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Episode 167: Steven Hyden—Woodstock ’99, ‘Break Stuff,’ and Books as Roadtrips
283 Plays5 years ago
"You tend to agree more with the people who don't like what you do more than the people who do like what you do," says Steven Hyden, rock critic for Uproxx and the host and producer of Break Stuff.
We talk about him always wanting to be a rock critic, how he still has passion for music, and his incredible podcast on Woodstock '99 titled Break Stuff.
Support for this podcast comes from Goucher College's MFA in Nonfiction, Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction and River Teeth, a journal of nonfiction.
Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod, Instagram @cnfpod, and Facebook @CNFPodcast. There's a sandbox for everybody!
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
I got a comment recently from someone on Twitter where they said, you're my favorite music writer with bad taste.
00:00:10
Speaker
Well, hey, hey, CNFers. I'm Brendan O'Mara, and this is CNF, the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, where I talk to people about the art and craft of telling true stories, leaders in narrative journalism, essay, memoir, doc, film, and even podcasting, so you can get a little bit better at what you do. Today's guest is Stephen Haydn, but before we get to him, first a word from our flagship sponsors, Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the greatest podcast in the world.
00:00:36
Speaker
is sponsored by Goucher College's Master of Fine Arts in Non-Fiction. Goucher MFA is a two-year loo residency program. Online classes let you learn from anywhere, while on-campus residencies allow you to hone your craft with accomplished mentors who have Pulitzer Prizes and best-selling books to their names. The program boasts a nationwide network of students, faculty, and alumni, which has published 140 books and counting.
00:01:01
Speaker
You'll get opportunities to meet literary agents and learn the ins and outs of the publishing journey. Visit goucher.edu slash nonfiction to start your journey now. Take your writing to the next level and go from hopeful to published in Goucher's MFA for creative nonfiction or just straight up nonfiction. CNF is also brought to you by Bay Path University. Discover your story with Bay Path University's fully online MFA in creative nonfiction writing.
00:01:30
Speaker
recent graduate, Christine Brooks, recalls her experience with Bay Path's MSB. Unbelievable. It wouldn't be a Bay Path read if I didn't butcher it. I could edit this out, but I might as well leave it in because it's par for the course.
00:01:45
Speaker
Christine Brooks recalls her experience with Bay Path's MFA faculty as being filled with positive reinforcement and a commitment. They have a true passion and love for their work. It shines through with every comment, every edit, and every reading assignment. The instructors are available to answer questions, big and small, and it is obvious that their years of experience as writers and teachers have made a faculty that I doubt can be beat anywhere.
00:02:11
Speaker
Don't just take her word for it. Apply now at baypath.edu slash MFA. Classes begin January 21st. Well, well, well. Look what the rifter again.
00:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, yep, that's right. Welcome back, CNFers.
Guest Introduction: Stephen Haydn
00:02:40
Speaker
CNF, of course, Creative Nonfiction Podcast, and today's guest is Stephen Haydn. He's a music and culture critic, and most recently he produced the amazing narrative podcast Break Stuff about Woodstock 99.
00:02:55
Speaker
What was so great about hearing him say Woodstock 99 on this here show was hearing his voice. Like him, right there, saying it to me. I was like, that's the guy from the podcast saying Woodstock 99. Woodstock 99, he's got that great Midwestern accent and it's just, it hit the notes. I was hearing it, it was resonating. It fell on my tympanic membrane with a kind and loving memory.
00:03:23
Speaker
He's also the author of Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me, Twilight of the Gods, and most recently, Hard to Handle, The Life and Death of Black Crows, of which he co-authored. I haven't read his books yet, full disclosure, so we don't talk about him here. His main intention coming on the show is to talk about that podcast. That's why I reached out to him, because guess who played at Woodstock 99? Metallica. We didn't talk about Metallica, but anyway.
00:03:50
Speaker
But I'm gonna have him back on the show and we're gonna talk about his books and his process behind those and what those meant. So in any case, trying to simplify things, I believe it was this guy named Leonardo da Vinci who said, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Trying to do this and not get fined for my day job, that's kind of what I'm up to these days, that's it.
00:04:16
Speaker
But I have to admit, I feel oddly disconnected.
Struggles and Identity in Writing
00:04:19
Speaker
Like, if I'm not writing or querying or trying to generate features, then who the hell am I? Am I a fraud to talk to people who have the courage to write and publish while I'm like this little bridge troll chewing on rocks and pretending like I know what I'm talking about and throwing rocks at people and just growling at them and drooling?
