Music festivals have become more plentiful these past few years. In fact, they seem to be breeding exponentially, with a single summer weekend playing host to major festivals simultaneously, such as the weekend of July 17th through the 19th of this year, which held both the Siren Music Festival in Brooklyn and the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago. As the number of festivals rapidly increase, not only do the lineups become more and more interchangeable, thereby making the festivals themselves more interchangeable, but an even stranger effect kicks in: Festival promoters moving farther out into less and less predictable climates and markets to find new places to hold their band-a-thons.

These days we will hold a festival anywhere, and the number of festivals held in the notoriously finicky weather of an East Coast summer has multiplied. Predictably, the number of these promotional gambles that get rained out is also growing, and the intensity of the losses is growing right along with it—which brings us to our “battle of the worst” between two East Coast summer festivals that experienced huge setbacks from rainy conditions. The winner will receive a lifetime supply of grass seed and pocket ponchos. Let the soggiest money pit win!

To place focus on a modern pair of festival adversaries, we have chosen, herein, to neglect the original Woodstock. History made Woodstock an exception to practically every rule, and readily available drugs, sexual freedom, and a lineup unavailable anywhere else trumped any amount of spite Mother Nature could throw at that gaggle of hippies. Also, with concern over global warming and the long-term effects of psychedelics and THC, not to mention STDs still making the rounds of our youth culture, music festivals are events only to be attended under the most hospitable of circumstances. And this means that festivals see huge setbacks in profit and entertainment value when the weather doesn’t cooperate with the promoter’s carefully laid plans.

Sure, we are used to seeing photos of soggy Brits rowing dinghies like homeless gondoliers through campgrounds under three feet of water. That is Glastonbury. And if you decide to go to Glastonbury, you know ahead of time that you will be thoroughly soaked throughout the festival’s entire three-day span. Pack accordingly. 

But this is not true of All Points West, the fledgling northern New Jersey festival aimed at New York City and its metropolitan rock residents, and the Woodstock revivals of the 1990s, which hoped to steal the zeitgeist of both the original Woodstock and the burgeoning grunge/alt-rock scene (an unbelievably tall order, but that is a cage match for another day—Zeitgeist vs. Marketing).

APW is produced by the same folks as Coachella, which takes place in the much more predictable climate of the Palm Springs desert. Because Coachella took about four years to gain its sizeable reputation, the promoters had to have expected that they’d need to build concertgoers’ trust before the truly huge crowds would flock to them. But surely they were in no way prepared for the wreckage of this past year’s festival, their second in Liberty State Park in Jersey City, NJ.

Needless to say, it rained. The National Weather Service reported that 5.1 inches of rain fell the week of the event. Fans wished that they had a “Mansard Roof” as Vampire Weekend attempted to play through the downpour. Since Liberty State Park basically consists of sloping, grassy fields, the park became a sponge, soaking up the rain and holding it under the feet of festival attendees, who were forced to trudge through deep, wide, unavoidable puddles to reach the exits. After the first night, during which I received both despondent and giddy phone calls from soggy friends stationed all over the grounds, many people had learned their lesson and checked the weather reports before returning to the festival grounds. 

Because the forecast called for even more rain, quite a few ticket holders decided to stay home the next two days. Craigslist, Twitter, and Facebook were flooded with posts that were all variations on, “Anyone need tickets to All Points Wet?? Selling a pair below face.” Attendance dipped to 4,000 less than the year before, which was already under-attended for the space.

By Sunday, the weather was downright awful, and four of the 18 bands scheduled to perform that day cancelled. Those fans who braved the rain donned ponchos and took refuge under large art installations to keep food and cigarettes dry.

As most festival promoters have found, inclement weather causes poor attendance and a lackluster crowd. But the patronage of Woodstock ’94 was mostly from out of town, planning to camp on the festival grounds. Unlike APW, which relied on a commuter crowd, when the rain started at Woodstock ’94, no one had the option of staying home. So the effects of the inclement weather on that festival were akin to hosing down the inhabitants of an insane asylum. Everyone lost their shit. 

Though I’m sure they wished they’d had the rain during the infamous fires at Woodstock 1999, the monsoon did no good at Woodstock ’94. Dubbed “Mudstock” by attendees and the press, Woodstock ’94 endured thunderstorms and rain from the onset. Legions of unexpected fans showed up—not something that would traditionally be considered a problem for a concert promoter, but in this case, security was woefully understaffed. Gate-crashers forced their way past the overwhelmed guards in the chaos of rain-generated low visibility and immediately set to moshing and dousing themselves in the giant mud pits that formed at front of the stages. 

Moshing was an oft-hazardous part of the grunge playbook that promoters of Woodstock ’94 had forgotten about in their planning meetings. Another was the anarchistic bands encouraging the crowd into more mayhem. As festival-goers slid, kicked, tackled, and slammed around in the deepening mud, the bands got in on the action. The most famous were, of course, Green Day who screamed and hollered, “You’re just mad ’cause you’re in the rain! Well, fuck you! I hope it rains so much you all get stuck!” The jeers egged the crowd on as the band and their soaked, hostile fans hurled enormous clumps of sod and mud at each other. Security was helpless to stop it, and seemingly half the field ended up in a heap on the stage that Billie Joe Armstrong slid and tumbled around on, both intentionally and accidentally. 

As we tally up the mayhem, a dark horse in the shape of Field Day 2003 requires some attention. Field Day would have been an unfair contestant in this showdown, as it sweeps any other failed festival right off the table with its tale of supreme calamity. Originally planned to be a two-day camping event on Long Island, the festival was denied its permits at the last minute, leaving promoters scrambling like eggs to find another spot. After moving the event to Giants Stadium and cutting it down to one day, moving equipment, rehiring security, and changing all schedules and merch, Field Day promoters had to deal with the further nightmare of the bands. Headliners were forced to share duties, injury forced Beck to duck out, and finally, the forecast for the day called for a dreaded flood watch. A pitiful 15,000 folks were reportedly in attendance, poncho-clad and freezing, and Field Day remains the single bedtime story that consistently keeps concert promoters up at night.

That being said, the winner of the battle o
f the rainy day festival is Woodstock ’94 by a landslide. Although it wasn’t struck as hard financially as All Points West ’09, Mudstock saw many injuries and destruction of private property, putting future events of its kind on hiatus for five years after. But ultimately, Woodstock ’94 wins the fight because of the sheer glee everyone shared in the destruction of the weekend. While APW attendees moped, shoes squishing all the way back to the PATH train home, Woodstock’s volatile patronage decided to take their satisfaction by storm. It seems like the true nature of the music festival: The idea that anything can happen; that you will prove yourself by enduring the trials of nature and rock ‘n’ roll combined; that one person’s nightmare is another person’s best weekend ever.

Watch: Woodstock ‘94, Green Day Mud Fight [at youtube.com]

Watch: All Points West ‘09, Mud Dancing to Mogwai [at youtube.com]