Woodstock '94 | |
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![]() Woodstock '94 poster design | |
Genre | |
Dates | August 12–14, 1994 |
Location(s) | Saugerties, New York, U.S. |
Coordinates | 42°05′24″N73°59′06″W / 42.09°N 73.985°W |
Founders | Michael Lang, John P. Roberts, Joel Rosenman, (Woodstock ventures) |
Attendance | approximately 350,000 (164,000 paid) |
Website | The Woodstock Festivals |
Woodstock '94 was an American music festival held in 1994 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the original Woodstock festival of 1969. [1] [2] It was promoted as "2 More Days of Peace and Music". The poster used to promote the first concert was revised to feature two catbirds perched on the neck of an electric guitar, instead of the original one catbird on an acoustic guitar.
The 1994 concert was scheduled for the weekend of August 13–14, [3] with a third day (Friday, August 12) added later. Tickets to the festival cost $135 each. [4] The weather was hot and dry on Friday but by early Saturday afternoon storms rolled in. The rains turned much of the field into mud. [1] [2]
The event took place on Winston Farm, just west of Saugerties, New York-about 100 miles (160 km) north of New York City and 70 miles (110 km) northeast of the original 1969 festival site near Bethel.
Elsewhere, 12,000 people who had attended the original Woodstock festival celebrated its silver anniversary at the 1969 site. [5]
Though only 164,000 tickets were sold, [6] the crowd at Woodstock '94 was estimated at 350,000. [7] The size of the crowd was larger than concert organizers had planned for and by the second night many of the event policies were logistically unenforceable. The major issues related to security, when attendees arrived, left or returned to the site, and the official concert food and beverage vendor policy which initially restricted attendees from entering with supplies of food, drinks, and above all alcohol. With the concert site mostly enclosed by simple chain link fences, there was hardly any difficulty for many attendees to enter freely with beer and other banned items. The security staff, along with the entrance and exit staff, could not continue reasonable monitoring of the increasing number of people entering and exiting while at the same time maintaining safety, security, and a peaceful atmosphere.
Three deaths at the festival were confirmed. An unidentified 45-year-old male died on Saturday of suspected diabetes complications. On Sunday, a 20-year-old died of a ruptured spleen. Organizers also confirmed 5,000 were treated at medical tents and 800 were taken to hospitals. [8]
The festival was followed by Woodstock '99, also in New York at Rome. [9]
The Woodstock '94 festival was shot using the early analog HD 1125-line Hi-Vision system in a 16:9 aspect ratio. The footage would be used for later home packages and a planned theatrical documentary about the event. The HD footage was mixed live into standard definition 4:3 NTSC for cable TV broadcast. [37]
The Woodstock '94 festival was broadcast live on MTV via pay-per-view in the U.S. and Canada. In the UK, audio from the event was broadcast on BBC Radio 1.
Highlights from the concert were later released as a double album set on November 4, 1994 on CD and cassette. The film about the event, directed by Bruce Gowers, was also released direct-to-video the same year on VHS and Laserdisc. Currently, there is no DVD, Blu-ray, or digital media release.
Since the release of the official album, various recordings of songs performed have been released officially; however, complete performances of entire sets have only been released unofficially as bootlegs. In 2019, a limited edition vinyl-only release of Green Day's performance was released for Record Store Day, making this one of the first official releases of an entire Woodstock '94 set.
About 75,000 people had arrived by the noon opening act at Woodstock '94 - a local heavy metal band called Roguish Armament with Rekk.
Performed at Woodstock '94: set turntables on fire at climax of Hendrix's National Anthem
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(help)I remember saying to the guys, it would be great if you guys were like the mud men, like all the crazy kids out there covered in mud. So time passes, and then the stage manager was like, How do we get these guys muddy? They started getting these [ice buckets] and filling them up with mud from around the dressing room trailers. Sitting right across from us while they were doing that were like Henry Rollins and the guys from Alice in Chains. And [Nine Inch Nails] were all like, "Those guys are gonna totally know what we are doing." So in between all that someone found a mud pit at the edge of the stage. So we all got in a sixteen-passenger van and went down to the stage and the band jumped in the mud. It was this big cathartic thing, and then they went onstage.
GRAMMY winners ranged from distinguished musical veterans including Frank Sinatra (who won Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance for Duets II, his first win in GRAMMY competition since the 9th Annual GRAMMY Awards in 1966) to edgier acts like Nine Inch Nails (Best Metal Performance for "Happiness In Slavery" from Woodstock 94) and Nirvana (Best Alternative Music Performance for MTV Unplugged In New York).
Aerosmith was still a year away -- Tyler was still in Top 40 New York City club bands like the Chain Reaction and William Proud -- and it's at Woodstock he met Joey Kramer, who would become the band's drummer.
I met Joey Kramer walking down the path.
Bob Dylan was simply amazing! He was 1.5 hours late but it was worth the wait.
State police spokesman Lt. James O'Donnell said it will take at least 20 to 25 hours to clear the site after Peter Gabriel's last song sometime after midnight Monday morning.
Friday morning, everybody got up shaking because the downbeat of the festival was at 11 AM. It was like going into battle—very detailed preparations had been made, and now we had to do it. All working personnel were delivered early to the site because the first act was due to start that morning on the North Stage. Twenty acts followed, including unsigned local bands and a "rave" that began at midnight and continued until 6:30 AM the next morning.
Mostly unsigned, unknown bands from the Saugerties area open at 11 a.m., bearing names such as Lunch Meat and Futu Futu.
The ignored: Six unsigned bands - one of them from Westchester. They call themselves Straight Wired, and they're a group of unknowns who only last week played for 100 people in a Hoboken bar.
Johnny Cash, the country and western singer, says he has decided to withdraw from Woodstock '94 next weekend because of disagreements with the festival's promoters.
Buzz on Alice in Chains' withdrawal from their Metallica tour and Woodstock '94 dates has it that the multiplatinum Seattle act is riven by internal strife and by frontman Layne Staley's reported heroin habit.
The Philips Multimedia Village will feature a variety of interactive experiences, including a multiple-screen, multimedia show that highlights Philips Media's hot new software titles; a 90-station CD-i play tent where visitors can experience those titles hands-on, guided by cyberpunk arcade "gamers"; and the "Todd Pod," where multimedia musician Todd Rundgren will perform five live shows daily.
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/woodstock94festival Woodstock Summer of 94 Documentary