00:04:42
Speaker
I know on some fundamental level that's nonsense, but when you're not doing the thing and you're talking to people about doing the thing, sometimes I get a little jealous. Not envious, but like, oh man, what am I doing wrong? In my spare time, I squeak the show out to celebrate the kind of work I wish I was doing. But it's fine, it's okay. Things will happen. In the meantime, the goal is to make a podcast worth sharing, of course. A show that makes you want to tell 10 of your friends.
00:05:10
Speaker
who will then hopefully tell 10 of their friends, and I'm no mathematician, but I think that's exponential growth. So keep the conversation going on Twitter, at cnfpod, Instagram, at cnfpod, and Facebook, at cnfpodcast, you can search the creative nonfiction podcast, you will see it there. Like the page you can engage, like the page and engage, hey. Ask questions, share the show, I'll jump in with digital hugs and fist bumps.
00:05:38
Speaker
Also, at this point, I also want to thank Riverteeth Nonfiction Journal for promotional support. Go check them out. Submit your work to them. Submit to their book prize. Anyway, so Stephen Haydn is here, and he's a prolific writer for Uproxx. He wrote for Grantland for a time, and Break Stuff was his podcast that came out with The Ringer and Luminary Media.
00:06:01
Speaker
He's at Steven underscore hiding on Twitter. I think you're going to love this conversation. In fact, I know you're going to love this conversation I had with Steven hiding. So let's just get to it. Let's kick it. Here's me and Steve.
Early Career and Influences
00:06:23
Speaker
You even contributed handwritten articles to your local paper. I think the first of which might have been U2's Zuropa, a review of it. So it was right in your blood from the beginning, wasn't it? Yeah, it really was. You know, there was a moment when I was around 12 or 13 where I made this calculation that I really liked music and I really liked to write.
00:06:51
Speaker
It just seemed like the best possible life to figure out a way to combine those two things. And yeah, it was really something that I kind of pushed to do from a young age. I guess I was fortunate in that respect that I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And at that age, how did you know perhaps that that was even a thing you could pursue?
00:07:20
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, it, that's a good question because I didn't really know anyone that was in the media. I had no connection to that world. I mean, I was growing up in, uh, in Wisconsin, you know, pretty far removed from any major media centers. And obviously this was pretty internet. Uh, so, I mean, really the only exposure I had to criticism
00:07:48
Speaker
As a kid was like watching Cisco and Ebert, you know, on television. I mean, I think those were the first two people I'd ever seen that, you know, were professional critics. Like it was their job to watch movies and, and give their opinion about it. Like Roger Ebert was one of the, he was the first critic that I ever read. Like I went to the library and I checked out.
00:08:11
Speaker
you know, volumes of the Roger Ebert home companion and I would just read them cover to cover in my bedroom. And that's really how I learned how to write reviews, just reading Roger Ebert stuff.
Motivation and Inspirations
00:08:26
Speaker
You know, I was also reading like Rolling Stone and Spin Magazine and stuff like that. I don't, it's so weird, like my career is so kind of bizarre.
00:08:36
Speaker
because I really had no idea what I was doing you know like I applied to one college it was a state school that wasn't terribly distinguished you know but it was like it was where you know like when I was in high school I wrote for my local newspaper and my editor there had gone to this gone to the same state school so I applied there because that's where he went and
00:09:03
Speaker
And I got accepted and I was like, okay, well, that's it. I don't need to apply anywhere else. My first job out of college was working at the same daily newspaper that I worked at in high school, you know, and I worked there for several years. Somehow I was able to kind of get out of that world and into like the internet world and in the music criticism world.
00:09:28
Speaker
But it was just sort of sheer force of will, I guess, that allowed me to do that. Yeah, did you have anyone in particular that was granting you permission or at least putting fuel in your tank, saying, like, Steven, you're like, this is great. We see your passion. You've got some talent. Let's nudge you in this direction. Not really. I mean, I had a supportive editor at my first job. But a lot of the things I was doing at that time
00:09:58
Speaker
were not, it wasn't anything that anyone really directed me to do or wanted me to do. I sort of made myself the music critic of my hometown paper, even though there was really no demand for a music critic. And I lived in this town that was like two hours from the major cities in Wisconsin, which are Milwaukee and Madison.
00:10:24
Speaker
You know, if Guided by Voices was playing a show in Milwaukee, I would get an interview with Robert Pollard and I would write up a big story. I mean, no one at the paper really cared that I was doing this. Really, no one really wanted me to do it. I just did it because I wanted to do it and I could kind of talk my way into doing it. And at the same time I was doing that, I was also working on the weekend and covering tractor poles.
