Mudstock '94

August 12th, 13th and 14th. Three days that your 1994 calendar refuses to forget and the Woodstock festival, held in Saugerties, would never be the same again. Every single band and singer that walked that stage sang their hearts out till they bled, putting on a show to go down in rock and roll history.

Green DayLes Claypool, lead singer of Primus, said "I'm not very good with numbers, but I can tell that there are shit loads of people here!", and indeed he was damn right. People flocked from all over to wallow in clumps of mud and to enjoy one of the greatest rock‘n’roll parties. Ever.

At the time Green Day had only been around for little of their now 17 or so years, yet for the eyes at least, the show they put on was by far the best. They were classed as a punk band from California, but they were far scream from the likes of The Levelers and Fugazi. Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong and drummer Tre Cool had bright blue and green hair, the lyrics were whiny and bitter. But their energy on stage astounded many, especially the ones who thought they were snotty brats, who were going to scream out of tune, yet they pushed themselves to reach the limits of "entertaining" and, boy, did they do it well.

Everything was going fine until things started to get out of hand and went into complete and utter chaos in true rock and roll style. The first mud pack was thrown at Billie Joe. In anger? I don’t know, I mean after all Billie did say to his onlookers, "You’re just mad cuz you’re in the rain, well fuck you! I hope it rains so much that you get stuck!" Anyway, he caught the mud being thrown at him and decided to stuff it into his rebellious mouth. All this did was encourage people to hurl more, in hope that their mud would find his mouth too. With Billie, Tre and Mike (bass) trying to play their songs their crew members had to fend for them, throwing mud back at the crowd, making one big happy mud fest.

But things really did start to go out of control as people from the mosh pit thought it clever to climb up onto the stage. Security tried to stop them, but the attempt was useless. By now all boundaries had been lost, even for chaos itself. One kid ran up to Billie Joe, hugged him, and went to run off stage, but (being the nice guy he is) Billie Joe chased after him and brought him back to sing a couple of lines. It probably made the kid’s day. Running around on stage did have downsides though as Mike Dirnt soon found out when security mistook him for an audience rebel and proceeded to kick him off stage, even through his pleas of ‘’No, really, I’m the bass player!" The security guy most probably thought "Yeah, like I haven’t heard that one before!"

After their performance they left the crowd screaming for more with the chants of "Green Day, Green Day!" The crowd even had to be told to show some respect for the other bands playing, not that they took heed to a single word of it. That day helped Green Day to become one of the biggest bands of that year, and today, in a performance that in this day and age will probably never be witnessed again.

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