Michael Lang and Final Reflections

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In that respect, I guess my interest in this story is a form of confirmation bias. If you're inclined to believe the worst about how large packs of human beings behave, Woodstock ninety nine is weirdly satisfying. See everybody. I was right about you all along. Clearly I need to talk to a psychologist. So I called up Dr. Leonard Newman. the Associate Chair of the Psychology Department at Syracuse University. I wanted to talk to him about Bob mentality. And what exactly WoodSock ninety nine can teach us about how crowds act? But before we got into that, Dr. Newman objected to my use of the word mob. That's the way people think about it, crowds equal mobs, equals violence. And a lot of social scientists have thought about him that way as well, but of course. Proud psychology is a lot more complicated than that. Turns out Dr. Newman is more optimistic about humanity than I am. He prefers a less judgmental term. Herd mentality. It's a state of mind people get in. where because they are part of a larger collective of people, because they're among other people, and because uh human beings are social animals, we tend to be open to cues from the environment about how to behave. We behave less like ourselves and more like the way a person is drawn to behave in that situation. If you're just a member of a large crowd and it's hard to pick you out as an individual, you're less accountable for the things that you do. You can get away with more. And if the cues from the environment are Let's burn this place down. Um you're gonna get a certain kind of behavior. We saw precisely that scenario unfold at Woodstock 99, right? psychologists would not have a hard time understanding why some of the people at Woodstock 99 might have done the kinds of things that they would never do in any other part of their life that they were just not behaving like themselves. Let me get this straight. If the crowd tells us that it's okay to act like jerks. Are we all doomed to act like jerks? Are human beings basically sheep? The lesson of Woodstock ninety nine? That doesn't mean they don't have responsibility for their behavior. That's a more complicated question. That's a philosophical question. But still. They are more likely in those situations to act not. Like themselves. In this episode, we'll explore the aftermath of Woodstock 99, which included a media firestorm that provoked a backlash against the promoters. We'll also see how Woodstock 99 influenced subsequent music festivals. There were many lessons to learn from this story. Some were embraced by modern music festivals, and some weren't. Then we'll try to answer what I think are the most important questions of all. What can we learn about ourselves from this festival? Are large groups just prone to mass destruction? Or is it possible to find a silver lining after all of this darkness? Finally, we'll hear from a man we spent months trying to track down, Michael Lang. This is Break Stuff. I'm your host, Steven Haydn. Episode eight, Aftermath. After Woodstock ninety nine. The festival was perfect fodder for comedy programs like The Daily Show. It seemed crazy this weekend with the fires and 200,000 people. What's it actually been like? John, this has been the most amazing experience of my life. A lot of people have been talking about these fires, but it was so much more than that. There was also violence and looting. I got this $50 t-shirt for absolutely nothing. Oh and I got you a jewel hat. For some reason, no one else was taking those. But what's most striking when revisiting the real time reaction to Woodstock ninety nine. Is how slowly information moved back then. Most people didn't have cell phones. They couldn't take photos of the mud people or send worry texts to friends as the riots unfolded. The Internet existed back then, but there was no social media. The sort of real-time reporting that occurred during the collapse of the Fire Festival, which turned Schadenfreud over the festival's demise into a worldwide viral event, wasn't possible during Woodstock 99. full extent of how bad it was wouldn't become known for days, weeks, even months after the festival. Or watching it through their phone. Um People were more just relatable, they weren't so fucking vain worrying about their Instagram fucking photos and it was this fucking good time. That's corn singer Jonathan Davis. I guess he misses the slow information era. That's like being like when you listen to your dad talk about the good old days. I'm I've turned into that. Others, however, wonder if modern technology would have prevented some of the bad things that happened at Woodstock 99. I highly doubt anything like this would ever happen today. It wouldn't happen in the iPhone era, it wouldn't happen in the internet era, where everyone has a camera in their pocket. That's Marine Callahan, who wrote about the festival for Spin Magazine. She hints at what has become an accepted truth in the modern era. We are always being watched. If you step out of line in public, all it takes to become the next unwinning viral star is for someone to catch your bad behavior on camera. What if that sense of preemptive shame had existed in 1999? A Woodstock 99 would never have gotten to that point or have gone on that long with an iota of these things taking place, being live streamed. And it almost feels antediluvian that something like this could have happened. It seems