00:10:49
Speaker
small town festivals like the Strawberry Festival in Waupaca, Wisconsin. Like I wrote about that like three or four times. But like these sort of music stories were things that I did, just sort of sneaking it in out of the wire. I would say that for me, like the big inspiration at that time was Chuck Klosterman. Because he was the only person that I had seen
00:11:14
Speaker
who came from a similar background, you know, from the middle of the country, you know, he worked for daily newspapers. He was also, but he was eventually able to write a book, and then he got hired by Spin, and he entered into that sort of mainstream music criticism world, like the national media. And from what I could tell, like he had no connections to that. And I remember reading Chuck's stuff on the wire,
00:11:42
Speaker
when he was still at the Akron Beacon Journal, like in the early 2000s. Like right around the time that he wrote Fargo Rock City, it was the kind of stuff that I wanted to do. Like he was, I think he's about maybe five or six years older than I am. So he was like sort of like the upper class, upper class man. He was like the high school senior and I was like the freshmen. It was just hugely inspirational to me because it's so much different now because of social media that
00:12:12
Speaker
You know, it's easy to know who the big editors are. Like we all know who the editors are at the New York Times or the New Yorker or any of these sort of prestige publications that everyone wants to write for. But like in 2000 or 2001, it was a lot harder to know who these people were, especially if you were in the middle of the country. So to see someone from a similar background enter that world, you know, it's sort of like
00:12:39
Speaker
If you're from Mars and you see a fellow Martian get to the planet Earth, you're like, wow, maybe I can get to the planet Earth. And that's that's really how it felt. I have a love hate relationship with social media, but as much as I hate it, sometimes I realize that I would not be able to be in this business without it. You know, someone who doesn't live in New York or Los Angeles and has never lived in those places.
00:13:09
Speaker
I lived for years in Wisconsin and now I live in Minnesota.
The Role of Social Media in Writing
00:13:15
Speaker
I wouldn't be able to do this job if it weren't for having a presence on Twitter. I've met a lot of people that way and I've gotten a lot of jobs like that. And now I'm fortunately in a position where I'm kind of well known enough where it doesn't really matter where I live. But for a long time, I needed that to get my name out there.
00:13:39
Speaker
I was very self motivated for a very long time. Would you say that that self motivation is kind of your superpower if you had one? I guess. I mean I think anyone who works in this business and has been around for a while and you know I'm at the point now where I started
00:14:01
Speaker
my first job in the year 2000. And, you know, I worked at a hometown paper. I worked at a hometown daily newspaper. I worked at an all weekly. I've worked in websites. I've done podcasts. I've written books, you know, I've kind of done like a little bit of everything. I think in order to do that, you really do have to be self motivated. You do have to ultimately
00:14:24
Speaker
be able to exist without a whole lot of outside encouragement. Not that, I mean, obviously we all need encouragement. We all need someone to tell us that we're good at what we do and that we need to be connected to some kind of community. As a writer, you really do need to be able to look at yourself and say, I'm going to do this no matter what. Even if people don't like what I'm doing on this particular day or even if I feel discouraged
00:14:54
Speaker
at this particular moment, I'm going to find a way to persevere. Because ultimately, if you decide to quit, no one's going to care. No one is going to care about your career as much as you do. And you can make some grand proclamation on your Facebook page. You can say, I have decided to leave the media business. I have decided to retire as a writer.
00:15:22
Speaker
And you may get some nice comments on that particular day. You might get a lot of likes or retweets or whatever. But by the next day, people are going to forget and they're going to move on with their own lives. And you're going to be in your own life trying to figure out what you're going to do. I feel like I've always kind of had that. I've always had that knowledge that even if people are sort of supporting what you're doing in the moment,
00:15:44
Speaker
They're not going to be there forever. You are still going to be in your own life and you're the commander of your life. The validation that you need that has to come from within. If you're looking for it to come externally, you're eventually going to run out of fuel.
00:16:07
Speaker
I know through writing about sports a lot, specifically horse racing and everything, just kind of my niche in a lot of things. Writing about it and covering it often, it kind of ruined it in a lot of ways for me. And I wonder if you experienced that with writing about music, because music's so
Passion for Music Writing
00:16:30
Speaker
important to you. I wonder if writing about it dampened your enthusiasm in any kind of way.
