 minutes you had to cover your head with your hands to protect yourself from the bottles raining down. A full bottle hit me in the right ear. So painful.

Speaking of being hit, the scariest part of being in such a large crowd was the mosh pits. You'd be trying to weave your way out of the throng, not knowing how far you were from the edge of the group, when you'd stumble into a small, circular, open area. Just when you thought you had made it out, you'd discover you were instead in the path of three brutes charging at each other with fists flailing.  It was like being tossed about in a sea of people that was mined with whirlpools of violence.

I went to the rave to check out Moby on Saturday night. I was burned twice by cigarettes being carelessly waved around. I soon left to stumble around in the dark trying to find our one tent in a slum of thousands. If I wasn't tripping over people who were passed out, I was walking into huge piles of trash. The heat didn't help the smell of either.

We left early Sunday afternoon to beat most of the departing traffic, and by the time we got back to Corey's New York apartment MTV was running coverage of the riot fires the fans had set to the concession stands and speaker towers. Later several incidents of violence and rape were reported.

So much for three more days of peace and love.

Yes, it was a once in a lifetime experience. Who would want to go through that again?