Woodstock Festival, 1994, By Viktoriya Kravetz

From MemoryArchive

Who: Viktoriya Kravets
What: Woodstock Festival
Where: Saugerties, N.Y.
When: August 1994

I was at the second Woodstock Festival in 1994. I was nine years old at the time and my dad took me to be a part of music of the second coming of a peace music festival. It had a lot of similarity to the first in 1969. It rained for about two days, and people were covered in mud. The music was good although arguably not as monumental as the first. The second festival had the feel of the first but it was not Woodstock festival that people generally discuss. There is a certain attribute to the memory of novelty in things, the idea of being a first. The reason for the 1994 Woodstock festival was a twenty- five-year anniversary of the Woodstock 1969.

It was not as significant because the historical context was different. Although we did have military involvement in Kosovo, the feel was different. It was not the Vietnam War. Nor was America in the midst of a civil rights movement or on any huge wave of sub cultural backlash to the old. In 1994, it was about a memory and about music. The festival of 1969 was political and that is sort of what makes it more historically significant to people other than music lovers. My personal account, I saw naked people running around covered in mud. I heard music. I walked for about two miles to get into the festival and the tickets were something like 150 dollars each. We snuck through the fence and I have the tickets to this day but we did spend 300 dollars to sneak in anyway. It was fun and I ruined my brown leather boots.