😍 2022-08-16 23:17:43 – Paris/France.
The sentence that begins writing 18 Brumaire by Louis Bonaparte of Karl Marx is memorable and visionary:The story unfolds twice: the first time as a great tragedy and the second time as a miserable farce.”. These 1852th century words, first published in XNUMX, have survived the passage of time and the passage of almanacs because the story of human evolution seems to have an impressive and insistent recurrence. A kind of looping back to certain moments that only updates a thought and agrees (as usual) with Marx. The question then would be: is there a greater and ultimately more catastrophic illusion than the illusion of return? The examples for glimpsing a tentative answer are many, but perhaps the most compelling (and handy) are Woodstock '99 and the documentary series complete fiasco (Rail accident in its original language) by Jamie Crawford which has just been released on Netflix. Let's say, to paraphrase the writer Juan José Saer: no one ever goes anywhere. No matter how hard you try, no matter how much you want.
The first edition of Woodstock, which took place from August 15 to 18, 1969, exceeded all reasonable planning. Not only because of the totally unexpected appeal (half a million people to witness a huge queue), but because it became a gold standard of what the hippie movement and flower power meant as form of existence in a country at war (Vietnam). : Community interaction and transcendence became a reality in a massive event where peace, love and music effectively co-existed.
The idea of que una juventud podía mostrar otro tipo de futuro (menos cruento y devastador y, sobre todo, con menos intervenciones internacionales que tendían a la depredación y las masacres) respecto de lo que estaba sucediendo en la política norteamericana crystalizó para siempre como message. From that moment, thinking about horse racing was to attach them to this story. Woodstock (also with his extraordinary documentary – Scorsese was part of this team – and the Oscar winner who portrays him) has built his own popular imagination: a recital can make history and dialogue with the present but look to the future. That on one side.
Picture: Netflix
In another sense, with the almanac in our favor, it is possible to see Woodstock as the last cry of freedom and daydreaming of an era (the 60s) that was coming to an end and, yes, bottoming out. The Rolling Stones concert in Almont, California, where the Hells Angels -in charge of concert security- murdered an Afro-descendant and left three seriously injured, and the murders of the Manson Clan (actress Sharon Tate -pregnant and in a relationship with Roman Polanski - and four others) marked a change of era where violence, at all levels and all social classes in the United States, became part of the daily climate. In this way, Woodstock becomes a ghost of a distant time. Was it possible to find that spirit again, to raise that flag again? Woodstock (like Cement, like the Einstein bar, like the Parakultural, etc.) was a legend. It took them 30 years to sketch out a response and envision some kind of concrete return.
Woodstock '99 has a precedent: in 1994 (25 years after the first edition) an attempt was made to revive "the brand". First sign of a new neoliberal era: Woodstock had become simply a brand. And peace? And love? And the music ? The graveyard of hippie dreams was beginning to take shape. That of 94 was a dull festival, failed and ruined by unfavorable weather conditions: the rains which left a muddy mess became the most memorable of this edition. It's quickly forgotten. Five years later, it was decided to produce Woodstock '99.
The series Rail accident by Jamie Crawford also has a previous reference: the documentary Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage by Garret Price, released by HBO in mid-2021. Returning to this Woodstock, this time through a sequence of three days (with a structure in three chapters: one for each day of the festival) allows us to contemplate with wonder and horror the density, the load and the tragic dimensions of the disaster experienced at that time. In this direction, each of the sectors involved (public, artists, organisers, sponsors, coverage, security) contributed to making this festival a disaster of historic proportions. And, in the same movement, destroy a legacy. This type of event shows, on the other hand, that it is also possible to become memorable after a failure. Something common in the rock world.
After Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994, an earthquake happened that turned things upside down in many ways. Mainstream music has displaced grunge from center stage. It caused a shift to a realm where metal, rap and distortion converged, but what we saw the most in the pinnacle of nü metal was a fury, it must be said: white fury, which had to be exteriorized. If grunge was a youth totally disappointed by the state of the world, nu metal moved a few boxes further in that direction and added nihilism and physical explosion but without knowing exactly who the enemy was. he was fighting.
This is why it can be perceived as a sound stream of blind and powerless masculinities for the end of the millennium when things were always going a little less well: from the individual (youth was only a target to be exploited by the marketing) to the popular (the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal was boiling and there was absolute disbelief in politics). This energy was the breeding ground for much of the audience that landed on the site where Woodstock '99 was to take place. Despite the fact that the lineup included female exhibitors (Sheryl Crow, Jewel and Alanis Morisette), it was a festival designed to attract male audiences excited by worthless bands like Limp Bizkit, for example..
Rail accident establishes three moments of ascending and deepening in horror: a predictable and happy first day, a complex but bearable second day and a third day where pandemonium is already breaking out everywhere. It is precisely for this reason that Anthony Kiedis mentions Apocalypse now and, in an act of utter disregard for the sources of fire he saw from the stage, he launched into the song "Fire" by Jimi Hendrix. In this sense, the interviews are very clear: in a context of such extreme economic inequalities, those who hold power (businessmen, musicians, MTV, among others) will do everything so that no one but them be saved and enjoy your moment. What you see in this series is classic class struggle but set in a -so-called- rock festival context, but it's clear that when the terror begins the audience is left to their own devices.. And he remains hostage to security mistreatment, scorn from businessmen, exploitation from sponsors and the like.
Picture: Netflix
Watch Rail accident at the moment is also reminiscent of the superb essay mass and power of the thinker Elias Canetti: “The most impressive of all means of destruction is fire. It is visible from a great distance and attracts other people. destroy irretrievably. Nothing, after a fire, is not like before. The burning mass believes itself irresistible. Everything is integrated as the fire progresses. All that is hostile will be exterminated by him. It is the strongest symbol that exists for the Mass. After any destruction, the fire, like the mass, must be extinguished.
when it ends Rail accident, an air of annoyance and discomfort hovers over everything seen. Not only because the devastation of any hippie ideal that is perceived in all who participated, but also because of the musicians' incredible disregard for the violence they generatedthe limited, false and stupid gaze of businessmen who have caused the greatest problems and attacks on the integrity of the public (especially in the care of women), due to the useless contribution of certain beings who have returned to the festival, among others.
What does rock (or music) have to do with anything just seen? Any. But the question is also that of how festivals are experienced today. Is there a music experience there? The answer will be for everyone who goes there. Rail accident it functions as a documentary and as a portal to many questions where we are still seeking a perspective of clarity and truth.
Trainwreck: Woodstock '99 is available on Netflix.
SOURCE: Reviews News
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