00:16:37
Speaker
No, I don't think so. I mean, I'm at a point now, you know, I've been writing my music in some professional capacity for, you know, a couple decades now. And I can honestly say that, like, I like music more now than I ever have. I have gone through periods, though, where I experienced something similar to what you're describing. And I remember, like, you know, when I was at Grantland, for that side, I was basically like the music columnist where I was writing about
00:17:08
Speaker
I had a lot of freedom to write about what I wanted to write about, but it was also understood that I was going to write about whatever the big release was that week. And I ended up writing about a lot of pop music stuff. And I like writing about pop music stuff. It's an interesting thing to me. And I think I did a good job with it when I was at Grantland. But the thing I realized about it is that if I'm going to write about, say, a Katy Perry record,
00:17:36
Speaker
I can only do it as like a purely sort of intellectual exercise, which might sound counterintuitive to say that about a Katy Perry record. But what I mean by that is that I don't feel personally a lot of passion about that. Like that's not an artist that sort of makes me excited as a music fan, but I can turn on the part of my brain that's a critic
00:18:02
Speaker
and engage myself into sort of looking at her career in a purely analytical way. And I can do that, and I can write about it, and I think I can do a good job with it. But the sort of passion of being a music fan is missing. And I feel like with a lot of that kind of writing that I've done in my career, like this sort of like pop music writing, it was going down that avenue. I think I'm happiest
00:18:31
Speaker
as a music critic, when I'm just sort of allowed to follow my muse, you know, when I'm allowed to like, write about stuff that I just think is interesting, or that I think is great. But it's something that I'm fully engaged with as a music fan. And I have just found that for me, like I'm happiest as a critic, when the music fan in me is also being fed, you know, and I think maybe that's where people get disillusioned when
00:18:59
Speaker
the music fan in them isn't being fed. When writing about music, or writing about film, or in your case, writing about sports, becomes purely an analytical exercise, and you're not engaged, like your heart isn't engaged, it's all about your head. And that's the thing I realized about myself is that if I'm just gonna be sort of
00:19:20
Speaker
Analyzing like the pop music sweepstakes, you know, like what's the latest trend? Who's going to be the next big star? Like what's the next big thing? Like that sort of prognostication aspect of music writing, which I think needs to be there. And I understand why it is.
00:19:40
Speaker
Again, I've engaged in that, and I think it can be interesting. But ultimately, to me, it's emotionally empty. I would much rather write about an artist who maybe isn't part of the pop music world, but I think is really great. And it's sort of under the radar. And I want to tell people about it in the same way that if you and I were friends, I would say, hey, you've got to check out this record. It's really great. You're going to really love it.
00:20:06
Speaker
And it's, it doesn't matter if it's on the charts or if it's not, you know, the sort of zeitgeisty type phenomenon. It's just something that engages you, engages your heart.
00:20:20
Speaker
Yeah, that's great. That's such a great point to underscore about just having at least a passion for the craft of the thing, even if you're not thrilled about a particular record. It's still the process of being able to deconstruct it and try to tease out meaning and then write about it in an engaging way. It's like the same reason like John McPhee writes so well about geology.
00:20:44
Speaker
or something, it's just like, oh yeah, I'll follow McPhee all the way down the geology rabbit hole because he's so fascinated with it. So it's like, similarly, you know, even though I might not listen to Taylor Swift, I know if I see a Stephen Haydn byline on Taylor Swift's review, I'm like, well, I'm gonna tune in for the review at least. Yeah, that's always like the best compliment that someone can pay if they say, I don't really care about what you're writing about, but the fact that you wrote it makes me interested in
00:21:13
Speaker
this topic, that's always the best thing for me. Because I always feel like the pieces that do the best usually in terms of traffic are usually tied to topics that are already popular anyway. So I sometimes feel like it doesn't really matter if I wrote about this because people would want to click on this if anyone wrote about it. I got a comment recently from someone on Twitter where they said,
00:21:44
Speaker
You're my favorite music writer with bad taste, which I thought was like sort of the ultimate Twitter comment to get. And I decided to take it as a compliment because to me, what that means is I usually don't agree with you, but I still like to read what you have to say. That's like the best. That's the best thing that anyone could say to me, I think.
00:22:10
Speaker
And there's a great line, speaking of your writing, that you wrote after David Berman passed, towards the end of the piece you wrote. And it was just a sentence that you wrote that he said, he often doubted his ability as a musician and a singer, which was really touching, especially towards the end. And I would kind of maybe extend that.
00:22:32
Speaker
to you is are there any things that in your own in writing your own writing and producing in terms of audio that maybe you doubt as you know as your own as your own artist that you doubt in yourself that you have to try to overcome yeah I mean all kinds of things I mean you know the craziest thing about you know living on living like in an online world
00:22:59
Speaker
in dealing with people sometimes who don't like what you do. And I'm telling you that is you tend to agree with the people who don't like what you do more than the people who do like what you do. You know, trolls have a way of articulating the very things that the critical voice in your head is saying, which is what makes that such an upsetting thing to read. You know, there's some truth to it.
00:23:29
Speaker
well yeah or like you know or i don't know if it's true or if it's like i mean because i think that with anyone you know with any writer it really depends on the reader ultimately as far as like how well something is communicated i mean i think obviously as a writer you take a lot of care and time and and trying to articulate your thoughts and
00:23:58
Speaker
and put in the best possible way. But there's a relationship with the reader that needs to be there in order for a piece of writing to really come across.
