Woodstock 99

[kelchlsm]

We can start the woodstock nation

[Speilmen230]

Originally Posted by jw209

It was a weird, ugly time and pop music has really never been the same since. Up until that point, there were always a slew of famous traditional rock bands getting mainstream airplay. But the boy bands and Britney Spears-types got huge on MTV and the reaction was Nu Metal, which was the most alpha-male-driven genre of music that could've possibly been conceived. For the first time since the 60s, there were almost no popular mainstream rock bands. Modern rock stations stopped playing DMB and REM and Pearl Jam, and basically flipped to almost entirely rap metal.

If you didn't seek out music and simply took what was spoon-fed to you by MTV or radio, your choice was the Backstreet Boys/Britney, rap/hip-hop, or Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock.

I would disagree with this. There was still straight forward "rock" bands that were charting and popular. Third Eye Blind, Matchbox 20, Goo Goo Dolls, Smashing Pumpkins, Fastball, etc.

If your only source of musical exposure was TRL, maybe this was true, but there was more than just Nu Metal and Pop Stars on the radio.

[WidespreadMule3]

Originally Posted by somuchtoplay

Just watched this, thought it was a bit better than the HBO doc, but i think that watching both gives a better perspective.

I have been to two festivals over my concert career--2007 Eric Clapton's Crossroads (in a stadium though, basically just a big concert) and 2020 Innings Fest--and I doubt i will ever go to another. Even at Innings, things were run very well, but by the end of the night, the portojohns were full and disgusting. I also hated the running back and forth between stages, standing far away for mediocre canned-festival setlists. Can't even imagine how awful it must have felt being at Woodstock 99 where the organizers just didn't give a shit. I'd rather just catch all of the artists on a headlining show.

I've been to a dozen+ and while I've seen some disgusting ones, I gotta say Bonnaroo has some of the best ones this year. They had flushable portajohns. The floor was kinda dirty but the seat and toilet itself were fairly clean. Also saw people cleaning them regularly. In the campgrounds they had regular portas and they were less clean but at no point did I think they were disgusting.

I say that to say I guess it really depends on the sanitation company handling the event.

[somuchtoplay]

Originally Posted by WidespreadMule3

I've been to a dozen+ and while I've seen some disgusting ones, I gotta say Bonnaroo has some of the best ones this year. They had flushable portajohns. The floor was kinda dirty but the seat and toilet itself were fairly clean. Also saw people cleaning them regularly. In the campgrounds they had regular portas and they were less clean but at no point did I think they were disgusting.

I say that to say I guess it really depends on the sanitation company handling the event.

Probably very true. I think my cap is a Football Stadium show, but only because it is a facility built to handle a crowd of size, rather than a temporary infrastructure that a lot of shows setup. Just not a big festival guy at this point--it would have to be like a dream lineup for me to consider it.

[somuchtoplay]

Originally Posted by Speilmen230

I would disagree with this. There was still straight forward "rock" bands that were charting and popular. Third Eye Blind, Matchbox 20, Goo Goo Dolls, Smashing Pumpkins, Fastball, etc.

If your only source of musical exposure was TRL, maybe this was true, but there was more than just Nu Metal and Pop Stars on the radio.

I can't remember where I saw it, but there was a short doc that blamed music turning to crap in the late 90's and early 2000's on the Telecommunications Act of 1996--basically when radio became extremely corporate and centralized. When a lot of independent radio stations started either dying off or consolidating with bigger ones.

[NeatFreakGeek]

Originally Posted by Speilmen230

I would disagree with this. There was still straight forward "rock" bands that were charting and popular. Third Eye Blind, Matchbox 20, Goo Goo Dolls, Smashing Pumpkins, Fastball, etc.

If your only source of musical exposure was TRL, maybe this was true, but there was more than just Nu Metal and Pop Stars on the radio.

Totally agree. There was a middle ground for sure. Do you know who was in there?

DMB.

[ISawTheBridge10]

Originally Posted by Speilmen230

I would disagree with this. There was still straight forward "rock" bands that were charting and popular. Third Eye Blind, Matchbox 20, Goo Goo Dolls, Smashing Pumpkins, Fastball, etc.

If your only source of musical exposure was TRL, maybe this was true, but there was more than just Nu Metal and Pop Stars on the radio.

My only rebuttal to this is that all of these bands showed up pretty regularly on TRL. The first time I heard Goo Goo Dolls' Iris was on TRL in 6th grade--they wore that song and music video out.

Not sure of the source of this list, but at first glance I would call it (at least, the bands and songs on the list--not necessarily the order) accurate for the time.

https://pulsemusic.proboards.com/thr...l-top-100-1998

Yes, the crux of TRL was boy bands, nu metal, and Eminem. But tons of bands got exposure because of MTV and TRL.

edit: the exception would be Smashing Pumpkins, who were already insanely popular by 1998.

