JAMES LILEKS ON NETFLIX’S THREE-EPISODE MINISERIES WOODSTOCK ’99:

I don’t remember any cultural impact of the event, aside from eye-rolling at trying to reprise the “Woodstock Spirit,” which means “swaying to hippie sounds or tripping to Hendrix while you stink worse than you’ve ever stunk before, then tottering off to a nearby copse to squat out whatever beans you ate the day before. The whole mystique is lost on me. It seems like the original was a nightmare of bad hygiene and music of varying qualities, subsequently regarded as a utopian moment for the high holy Boomer movement. I have an allergic reaction to all that stuff.

The 90s was when I lost touch with contemporary rock, so the bands mean nothing to me. They’re mostly angry. Very angry. Loud and tight and tuneless. You look back and wonder: I don’t remember the 90s being this feral. But you get the sense of a youth culture that had completely decoupled from the civilization that gave them life and food and purpose. Just RAAAAHHHHWWWWW dude culture, like the last horrible yawp before the internet fixed them all with a pin and everyone was anesthetized by a gaming console or a phone.

Read the whole thing.