Woodstock, the era-defining music festival that you learned about in high school, will return this summer for a 50th anniversary celebration. Co-creator Michael Lang confirmed the news to Rolling Stone (who else?) this morning. The three-day event will take place at Watkins Glen, New York, between August 16 and 18. Far out.
“It’ll be an eclectic bill,” Lang told Rolling Stone. “It’ll be hip-hop and rock and some pop and some of the legacy bands from the original festival.” Acts won’t be confirmed until tickets go on sale in February, but Lang said that he wants to see some onstage collaborations and tributes to the original Woodstock performers. “Having contemporary artists interpret that music would be a really interesting and exciting idea,” he said.
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Lang insisted that, unlike Woodstock ’99—which featured widespread violence, an E. coli outbreak, and Limp Bizkit—Woodstock ’19 would be safe, sanitary, and Limp Bizkit-free. “There’s a new dimension in portable toilets now,” Lang said, giving us simultaneously way too much and way too little information. “They are clean and airy and sizeable. They also don’t get pumped during the event, so you don’t have these wagons running around smelling everywhere. And then the end product is fertilizer.”
The event will be livestreamed online, and there will be a heavy focus on the environment. “Things on the planet are critical at this point, especially when it comes to global warming,” Lang said. “Everyone has a stake and ignoring it is ridiculous. I really want people to explore how they can get involved. That’s one of my main motivations for doing this.”
It all sounds extremely mellow and not at all harsh. Read the full feature over at Rolling Stone.
Alex Robert Ross is all on, you know, Twitter, man, but that doesn’t even exist when you think about it, you know?