like it happened in a little bottle. And it wasn't until Monday morning that the world really saw. Devastation and the wreckage. As a picture of what went wrong at the festival emerged. The media made Woodstock ninety nine a cultural bellwether. In 69, it was free speech and free love, but in 99, nothing was free. High prices made tempers flare. It was seen as an end of an era moment, similar to what Ultimate signified at the end of the 60s. Back in nineteen sixty nine. Maltemont was viewed as the dark underbelly of the Woodstock dream. A reality check suggesting that American youth culture wasn't so enabled with peace and love after all. With Woodstock ninety nine. Many wondered whether the progressivism that marked mainstream rock in the early nineties was a mirage. Was the violence and machismo of Woodstack ninety nine the true sign of where we were at as a culture? It's so interesting that it was nineteen ninety nine. In a way. the punctuation point on the end of the decade pop culturally. It's interesting especially to look back now at this moment when we're into Time's Up and Me Too and the unmasking of Harvey Weinstein. And it's a similar feeling. The mask has been ripped off a bit. And it's It's sad and it's scary. But I think That's what makes revisiting Woodstock 99 important today. Some commentators turn Woodstock 99 into a rock cliche. Years after the festival happened, HuffPost referred to it as the day the music died. Even when Generation X had its own screw up. Baby boomers still found a way to call back to their generational touchdowns. In the aftermath of any well publicized fiasco. Insightful commentary always commingles with a fair amount of hot air. It was easy of the riots at Woodstock ninety nine and overreact. An entire generation with a broad brush. Looking back. Some of the people who are there are reluctant to attach any greater meaning to the festival. Things can go wrong. very quickly. And it's just a few wrong decisions in a row. can make a good thing into a bad thing. And I don't think that has anything to do with you know, an eighteen year old in nineteen ninety nine versus an eighteen year old in nineteen, you know, sixty nine. That's Dave Holmes, who was an on air host for MTV. He rejects the notion that Woodstock ninety nine has any larger cultural significance for Generation X. I don't know. I don't know that it says anything specific about disaffected youth of the the late twentieth century. I think it was just It's normal for there to be conflicting impulses when assessing something as strange and senseless as Woodstock ninety nine. Do we try to learn from this, or put it behind us? Is there any value in revisiting it, or do you just end up wallowing in a big disgusting mess? One person who seems a little bemused by the interest in Woodsack ninety nine is John Cher. One of the promoters. He's been thinking about the festival more lately than he has in years. He told me in the spring that his phone was ringing off the hook with calls from reporters wanting to talk about Woodstock. Those calls were provoked by the troubled launch of Woodstock fifty. Overseen by his former collaborator, Michael Lang. Cher doesn't seem to have any regrets regarding the festival, save one. He wishes he hadn't booked so many hard rock acts on Saturday. The night with Limp Biscuit, Metallica, and Rage Against the Machine. That many people mistakenly believe was the night of the riots. MTV interviewed at least one attendee who felt the aggressive music on stage. Field the aggressive behavior in the audience. They can't have limp biscuit and then they come out and say, Alright, the crowd's gonna calm down and then they have Raging is the machine come out. Alright, you guys gotta calm down. And then Metallica come out. You can't do that. There's too many crazy people around here on drugs. But Cher also believes that the media overstated how aggressive the music was at the festival. Most of it was Mellow. You know, we had a lot of Milloacs there, you know? And uh and a and a lot of diversity. We tried really hard with Michael Lang to book a festival as we did in ninety four that was artistically similar to sixty nine. Lot of different kinds of acts. 69 you had everybody from Joan Baez to you know, hard rock axe. And you know, we we we tried to replicate it and I think we did. If you look at the axe on paper It's extraordinary. It's extraordinary. I mean, you know, you you can't paint this festival with one brush. There's a lot going on. Unfortunately for Cher, Woodstock 99 didn't happen on paper. It happened at an air force base that was trashed by rioters. The months after the festival were an intense period for the promoters. Their hope of making millions from the festival, aided by a soundtrack album and film, had literally gone up in smoke. In the media, they were pilloried as greedy hucksters who created an environment that engendered so much violence. In my conversations with John Cher. His criticism of the media always seemed to center on one person. Loader. Do you remember Kurt Loader? Kurt Loader. Welcome to The Week in Rock, coming to you this week from Los Angeles, where we've come across this He was like the Walter Cronkite of MTB. A serious music journalist amid a field of video jackies. Cool. So dryly witty. I worshiped him as a kid. In a way, this podcast is my attempt to be Kurt Loader. Sean Cher, however, is not a fan. He saw an opportunity to sensationalize it. And There were unquestionably