Woodstock 99 — Griffiss Air Force Base, Rome, New York

Woodstock 99, held over 22-25 July 1999 at the decommissioned Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York, was one of the most catastrophic music festival events in history — an attempt to recreate the spirit of the original 1969 Woodstock that instead produced riots, arson, sexual assaults, and four deaths. Approximately 400,000 people attended the festival, which was promoted by the original Woodstock organisers Michael Lang and John Roberts. The site — miles of concrete tarmac on a former military base, with inadequate shade, limited water, and overpriced food — was fundamentally unsuitable in the heat of a New York July.

The lineup reflected the nu-metal, rap-rock, and post-grunge world of late 1990s alternative music — Limp Bizkit, Korn, Kid Rock, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, DMX, Dave Matthews Band — and the aggressive energy of those performances, particularly Limp Bizkit's set during which frontman Fred Durst reportedly encouraged crowd chaos, contributed to the deteriorating atmosphere. During the closing night performance by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, fires were lit throughout the site; vendors' booths were burned and violence broke out. The contrast with the original Woodstock mythology — peace, love, community — was stark and culturally significant.

Griffiss Air Force Base has been converted into the Griffiss Business and Technology Park and is no longer accessible as a public site in the way it was during the festival. The events of Woodstock 99 were extensively documented and became the subject of a major Netflix documentary series released in 2022, which brought renewed attention to the failures of organisation and the culture of violence that made the event a landmark of late-1990s disillusionment.