Woodstock 99 Festival

The smoke cleared Monday on the site of Woodstock '99 as authorities and cleanup crews dealt with the aftermath of the weekend festival's violent finale--widespread looting, arson and rioting that sent the event's peaceful ethos up in flames. The Sunday night chaos saw hundreds of youths set a dozen bonfires, tear down at least two 50-foot light towers and torch a row of cargo containers, authorities and witnesses said. Propane gas tanks also reportedly were thrown into the flames by rioters.

Like ashes, the fallout from the fires and riots of Woodstock 99 are settling throughout the concert world and no one is more aware of the potentially smothering effects than the organizers of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio. Tickets go on sale today for the Oct. 9-10 show, which will feature Beck, Tool, Rage Against the Machine, Morrissey and five dozen other acts. It will be the first major U.S.

More than 200,000 music fans streamed into town Friday for Woodstock '99, a three-day celebration of love and peace held at a former military base instead of the farm where the original antiwar festival took place 30 years ago. James Brown opened the show, introduced as the "general of soul" as he looked out on giant hangars that used to house B-52 bombers. Also on the weekend bill were Limp Bizkit, Dave Matthews Band, Korn, Jewel and Sheryl Crow.

The smoke cleared Monday on the site of Woodstock '99 as authorities and cleanup crews dealt with the aftermath of the weekend festival's violent finale--widespread looting, arson and rioting that sent the event's peaceful ethos up in flames. The Sunday night chaos saw hundreds of youths set a dozen bonfires, tear down at least two 50-foot light towers and torch a row of cargo containers, authorities and witnesses said. Propane gas tanks also reportedly were thrown into the flames by rioters.

After almost 72 hours of peace and love, Woodstock '99 ended in blazing chaos as hundreds of concertgoers in Rome, N.Y., turned into vandals, starting fires and looting. What began as scattered bonfires toward the end of the Red Hot Chili Peppers festival-closing set escalated into several major infernos.

Like ashes, the fallout from the fires and riots of Woodstock 99 are settling throughout the concert world and no one is more aware of the potentially smothering effects than the organizers of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio. Tickets go on sale today for the Oct. 9-10 show, which will feature Beck, Tool, Rage Against the Machine, Morrissey and five dozen other acts. It will be the first major U.S.

At the original Woodstock, there were warnings about bad acid. At Woodstock '99, the admonishments are about water: Drink lots of it. Organizers tried to push water on more than 225,000 people sweltering in 90 degree-plus temperatures Saturday during the second day of the three-day megaconcert. "There's lots of free water here. There's water all over the site. We just have to get people to use it," promoter John Scher said.

Limp Bizkit--one of the acts frequently cited in the debate over pop music content thathas stretched from the nation's living rooms to Capitol Hill--appears to be stronger than ever. The irreverent rap-rock group's new album, "Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water," got off to such a blistering sales start Tuesday in its first day in stores that one major retailer projects the album will sell about 1.3 million copies this week.

ART & ARCHITECTURE Gehry Wins Corcoran Commission: Architect Frank O. Gehry has won a yearlong competition to design a major addition to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. With a projected budget of $40 million, the museum's gallery space will expand from 29,000 square feet to 52,000 square feet, housed mostly in a reworked interior space in the original structure. The plan also includes a new home for the museum's school, an auditorium and children's center.

The Empire Polo Fields are 90 acres of pristine green in a land of craggy brown and represent a field of dreams for music fans as the home of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. But a few years ago, the festival, which brings international travelers together in this small, low-desert city, came close to being buried by bulldozers. At the height of the real estate boom, owner Alexander Haagen III was tempted to chop up the polo grounds and covert them to residential uses at a big windfall.

After almost 72 hours of peace and love, Woodstock '99 ended in blazing chaos as hundreds of concertgoers in Rome, N.Y., turned into vandals, starting fires and looting. What began as scattered bonfires toward the end of the Red Hot Chili Peppers festival-closing set escalated into several major infernos.

At the original Woodstock, there were warnings about bad acid. At Woodstock '99, the admonishments are about water: Drink lots of it. Organizers tried to push water on more than 225,000 people sweltering in 90 degree-plus temperatures Saturday during the second day of the three-day megaconcert. "There's lots of free water here. There's water all over the site. We just have to get people to use it," promoter John Scher said.

More than 200,000 music fans streamed into town Friday for Woodstock '99, a three-day celebration of love and peace held at a former military base instead of the farm where the original antiwar festival took place 30 years ago. James Brown opened the show, introduced as the "general of soul" as he looked out on giant hangars that used to house B-52 bombers. Also on the weekend bill were Limp Bizkit, Dave Matthews Band, Korn, Jewel and Sheryl Crow.

In front of her omnipresent video camera, she managed to charm a deposed Imelda Marcos into revealing her vast, internationally derided shoe collection. As the tape rolled on other occasions, she jokingly called Roseanne a "big pig" to her face and poked a finger into one of Pamela Anderson Lee's breast implants--back when they were still in service. At the end of one of her most horrific (and well-publicized) interviews, she was even mock-stabbed with a banana by a giddy O.J. Simpson.

The most dramatic moment of this weekend's Coachella festival will surely be when the four members of Rage Against the Machine step on stage together for the first time in seven years, but even that reunion will be hard pressed to match the drama of the politically charged band's initial appearance there. Rage's tenacious set on the closing night of the inaugural festival in 1999 tops my list of Coachella's memorable moments because the very future of the event hung in the balance.