a couple of hairy moments. The first, you know, hairy moments were on Saturday. Not on Sunday when all the problems went. And they're moron lead singer. Badly tried to cause trouble. And While that certainly was newsworthy. Again. Not anybody got hurt, or at least not very many people got hurt. And he From that time. through Sunday trying to sensationalize that. Getting headlines. Them being there with cameras and being able to pick and choose what they wanted to put on the air. By the way, I tried to talk to Kurt Loader for this podcast. But he declined my interview requests. In spite of that I'll always love you, Kurt. However, I did talk to Dave Holmes, who also worked for MTV. And he denies that the music channel had a vendetta against the festival. I was there and it was it was Pretty ugly. Um I think that what we did was report on what was going on. Pretty accurately. We we were you know, you don't expect to be in a war zone when you are an MTV VJ. I don't think anybody really had any interest in in shitting on it before it happened or while it was happening or even after it was just it it was it was dangerous and unsafe. And poorly planned. As for John Cher, he kept on being a big time concert promoter after the festival. In fact, in two thousand The live music trade publication Polestar named him promoter of the year. That's how quickly the industry moved on from Woodstock ninety nine. Since then, Woodstock ninety nine has been overshadowed by the Fire Festival. Which was immortalized by two documentaries in early twenty nineteen. Cher watched at least one of those, by the way. I haven't seen the Hulu one yet, but I've I've seen the Netflix one. And I watched it. And I related to every single second. And in the first Maybe twenty minutes, half hour. I'm saying myself. This guy's pretty smart. He's gonna pull this off. Then obviously he didn't. Back in Rome, there was naturally a lot of controversy amid the smoke and rubble. In the mind of Joe Griffo. The Rock and Roll Mayor The idea of having Woodstock ninety nine was to restore the town's self esteem after a period of economic uncertainty. But the publicity from Woodstock ninety nine was almost all bad. I think in the aftermath there was a lot of finger pointing by those people who before the festival said it was a bad idea and now said, look, I told you so. That's Glenn Coyne, a reporter for a newspaper in Syracuse. There was you know, people like Joe Griffo and others who had really promoted the festival, tried to focus on the fact that This was a relatively small number of people at the very end of the festival who caused trouble. After some initial bickering. Something surprising happened. What stock ninety nine slowly but surely Seem like less of a big deal. Temper's cool. Memories faded. That's fine Joe Griffo The man who fought hardest to get Woods like ninety nine to Rome. was up for re election. Looking back, Griffo believes that the election was a referendum on the festival. A lot of people thought as a not only the mayor, but as a candidate for re-election. that are you sure you want to do something like this because depending upon what happens it could have an impact upon uh how the people view you. I was uh reelected overwhelmingly that fall. So I think that reflects that the majority of the community felt like they had a uh an overall positive experience. Sometimes People just want to move on. That seems to have been the prevailing feeling in Rome. But that doesn't mean that Woodstock ninety nine didn't become an example of what not to do. October, a new music festival began that would eventually eclipse the Woodstock brand for millennials in Generation Z. place in the Southern desert. It was called Coachella. In time, Coachella would develop its own Woodstock style mythology. For instance, here's how MPR reported on the festival in two thousand five. The sun has subsided and the wind blows through the palm trees behind the stage. There's a sense of community, togetherness, the sense that people are here to see each other, as much as the band. I suppose this is what rock and roll was always about. a collective feeling of belonging, and it probably explains why Coachella has become the sun dance of music festivals. It's not that you don't want to go home. It's just that when everybody's different and everybody's dancing, for a moment or two, it feels like you are home. backers of Coachella were eventually able to do something that Michael Lang and his collaborators never could. Tens of millions of dollars. No iteration of Woodstock has ever been profitable. However in twenty seventeen Coachella made $114 million. Now when it comes to music festivals, Coachella is the most recognized brand. Woodstock. 