The reference to the people talking about how badly planned it was was meant to cover that. But it's probably true that if the physical conditions had not been so bad the behavior probably would not have been. There are lots of music festivals that don't turn out this way.

It seems to me that there are at least three angry streams feeding the bigger pop river: punk, metal, and rap.

I wonder to what extent they are independent of one another, to what extent they come from the same spiritual source, to what extent they influenced one another, and so on.

Punk seems to be mainly represented by the attitude. Walking out on stage with middle fingers raised, yelling f-you at the crowd, and on and on. But there is a *lot* of crossover in all this stuff. Look up nu-metal on Wikipedia and you'll see mention of all kinds of sub-sub-genres. Grunge seems to me to be related, too, although I never listened to much of it. Never quite understood why it was considered such a big deal, really. My first reaction was that it was basically '70s hard rock. I remember reading somewhere that Kurt Cobain wanted to combine punk and heaviness.

Grunge apparently surprised a lot of people, but not those of us who were already listening to its immediate antecedents in the late 80's. What was most surprising about it was not the music itself but its rapid acceptance into the mainstream, which I never really understood: why was so much 90's rock so aggressive?

This was the main reason I tended to gravitate towards shoegaze and "britpop." It could still be heavy and loud but in general it avoided the anger/aggression of the other stuff. I have come to realize, however, that the reason a lot of people enjoy punk, metal, and rap is precisely that they like, perhaps above all else, that aggressive element. In that sense gangsta rap and death metal are cousins, even if the respective fans of each would never admit it.

I actively like some metal, though in fairly small doses, and have become a bit knowledgeable about it. I mention that to justify my observation that European metal tends to be noticeably less angry than American. Even death and black metal and the bands that have followed in that general direction tend to be more gloom-and-doom than anger. The lyrics are often more Poe than punk. In fact one of the tracks on one of my favorite goth-metal albums is called My Lost Lenore. The whole album is doomy romanticism, not I-hate-the-world.

"why was so much 90's rock so aggressive?" Good question. I don't know. That element seems to have receded somewhat, and "why?" is an equally good question there. That was also a time of very non-aggressive indie rock. But I don't think those bands tended to make the charts.

Glad you specified gangsta rap, as rap as a genre doesn't seem to be especially angry.

I watched the last episode of Trainwreck a day or two ago. Pretty horrible. I'm surprised there was not a massive lawsuit, assuming the documentary is not outrageously one-sided.

For me the overall effect was that the promoters were more to blame, because they created the situation. Negligence and that sort of thing, if lawyers were involved. I'm just hedging my bets, because some documentaries these days seem to be basically propaganda. Like you say, that doesn't excuse the thugs.

That's interesting, because I had a similar but very vague notion. But then I thought I must be confusing it with Alfie, because I was thinking Michael Caine was in it. Maybe they were both somewhat dark.

Same here, all I have is that very vague impression. Since I saw both when they were initially in theaters, and not since, I'm pretty sure it's been even longer for me. :-)