Reader-Writer Relationship
00:24:12
Speaker
And there are readers who are warm and charitable and readers who are very predisposed to not like what you do. The filter
00:24:24
Speaker
is very important, you know, because I think about this when I write books, because to me, like a book, it's like taking a road trip with someone, you know, you're the driver as the author, and the reader is in the shotgun seat. And you really need for that, for that reader, you know, to
00:24:49
Speaker
think that your stories are interesting to think that the records that you're going to be playing on the radio are cool and they want to hear them. And they're going to want to, and you need them to think that wherever you're driving is a place that they want to go. And if they're on board with that, a book can really blossom and become this beautiful thing. If they're not on board with that, if they're like, hey, I don't like this first person that you're using, I don't like the subject matter,
00:25:19
Speaker
I don't like the way that you're choosing to use humor in this particular way. All these sort of aesthetic choices that you're making as a writer, if they're not on board with those things, it doesn't matter how well you execute them. You're screwed. You're screwed. They're against you. I realized this from reading Goodreads reviews, because Goodreads is notorious for having reader reviews
00:25:49
Speaker
from people who like read books on topics that they have no interest in. You know, they're like, like, I just wrote a book, like I had a book that came out last year called Twilight of the Gods. It's about classic rock. And I got reviews on there who were like, they're like, I don't, I don't care about classic rock. And I read this book, and it was really boring. And I don't like, this is an interesting like,
00:26:12
Speaker
But it's like, why would you read a book that you're not interested in? Yeah, pulling down my rating too. Well, that too, but it's like, I'm kind of a compressed that they would read a book from cover to cover that they have no interest in. And that they had no really chance of ever liking. And then they get to the end and they're like, okay, time to file the review. This book sucked.
00:26:36
Speaker
I wasn't interested in it at the start of it, and at the end of it, I still wasn't interested in it. Of course, I read that, and I think, well, if I was a better writer, I could have made them interested in it. But the fact of the matter is that if the reader isn't going to be on board with you, it's just really hard to get to where you want to go.
00:26:58
Speaker
It's tough because I think every writer has the voice of the reader in their head that is least interested in what they're doing. The reader who says, all your jokes aren't funny, everything you're interested in, all the things you care about are stupid, and your thoughts on these things are stupid. Like the Simpsons comic book guy is in your head. Yeah, I think every writer has that voice in their head.
00:27:26
Speaker
there are actually people like that in the world you know there are actually people like that who are just not on your wavelength at all and yet they've still decided to maybe check out something that you've done and tell you that they're not on your wavelength um you just have to be able you have to have the fortitude to say that i still want to do what i what i what i'm doing and i think people who are on my wavelength are responding to it and hopefully
00:27:55
Speaker
You know, there's enough people on your wavelength that will help, you know, that will enable you to be able to make a living at this. But yeah, you really need those good readers on your side.
Creating the Woodstock 99 Podcast
00:28:10
Speaker
Now, of course, your primary vocation is a writer, and break stuff, of course, is a narrative podcast. So as we start to unpack that a little bit, I wonder maybe when you were conceiving of the idea, what was the thought process between choosing, say, to go the podcast route with it versus saying maybe a gigantic
00:28:36
Speaker
narrative feature in an online or in a magazine or a multi-part series like that. So how did you make that decision? With Breakstep, it really started with wanting to work in that particular medium, like a scripted podcast series. I was a huge fan of Slow Burn, the podcast that Leon Nath did with Slate. And also, you must remember this.
00:29:05
Speaker
by Karina Longworth. Those were hugely inspirational to me. Inspirational in the sense that I just loved the shows. I thought they were really well done. If I follow their example, I think I could do my own version of this. After that, it just became a matter of trying to find the right subject to do my version of that.
00:29:34
Speaker
Woodstock 99 was just something I came upon, I think fairly quickly. And I just had a really clear vision of it from the beginning. You know, I was looking at the email that I sent to Sean Fennessy at the ringer, which was I sent that at the end of August of 2018, so almost exactly a year ago. And, you know, I outlined how I saw the show.
00:30:02
Speaker
And the outline that I sent was pretty close to how the show ended up being. From there, I just ended up doing a lot of reading about Woodstock 99, and eventually got in a position where we started interviewing people. And it just came together. It just felt very natural to do it. And it ended up being a format that I really loved. To me, podcasts, these sort of documentary podcasts
00:30:32
Speaker
are really becoming popular now. I think eventually they're going to sort of make oral histories obsolete, you know, because like whenever you read an oral history, you know, they're so fun to read. But if you could actually hear those people talking, you know, it just makes it so much better. And to me, like Woodstock 99, like it was a break stuff. I think that could have been an oral history.