10 years ago everything was like the woodstock of like car dealerships, or you know, this is gonna be the woodstock of spelling bees. But now it you know it's it everyone kinda calls it the coachella of that. You know, this is like the coachella of beer festivals, or like this is the coachella of like weed festivals, right? That's Dave Brooks, who covers the live music industry for Billboard Magazine. I think in terms of like the festival world itself and people who go to festivals now, I just don't really think Woodstock is like as a brand is is necessarily that relevant to them. When Coachella started in the shadow of Woodstock 99, the festival took great pains to differentiate itself from its infamous predecessor. The setting, a polo club in Indio, California, marked with lush palm trees and scenic mountains, was praised for its natural beauty. Parking was free and there were no traffic problems. Attendees were even handed a bottle of water on the way in. The music was different as well. While Woodstock ninety nine offered a lineup featuring many of the biggest mainstream stars of the era. Chella became known for its hip Indy leaning curation. Rage Against the Machine was a headliner at both festivals. But Coachella also booked artists like Beck, Morrissey, and Paveman. The kinds of acts who don't inspire machine. Music festivals today are big business. Unlike Woodstock, festivals like Coachella, Valpalooza, and Bonnaroo take place on the same grounds every year. And almost all of them are run by corporations. you know in North America and Europe to degree it's AG which owns like Coachella and Stagecoach. Then you have like Live Nation was the biggest concert promoter in the world. And they own Lalpalooza, Governor's Ball New York. And then you have a third company LiveSyle and they do a lot of like the EDM dance events like Spring Awakening in Chicago and Electric Zoo in New York. So it's definitely become a uh consolidated business. Dave Brooks says that the festival business has now squeezed out most of the independents. The sort of ragtag, sorry eyed outsiders who jumped up the original Woodstock. Everything's kind of done at at a larger scale and the money involved is some so much more. We're talking, you know A headliner for a big festival can make three million dollars. As Coachella has grown over the years, regular concert goers have been squeezed out too. Say what you want about the Riff Raff who showed up at Woodstock ninety nine. That was, for better or worse, a populist music festival. Coachella charged fifty dollars for a ticket per day in nineteen ninety nine. About what it costs to attend three days of Woodstock ninety nine. But over time, Coachella and the other big festivals have implemented lavish VIP packages. Cater to the one percent. The egalitarian ethos of Woodstock has made way for the perks of exclusivity. It's LA, right? It's all about status. It's kinda to show people like, I'm a big deal, I'm a VIP. What wristband do you have on? And like There's no more high status wristband than uh uh a Tpee in the clamping area. Although I should say that back there is, I'm sure you could pay for something even more expensive, right? Like now you can even rent out luxury mansions on these sites they've built just for this kind of thing. Today, the most striking differences between Coachella and Woodstock 99 are aesthetics. It's easy look back to nineteen ninety nine and smugly laugh at the tackiness of Woodstock. The new metal bands, the shirtless bros. The mud people. The hippie wannabes. Echo Chella with the right Instagram filter. You can make yourself look classier. Prettier. wealthier. proletariat hordes at Woodstock ninety nine. And yet There's a lot about music festivals that hasn't changed. So we ran a survey, got about a thousand responses. And from those, we received a thousand six incidents of harassment or assault at festivals. Kim Warning. She's been working to prevent sexual violence for more than a decade. Her organization, Calling All Crows. helps music festivals like Bonnaroo address the issue. And the training includes how to identify potentially harmful behavior. So really what is it that we're looking for? Obviously once it gets to the level of assault, we we sort of understand what that looks like, but how can we? identify things a little bit further upstream from assault. that might allow us to step in earlier and actually prevent an assault from happening. After Woodstock ninety nine, there was an uproar over the abuse of women. Some modern festivals have tried to address their own problems with sexual violence, but many continue to look the other way. Because if you acknowledge a problem. It also means that you have to accept responsibility for fixing it. I ask him what forms of sexual violence are common at today's festivals. would be cat calling unsolicited comments about about people's bodies um Being photographed without consent. I would imagine that one has gone up, if nothing else, because everyone is walking around with a phone uh that has a camera that didn't used to exist. So I don't know that photography of people was as pervasive as it is now. Uh, and then really the use of alcohol as a date rape drug. I don't know that that was in people's consciousness as much, but that is the number one date rape drug is alcohol. Are music festivals safer now than they were in nineteen ninety nine? If you're a woman. You probably still need to watch your back. But festivals are certainly fancier. The menus are definitely better. Coachella you can feast on vegan tacos, chicken pot stickers. Or gourmet donuts. And the setting is cleaner and more luxurious. As long as you can pay to get in. On stage, the acts you'll see are more critically acclaimed. And they cater to young, trendy, upwardly mobile urbanites. It'll never get too loud. Or too out of control. or distract you from the truly important task at hand. Taking pictures of yourself. I'm sorry. Like Jonathan Davis. I guess I sometimes lapse into my old man routine. I just can't help dwelling on power dynamics. Music festivals, as many have said in this series. Or a realm where the rules of the larger society don't apply. And yet People have a way of using power. To suit their