Alisha GrausoVerified account

Other memories it's also bringing back: How stupid hot Gavin Rossdale was in 1999 and how much I loved him.

I was always close to the stage to the left, just off the mosh pits. REAL close. 3 rows back from the walkway to the stage. I remember these stage security guys. I can't tell you how many people I saw collapse or get pulled out of the pit with heatstroke, injuries, or bad trips.

Also depressing that I now remember the anti-gun violence people passing out flyers and petitions. Depressing we've been fighting this with no change for over two decades.

Living through the 90s as a teenager, it seemed like such a great time. But this documentary is really driving home how many warning signs there were about where we'd be today. There was so much inexplicable anger in disillusioned suburban white boys with zero healthy outlet.

We really should have seen the Trump years coming when we elevated a band like Limp Bizkit and a man like Fred Durst to godlike status. ...Wes Borland is still cool though.

Part of me can't help but wonder how many of these inexplicably angry, teenage boys who groped women at Woodstock 99 grew up to be inexplicably angry, adult men who stormed the Capitol on January 6.

It was right as the beat dropped during Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff" that I remember looking around and thinking, "People seem...really angry. This seems not great?" That was the song that changed the mood at Woodstock 99.

I still remember this Metallica set. It felt like they played for 4 hours straight. I was close to the stage & despite the fun, everyone was packed so tight I remembered getting worried that I couldn't control being shoved & I instinctively knew if I fell down, I'd get trampled.

John Scher is a rape apologist piece of shit. Full stop. End of story.

I take it back. He's a piece of shit about so much more than being a rape apologist.

By the time Creed played, the energy was so weird & bad that I remember Scott Stapp coming out for his set & dressed, oddly for a rock show, in a white button-down. For some reason the button-down made me think, "Oh thank God, he's an adult, maybe he'll calm things down." CREED.

When RHCP's closing set was stopped to ask people to make way for the fire trucks, my friends & I were confused: Fire? What fire? My friend put me on his shoulders & turned around & that's when I saw just... Apocalypse Now behind me. Fire everywhere, riots starting at the edges.

By the time we made it to the back of the crowd, everything was on fire. Guys were hanging from sound towers as people built pyres underneath. Guys were rioting, looting the shops. Setting cars on fire. The medics and peace patrol fled. FLED. The medic tents were empty.

I remember that was the moment shit got realer than real in my head and crystallized. My mom was a nurse. That medics, medical professionals, were so concerned for their safety they turned and fled their duty drove it home for me how we genuinely might be hurt or worse.

We made it to our tent somehow, packed our shit up as fast as possible, and ran a quarter of a mile to the car. We only got out because people had broken down part of the fence and we drove through that gap. We didn't say a word for the first hour of the road trip home.

I came home filthy, sunburned, on the edge of heat stoke & with a bruise in the shape of a boot print on my face. I was a happy, optimistic kid who thrived in most situations. When my mom asked if I'd ever do it again, I said, "I...don't know. Yes? Maybe."

Did I have fun at Woodstock 99? I'd be lying if I said I didn't mostly have a blast. But under the happy there was a really troubled undercurrent. I recognize it now as a naive kid working through the really dark shit she saw without being able to articulate it consciously.

I knew what rape was. What I didn't know was how to process all the other kinds of sexual assault that fall just below it. And it was EVERYWHERE. Casual sexual assault everywhere you looked. My brain didn't know how to define that or articulate why I was so uneasy seeing it.

Understand: Conversations we have now about consent & sexual assault didn't really exist in the 90s. I literally did not have the tools to process how I instinctively knew I was seeing something awful or articulate why. It was constantly at the back of my mind at Woodstock 99.

And the drugs. I had never seen and will never see so many drugs in my life. I remember sitting on a hillside the first night, when it was still chill, and looking around me and seeing five different kinds of drugs nearby.

It was kind of a thrill to feel like I was around something a little bad, a little reckless. Like I said: good, naive kid. But even then, I remember thinking, "There are just...so, so many drugs here. That probably can't be good."

Tl;dr this whole entire thread: I'm fairly certain Woodstock 99 was the event that made me start paying attention to my lizard brain & gut instincts, because every curl of unease & every moment of "Oh, that doesn't seem..great" ended up being proven right by the final night.