00:30:58
Speaker
But it just made it so much more powerful to hear John Cher, one of the promoters of the festival, to hear his voice. To hear his New Jersey accent actually say the words that he was saying. And that tinge of anger at being blamed for so much of what went wrong. Absolutely. Absolutely. And just the nuances that you get when you can actually hear people's voices.
00:31:27
Speaker
For me, it was also really nice because I love documentaries. Similar to when I got involved in journalism in the early 2000s, I had no clue about how to get involved in national publications.
00:31:48
Speaker
Now, I don't really have an entree into the world of documentaries, but I feel like after doing this show, I kind of know the process. This wasn't a film. We didn't shoot any visuals, obviously, but every other aspect of documentary filmmaking and how to script, something like that, we did that with this show. So I feel like I've got a much better understanding of that.
00:32:15
Speaker
It was just great. I mean, it was really scary at the beginning to do it. You know, I kind of freaked out when I saw the schedule of like, cause I had to write eight scripts and I was basically writing a script a week for about two months. And that was very intimidating. I feel like I wanted to push myself, you know, in a medium that hadn't really worked in before, uh, at least not in this way. Like I'd been involved in podcasts, but doing
00:32:42
Speaker
I started my own podcast in 2016. It was a show called Celebration Rock. But that was like a talk show, essentially, where I was interviewing a different guest every week. And this was much more ambitious than that. So to me, it's like another storytelling medium. It's another way to talk about the things that I'm interested in.
00:33:05
Speaker
What was the challenge for you given that Woodstock 99 had so much coverage, books written about it, investigative journalism? So what was the challenge in trying to maybe unearth a new way of telling the story and maybe unearth some information that wasn't heard before? So your spin on it was definitely unique and new to the year. Yeah, I mean, I feel like, you know, one of the things that I felt made Woodstock 99 such a good topic for a show is that
00:33:36
Speaker
you know, much like Watergate with with slow burn. It's a, you know, it's a story that I think a lot of people know, like the sort of general outlines of it. But, you know, few people know, like the specifics, you know, like, you'd have to read a lot of Watergate books to be as well versed as Lea Nafak is when you listen to slow burn.
Myth vs Reality at Woodstock 99
00:34:00
Speaker
And I really found that to be the case with Woodstock 99. I mean, we kind of play on that a little bit in our first episode, where we talk about the Limp Biscuit performance. Because I think that is the sort of most iconic moment of that festival. And that's why I wanted to start with that. Because I think the common perception is that Limp Biscuit
00:34:24
Speaker
played this festival, they played the song break stuff, and then there was a huge riot and lots of fires and the festival ended as this big catastrophe. When the reality is is that when Biscuit played, some people in the audience got pretty crazy, but like it didn't end the festival at that moment. Like the riots that occurred at Woodstock 99 didn't happen until the next day. So that was sort of an interesting
00:34:52
Speaker
thing to talk about as far as the gap between the reality and the myth of the festival. And that just opened a portal to talk about so many other things, you know, whether it was the minutia of like how that festival was planned and like all the mistakes that were made along the way to
00:35:15
Speaker
the sort of greater mythology of the Woodstock brand in general and the idea of music festivals being this sort of utopian free area that you can just do whatever you want in. You can take a lot of drugs, you can have free love, you can listen to music, all these fun things that we associate with the original Woodstock.
00:35:42
Speaker
And then connecting that to this festival that occurred 30 years later, where the ideology of the original Woodstock curdled in this sort of bizarre and violent and scary way. That just seemed like a great way to talk about, you know, Baby Boomers versus Generation X and the sort of way that nostalgia distorts the past in order to turn it into a commodity.
00:36:12
Speaker
And how when that happens, it ends up replacing history so we don't learn the lessons that we should from history. And it unfolds all these decades later into this disaster that ends up causing so much harm. It just seemed like a great idea for a show, like something that seems so silly and frivolous on the surface.
00:36:38
Speaker
that is actually kind of like an epic story about America, I think, ultimately. What ultimately surprised you the most about this deep dive you took over the last year? Well, you know, I had written about Woodstock 99 like several years ago. When I was at the A.D. Club, I wrote this 10-part series about 90s rock. It was called Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation.
00:37:06
Speaker
And it was almost like an excuse to write a book, but like on a website, you know, like each installment was like 5,000 words. So this whole series was like 50,000 words, a pretty large scale thing. And it's kind of crazy. It's like, that's the kind of thing that you could do on the internet like 10 years ago. I don't think you could do that now. It's like there really is like a before and after social media.