[Speilmen230]

Originally Posted by ISawTheBridge10

My only rebuttal to this is that all of these bands showed up pretty regularly on TRL. The first time I heard Goo Goo Dolls' Iris was on TRL in 6th grade--they wore that song and music video out.

Not sure of the source of this list, but at first glance I would call it (at least, the bands and songs on the list--not necessarily the order) accurate for the time.

https://pulsemusic.proboards.com/thr...l-top-100-1998

Yes, the crux of TRL was boy bands, nu metal, and Eminem. But tons of bands got exposure because of MTV and TRL.

edit: the exception would be Smashing Pumpkins, who were already insanely popular by 1998.

That's fair, however the poster I was replying to was arguing that there was no middle ground, which is just plain false.

You could even make an argument for the tweener solo artists who were more pop-rock like Sugar Ray, Smash Mouth, Lenny Kravitz, Alanis Morrisette, Sheryl Crowe. They weren't teenie boppers and they weren't nu metal.

[Rodey]

Gotta be honest, I remember TRL always featuring a pretty diverse array of artists. The boy bands dominated the top spot but I always thought the top 10 represented all genres fairly well.

[coldengrey12]

Originally Posted by NeatFreakGeek

Totally agree. There was a middle ground for sure. Do you know who was in there?

DMB.

Oh most definitely

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBYtvdpP1vQ

[jmkratt]

Originally Posted by nerrfhearder

Don't forget Creed.

I don't care what anyone says, that first Creed album was a banger.

And I don't remember Creed having anywhere near the presence on MTV that Backstreet Boys, N Sync, Britney, Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, Eminem etc had.

[Rodey]

Originally Posted by jmkratt

I don't care what anyone says, that first Creed album was a banger.

And I don't remember Creed having anywhere near the presence on MTV that Backstreet Boys, N Sync, Britney, Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, Eminem etc had.

First Creed album was solid.

I also definitely remember them being on TRL, especially for those few big songs off Weathered.

[jmkratt]

Originally Posted by Rodey

First Creed album was solid.

I also definitely remember them being on TRL, especially for those few big songs off Weathered.

I just don't have any memory of that...or what's on Weathered I think was done with them by that point.

[Rodey]

Originally Posted by jmkratt

I just don't have any memory of that...or what's on Weathered I think was done with them by that point.

I remember My Sacrifice being EVERYWHERE. And probably With Arms Wide Open. I think when they performed at Woodstock they were still pretty new from a “mainstream” perspective.

[DannoMac21]

My Sacrifice will always make me think of Triple H. Banger

[notorious v.i.g]

Originally Posted by coldengrey12

Oh most definitely

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBYtvdpP1vQ

Forgot about that. Who was playing guitar? That was kinda painful. Well guess this is what RCA wanted at the time. They probably still do

[jw209]

Originally Posted by Speilmen230

I would disagree with this. There was still straight forward "rock" bands that were charting and popular. Third Eye Blind, Matchbox 20, Goo Goo Dolls, Smashing Pumpkins, Fastball, etc.

If your only source of musical exposure was TRL, maybe this was true, but there was more than just Nu Metal and Pop Stars on the radio.

Not sure how old you are and what you remember but the majority of the bands you mentioned were nowhere near the popularity of the deluge of rock bands that always got heavy airplay on MTV and radio up until the late 90s.

Matchbox 20 was legitimately big, but they really were a pop band. Goo Goo Dolls also had a few massive hits. I'll give you that. But they were writing power ballads at that point. Smashing Pumpkins were huge at one point, but not by then. Their prime era was the same as Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, etc. Mellen Collie was their last really big album and that was released in '95. Fastball was never a headliner. Foo Fighters you didn't mention but they were pretty big in the late 90s. DMB was big, obviously (they were playing football stadiums!) but they almost entirely ceased to be played on mainstream radio and MTV after BTCS.

Of course there were some famous rock bands. But it wasn't like before when there were huge modern rock stations playing everything from Nirvana to DMB to Beck in every city up until around 1998. After that, the vast (vast) majority of music played on modern rock stations got much heavier.

[jw209]

I cite this quote from the Wikipedia entry on Modern rock radio :

For most of the 2000s, modern rock radio stations mostly featured songs that were crossed over from the active rock format. This was often famous for the second wave of post-grunge and nu metal scenes that derived from grunge and alternative metal music, respectively, in the 1990s. During the early 2000s, these two genres made up most of the modern rock format, despite the format being a heavily diverse format genre-wise

This is essentially what I was saying. There used to be a huge myriad of modern rock bands who were vastly different. Everyone from Offspring to REM to Sarah McLaughlin to Stone Temple Pilots to Oasis. By the late 90s and early 2000s that range narrowed massively into a shit ton of bands that all played what is apparently called "active rock".