What Happened Here? Woodstock '99 and the Death Of The '90s: What Happened Here?, #2

By Nyck von Boosten

Woodstock is a name anyone who loves rock & roll will know. Peace and love, hugging it out, don't take the brown acid, so many have fond memories of what was the world's greatest music festival. What many don't know is that the story of Woodstock is far more complicated than anyone thought. Especially when the festival was held again at a military base in Rome, New York. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nyck von Boosten
• Release date: Mar 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224194032

Book preview

Copyright © 2024 by Nyck von Boosten

All rights reserved.

This book was researched solely with publically available information and interpreted based on that information. The author has depicted incidents and conversations as accurately as possible using public information from individuals involved. Any claims made by individuals included or associated with this book are not reflective of the author's opinion.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Contents

Content Warning

1.Eyewitness

2.Peace & Love

3.The Players

4.Look The Other Way

5.An Abundance Of...

6.Break Everything

7.Dead Tired

8.The Fall of Woodstock

9.The Corpse of Woodstock

10.Woodstock Forever

11.Works Cited

Content Warning

This book discusses themes readers may find upsetting. These themes include:

Sexual violence

Bigoted slurs

Racism

Mass shootings

Chapter one

Eyewitness

His pinkish-red skin was peeling and his skull felt like it was being crushed with a vise grip. Sweat and mud (or at least, what he thought was mud) soaked his sleeping bag. He didn't know what it was. Maybe a really bad hangover, maybe a stomach bug he caught yesterday, or perhaps someone slipping a little something extra into his beer last night at the Rave Hanger. Maybe it was all of them at once. All he knew was he felt like shit.

Why did he come to this quirky little town in New York on a July weekend? For Limp Bizkit and Korn, of course. And, well, the festival was called Woodstock. His father went to the 1969 edition, so did his uncle, and they wanted him to experience it as well. His generation was too soft, too submissive, but somehow also too violent. How do those go together?

Who knows. What his parents knew was that he needed some peace & love in his heart, and Woodstock would do just that. And he agreed—but not because he wanted to hug it out with some hippies. He wanted to get drunk, take shrooms and get in the mosh pit while his favorite bands screamed about their ex-girlfriends. His friends wanted to do the same. They did just that during Korn’s show on Friday night, then partied in the Rave Hanger until daybreak.

He barely remembered any of it; maybe that’s for the best.

In the end, he wouldn’t be seeing Limp Bizkit at all. Instead, he would groan in-between grotesque spasms from the lingering effects of whatever was in that ecstasy he got from Hairy-Ass Joe around 6 o’clock last night.

His arms and legs felt like stone and his eyes were bloodshot. He coughed up blood every now and again, and his lungs felt like they were vomiting phlegm.

One of his friends came by every now and again to make sure he wasn’t dead—every time he saw them, their skin looked a deeper shade of red and they gasped for air.

The friend tossed in a water bottle for the bedridden party animal to suckle on. Within a few minutes, the water came back up.

At some point, he could hear Limp Bizkit. That’s how he knew it was the evening. The day had flown by, since he’d been asleep for most of it. He could hear Durst screaming at people to get the fuck up, and he tried to enjoy it as much as he could—it was a slight distraction from how horrible he felt.

He paid a hundred and fifty bucks for this.

He felt even worse the next day. The hangover had slightly worn off, but now his mouth was foaming with blood. He felt bumps all around his tongue, and all of them felt like the nerves inside were pressing against the sun. His trachea felt like it was being ground with sandpaper, and his skin was peeling so badly that he was bleeding.

He feared death was near, and he didn’t want to die in a puddle of shit mud that coated the bottom of his tent. His friends wanted to take him to the hospital, but he refused, figuring he could sleep it off. That’s what big boys do, right?

He could hear some sort of snapping noise coming from something flimsy, as well as the thuds and cracks of plywood walls falling to the ground. People were cheering as they were doing it, so it must have been a good time, he thought.

He could also hear the slapping of mud as people skidded in it, threw it at each other, rolled in it like pigs or dogs. A constant schlop, schlop, schlop noise like the tentacles of the Kraken about to pull someone under.

Before he knew it, he couldn’t see anything. It was nighttime. He had spent all this money and slept through the whole day. A hundred and fifty bucks and all he got was violently ill and more intoxicated than he’d ever been in his life.

If he knew it would go like this, he would’ve just gone to the bar and drank a mix of gasoline, grain alcohol, and battery acid.

But it wasn’t all black in the tent anymore—he could see light.

There was a yellow-orange glow against the thin tarp surrounding him. He sat up with a horrible sound, something in-between an agonized groan and a belch. His cold, shaking hand pulled down the zipper ever-so-slightly, and he stared out into the night sky, now painted at the horizon with the same bright glow.

A smell filled the tent, one that caused bile to squelch up his throat and pool around his tongue. Something odd was burning, like a chemical of some kind. Mixed in with the smoke was a hint of manure that he couldn’t quite place.

Was it a dirty bomb? The Russians? Bin Laden? All he knew was that the stench and the already-present illness overtook him, and he flopped back onto the waste-soaked tent-floor with a splat.

He felt unfamiliar feet, fingers, arms, and toes throughout the night. It stirred him enough to regain consciousness, but he lacked the energy to open his eyes, deciding to just hope they were his friends coming back to the tent to sleep. But the bizarre grunts and guffawing he heard were foreign to him.

He heard the tent zipper open once or twice, and then he felt someone whisk away his duffel bag, grazing his face with the straps. He didn’t fight against it. Not only was he unsure what was happening, but he was far too sick.

He felt like if he moved a finger, his entire body would implode. He just kept his eyes shut and prayed he would