own needs. At Woodstock 99, there was generational power. Boomers asserting their cultural prominence over Generation X. Keep the brand alive. There was gender power. Where men felt emboldened to harass or assault women. And there was the power of the herd. People decided to riot and set fires. These sorts of power dynamics haven't gone away at modern festivals. Now it's just Less dirty. You don't have to set fires. You don't have to yell, show us your tits, said women. Do instead is buy an absurdly pricey ticket. Camp out in an air conditioned peepee. Февс на пор, статус. Where you assert your dominance with a badge that literally says Very important person. So many of these festivals are so expensive. You know, if you go to Coachella, I think you can't really go for under a thousand dollars, you know, between the ticket prices and getting there and having to stay somewhere and the food and having a tent and all of that. That's a pretty significant amount of money. That's Gina Arnold. The author of Half a Million Strong. Crowds and power from Woodstock to Coachella. Basically, what they're sort of announcing to their audience is that The global Capital. is what we're particip we're all participating in that, right? Like help consume that with us and it's joyous. It's a fun thing. participate in very expensive rights. And I and it is fun, you know? And also we're all enmeshed in capitalism, so we may as well be enjoying it. Being overly cynical. After all, most people do manage to have fun at music festivals without setting fires or assaulting other people. Let's go back to Dr. Newman. The reason he doesn't like the term mob mentality is because it implies that groups of people inevitably default to violence. But he says that's not true. So I'm sitting in Syracuse, New York, not so far away from where Woodstock ninety nine was held. But I'm also not so far away from Where another incident occurred in two thousand five, Lake George. Dr. Newman is referring to a tragedy involving a tour boat that capsized and killed 21 people. Many of them senior citizens. But it actually could have been much worse. Capsized. Herd mentality took over. Lots of other boaters who were on the water as well converged on the scene of the accident to try to save as many people as possible. People on shore gathered and got blankets and food so that they would be ready for the survivors when they came on shore. So my point is is that Yeah, people do extreme things when they're in crowds, and maybe do things that are not characteristic of themselves, but not always terrible things. Dr. Newman believes that the circumstances at Woodstock 99, the extreme heat, The lack of water, the rising sense of frustration, created a kind of perfect storm that steered the audience in the wrong direction. Looking at Woodstock 99, I sometimes think if you got an unethical social scientist to purposely create a scenario where the likelihood of violence was basically maximized. Uh you might have come up with Woodstock 99. I mean it was hot. And aggression researchers know that High temperatures are associated with violence. It was set up in such a way that people were frustrated by all sorts of things. People had to walk, in some cases, a mile from one stage to the next. So people were frustrated. And that's another thing aggression researchers know. Frustration is a big predictor of Aggression. The point is, if you treat people well, they are more likely to respond in a positive way. If you don't treat them well Watch out. You know, the devil is in the details. Details count. It is entirely possible to have large crowds of excited people and to have things. Go well, but again. Uh with Woodstock ninety nine, it seems like Just about every other detail in place was Pulling in the direction. Of a crowd. out of control. People are complicated. We all have the capacity for good and evil. But we're also animals. We're sensitive to stimuli. We put out what we take in. So Does that mean we really are sheep? Not exactly. I think it means that we need each other. If groups don't always bring out the best in individuals. We still need a society to keep us from being our worst. As for Woodstock. The dream about a festival devoted to peace, love and music. No longer seems so simple or so pure. And my cynicism aside. That makes me sad. I'm not just a person who writes about music for a living. I love music more than just about anything. And I really want to believe that it can bring people together. I need to believe it. In spite of everything. But is that a phony fantasy? Not for Rob Sheffield. He makes the best case I've heard for why communal music events matter. I think we all have moments where we experience communion in in a musical audience, whether it's a little one or a big one. can have that feeling. You know? club where a punk rock band is playing and you're watching the greatest band in the world with 30 people. You can have that at a stadium show where you're seeing an artist you love who is a pop act, who's used to playing stadiums, where you're just submerged in a sea of strange faces, but you're all having this beautiful experience together. There's nothing phony about that fantasy. I think that that is like absolutely an aspect of music. on many different scales that we've all experienced. I don't know about you, I've had beautiful experiences at festivals. Big ones, little ones, even bad ones. And, taboo as it seems to say, I had those experiences at Woodstock 