00:37:33
Speaker
Because I really think of social media becoming a big deal in the media in like 2010, 2011, around there. Like before that, I don't want to be another sort of bullshit, mythologizing, nostalgia here. But it does seem like things were simpler before that. You know, like I remember at the AV Club, we would post every story that we were going to run that day on our website at midnight.
00:38:03
Speaker
and the site wouldn't change all day. It'd just be the same stories all day long. It was basically like a, like a newspaper cover, you know, that whole idea. And you could do that, you know, and people would come to your site and they would read everything on the site. You know, even like if you had loyal readers, they would do that. Like, like loyal readers of a newspaper would, like they'll read a cover to cover because
00:38:32
Speaker
This is the thing that we read every day. So that series really kind of came out of that era and really came at the end of that era. And anyway, I wrote about Woodstock 99 for that. And in that piece, I was very like the condemnation was of like lint, biscuit and corn and new metal in general. It was very critical of the bands and it took
00:38:56
Speaker
the tack that like became like a pretty common tact in the media, which was looking at those bands as sort of like examples of like cultural decay, you know, that like these bands, like I think my thesis of my piece was that, that like Limp Biscuit was sort of setting up the Bush administration of the 2000s, you know, the sort of like macho, very sort of
00:39:24
Speaker
you know, aggressive man's man type music that was ultimately insensitive to, you know, women and minorities and all this. That was the pieces of my piece. And, you know, I read that now and I think I was like pretty unfair to those bands, actually, I think I was like, I don't think that was right to lay on them. And if you listen to break stuff, I take a much different position.
00:39:54
Speaker
on that, where it's not about blaming the bands, it's really about one, talking about the organizers, just all the mistakes that they made, you know, and planning that festival, and also, you know, the politicians that were, you know, pushing that festival like in the in the Rome, New York area. And also, again, talking about just the momentum of the Woodstock brand in general, and how
00:40:25
Speaker
that was created over the course of several decades about how there was a festival that occurred in 1969 that had a lot of problems. But a movie came out the next year that sort of transformed this problematic festival into this generation-defining event. And it created this
00:40:50
Speaker
phenomenon that people tried to recreate not once but twice in the 1990s. You know, in 99, you know, obviously a disaster. And I think just exploring that was maybe not a surprise, but I think I was just able to make a much more nuanced look at this, you know, than I was when I wrote about it.
00:41:16
Speaker
several years earlier, you know, that it could be a portrait of something, you know, because I feel like ultimately, like break stuff, it's not about like blaming any one person in particular, because I think there's a lot of blame to go around, you know, I think everyone that was involved in that festival contributed to it becoming the disaster that it was, whether it's the promoters, whether it's the, you know, the media in some respect, whether it's the people that actually attended,
00:41:43
Speaker
who chose to act in, you know, violent and brutish ways, just trying to avoid like easy answers, you know, like the pat answer, whether it's like, what's New Metal's fault, or it's, you know, Generation X's fault, or whatever, you know, just trying to avoid that sort of pat reductive sort of answer and looking at it more broadly.
00:42:09
Speaker
And also, you know, like in the last episode, to me, it was really important to talk about how, you know, the weirdness of that festival isn't just true of Woodstock 99 that you could apply to other festivals, you know, like if you go to Coachella, for instance, you know, you're not going to see shirtless guys assaulting women necessarily, although there is still a lot of
00:42:33
Speaker
sexual harassment and assault that occurs at music festivals, you know, not just Coachella, but you know, everywhere. But you know, the sort of power dynamics that were in play at Woodstock 99, they're not as overt now. But if you go to Coachella, for instance, it's like about the power of status now, that you know, like it was like 99, there was, there were these men that were sort of asserting
00:42:58
Speaker
their power over women, or there was generational power, this idea that baby boomers can force Woodstock to still be relevant, even in the age of Generation X. At the end of the festival, there's the power of the herd. The herd decides that they want to riot, and they end up overwhelming everything and setting fires. You don't see that at Coachella, but you do see people with their VIP badges in
00:43:28
Speaker
living in air-conditioned teepees, eating this great food, and taking great pictures of themselves, and having an experience at the festival that the average person is not going to get. But we're all going to see. We're all going to see the people who are backstage and living the life that we all wish that we could live. And that's another form of domination. It's not as overtly scary, but I think in its own way, it's as alienating.
00:43:59
Speaker
as the power dynamics that existed with Stack99. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the Capitol and the Hunger Games, that decadence is its own form of dominance. Exactly. Yeah. And to me, that's what makes this story bigger than just a music festival. I think it is about human nature, that idea that we're always going to want to separate ourselves in some way.
00:44:27
Speaker
Why is that? Why is it that we feel that some people are going to feel the need to assert their dominance over other people? And why does it play out in this environment that is supposed to be this fun experience about enjoying music, but it ends up kind of creating this own society that
00:44:50
Speaker
has its own rules, but replicates the rules of the larger society. We use the term social experiment in the show about Woodstock 99, but I think all festivals in a way become social experiments about why people are the way they are.
00:45:09
Speaker
Yeah, and to that point, that was something I wanted to bring up was the gentleman you spoke to in the final episode about if you had an unethical scientist, basically, who ran an experiment, it would probably look like Woodstock 99 in the sense that there would be no water, there would be heat, which would breed frustration. And in the overlapping area in those three is basically the powder keg of Woodstock 99.
00:45:39
Speaker
Yeah, and he was an interesting guy. You're talking about Dr. Leonard Newman, who was this psychology professor from Syracuse University. And, you know, we interviewed him towards the end of the show, or the end of our production. And, you know, the process of reporting for this podcast, it definitely made me more cynical about music festivals, and, and just about
00:46:04
Speaker
crowds in general and the whole sort of mob mentality idea that if you get a bunch of people in one space, that inevitably they're going to default to some sort of like negative or aggressive behavior. And Dr. Newman was really great because he pushed back on that.
00:46:23
Speaker
And he didn't like the term mob mentality either. He thought that was inherently a negative way of talking about crowd psychology. He liked the term herd mentality. And he was talking about the idea that when people are in groups, they tend to act differently than they would be if they were just individuals. Because when you're in a group, obviously, you feel less culpability or less responsibility for your own actions.
00:46:52
Speaker
And that can obviously result in negative behavior. But he's saying that can also result in positive behavior. There's examples of people being more heroic or more brave than they would be normally because they're in a group. It's really about the other circumstances in the environment that ultimately points people in either the positive or the negative direction. And that's why he said the thing that you talked about, how if you were going to create a situation
00:47:21
Speaker
where people were going to go to the dark side, that you would generate a scenario like Woodstock 99, because it just seemed engineered to make the group
00:47:36
Speaker
act in a bad way.
00:47:52
Speaker
of the bands that were there and maybe some of the band's point of view. And it was so great and refreshing that you were able to take the dive you took and to tell such a bigger story and examine it with nuance and everything you did. So it was what a delightful surprise. And I'm so, so happy you made this work. And I have to thank you and applaud you for it. Well, thank you so much. That's really nice of you to say. I mean, I feel like what you're talking about where, you know, that that approach where you're basically just talking about the performances
00:48:22
Speaker
on stage and like how crazy they are and how in many cases they're very schlocky and sort of unintentionally hilarious. You know like that's sort of the common way to talk about Woodstock 99 you know to like laugh at the bands basically on stage and I didn't really want to do that because
00:48:47
Speaker
Number one, I think that's a very easy thing to do. It's very easy to always look 20 years in the past and look at the things that used to be popular and to point out all the sort of anachronistic things about them. People are going to do that about 2019 and 2039 in ways that we don't really realize. But there's tons of things about our culture now that are probably hilarious that we don't notice yet.
00:49:17
Speaker
To me, it was more interesting to look at that time and to make it relevant to now, to not look at what was different, but to look at what's common. And there's a lot of things about it that are very specific to 1999, but there's also a lot of things about it that I think are pretty universal. And I think that's ultimately the most powerful parts of the story.
00:49:47
Speaker
great right steven hiding good dude great dude a great dude go check out his work so i need to give out a recommendation again since i recorded this before that was a thing i couldn't ask steve to recommend anything so here it is i'm gonna do this again for a second consecutive week
00:50:07
Speaker
My recommendation is the Blackwing Longpoint Pencil Sharpener. Sharpens your pencils easy peasy. It's nice and small. I've been using a single pencil for several months now in my journal. I've been counting the words in that pencil and it's up to 94,000 words. I'm hoping to get to 100,000. It's cutting it very close. It's kind of painful to write with now.
00:50:33
Speaker
but we're getting there. But when I sharpen the pencil, I use the Blackwing Longpoint Sharpener. Okay, thanks to... Thanks to Goucher's MFA in Nonfiction, Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction, and of course River Teeth for the support. If you think this podcast is worth sharing, try and get your pals to subscribe and keep that conversation going on the internet.
00:51:00
Speaker
Let this episode kickstart a dialogue that carries us through our work week into the next week. Why not, right? We're here to support each other. That's CNF Pod on almost all the socials. Head over to BrendanOmero.com. Hey, hey, four show notes and to sign up for the second best newsletter in the world. Once a month, no spam. You can't beat it so far as I can tell. That's gotta be it, right? Hey, you know what? It began new interview. See ya.