99. Can't believe Rob said that. All the bad things he told me he witnessed at Woodstock 99. He still had the capacity to be moved by the best parts of the experience. Dancing to the Chemical Brothers, doing the Sunshine Underground. in a field on a Saturday night when you know the voice comes over the speakers and says it's about to rain and then it rains and everybody just keeps dancing. That was a beautiful moment of communion with strangers, even at a festival. As as as Woodstock 99 turned out to be, those moments were real. And I think A real takeaway from Wizuck 99 is the need to Preserve and cherish those moments. Another person who still believes in the power of communal experiences. There's none other. Then Woodstock founder Michael Lang. For months we tried to interview him. He was our elusive Willy Wonka. The man who dreamt up Woodstock. And then ushered in multiple generations of young people into his dream factory. Finally, late one afternoon toward the end of our production. I made one last phone call. Utter surprise. Make a line. Like always, Michael Lang found a way to come through at the very last minute. I think he must have been in upstate New York. Which would have explained his terrible cell reception. But he gamely agreed to answer some of my questions. As I worked on this series, Lang truly had been built up into a mythical figure in my mind. A character in the classic Woodstock documentary. figure mentioned in all the books I had read about the festival. But now? He was just the guy on the phone. It made me think of another character from a childhood story. The Wizard of Oz. Throughout that film you hear about him as an unseen puppet master. powerful man who drives the action. But remains a mystery. You don't actually get to see him until the end of the movie. Uh Lang played a similar role on this podcast. And now. Just like at the end of the Wizard of Oz. Finally get a peek behind the curtain. Of course there had to be an element of chaos. couldn't actually make out a lot of what he was saying. But I could tell that his faith in the Woodstock idea had not wavered. For about twenty minutes I asked him about all the things I had wondered about. He held firm on his assertion that there was no near mass electrocution incident at the original Woodstock. He told me that the power was in fact shut down dozens of times. contradicting his co founders, Joe Rosamond and the late John Roberts. He insisted that yes. did stick around for Jimi Hendrix. Just as he wrote in his book. As for Woodstock ninety nine. And dismissed the bad. particularly the riots and the aggressive music. Yeah, also yeah, like the nature of a lot of the music. And make sure that the traffic. He agreed that four dollars was too much for water. But he insisted that he couldn't do anything about lowering the price. The thing is for Charlie. No, I did that. When we spoke he was in the middle of trying to save Woodstock fifty. His latest attempt to bring the festival to a new generation. Past iterations of Woodstock. Faced opposition from local government officials. There were objections about the planning not being sufficient. The Sheriff for Oneida County. The same county that hosted Woodsak ninety nine. said he could not guarantee the public safety at Woodstock fifty. Then Lang tried to take Woodstock out of New York And to a venue in Maryland. Finally, just two weeks before it was scheduled to take place. What's that fifty was canceled? with organizers citing quote. А серізів усім сетбекс. During our conversation. I'd ask Lang why he's never been able to let Woodstock go. He told me that he still sees Woodstock as a catalyst for change. He believed it galvanized opposition to the war in Vietnam in nineteen sixty nine. And he had hoped that it would rally efforts to fight climate change in twenty nineteen. It was of its time, very special of its time and accomplished for me. You know, a lot of the the the things that I was helping for. Yeah. Okay, cool. On that point I agree with Michael Lang. Woodstock is bigger than most music festivals. Study this institution for me has been a way to think and learn about human nature. When I interviewed people for this series, I always asked the same first question. When I say Woodstock ninety nine, what comes to mind? And the word that came up most often Was chaos. Breakstuff was an attempt to make sense of that chaos. To learn from it. But somehow give it some kind of purpose. So that all the suffering that occurred at the festival wouldn't be in vain. We did that. The next time you're at a music festival. Remember Woodstock ninety nine. Think of it as a threshold that should never be crossed. Don't forget that the strangers who surround you need you. And that you need them. Together we can make any festival feel like a garden. Yeah. A military base. As for me. I think I'll watch the live stream at home. Breakstuff was brought to you by Luminary Media in the Ringer. It was written and hosted by me. Steven Haydn. And produced by Noah Molly. Also from The Ringer, thanks to audio producer Isaac Lee and fact checker Charlotte Gadu. From Neon Hum Media, Breakstuff was edited by Catherine St. Louis. Kara Cornhaber was the associate producer. Jonathan Hirsch and Victorin Patel were executive producers. Production assistants from Carr Navatia and Betty Marquez Rosales. Breakstuff was sound designed by Steve LaRosa and Joseph Fridman. of Wonderboy Audio, and the theme song was composed by Steve LaRosa.