New York City is getting a mini-Woodstock in August – and it’s being headlined by the same band blamed for inciting riots at the last hipster fest in upstate Rome in 1999.
Michael Lang, co-producer of all three Woodstocks – 1969, 1994 and 1999 – is producing a one-day concert called “Amsterjam” on Randalls Island, a source close to Lang said yesterday.
Organizers are expecting up to 30,000 fans and the stars of the show are The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Snoop Dogg.
But the last time the Chili Peppers played at a Lang-produced show, at the July 1999 Woodstock, the town’s mayor asked lead singer Anthony Kiedis before he took the stage to “do something” about the bonfires thousands of fans were lighting in the infield.
The crowd was using candles handed out by a peace group to torch piles of food wrappers, plastic bottles and sheets of plywood torn down from fencing.
But instead of asking the growing mob to calm down, the band – the final act of a three-day bash awash in drugs, mud and nudity – let the fires rage, closing its set with a raucous version of the Jimi Hendrix song “(Let Me Stand Next to Your) Fire.”
Within minutes, the flames were engulfing a speaker tower and the rioters, peeved at paying $4 for bottled water in the scorching summer heat, were setting fuel tanks, food stalls and tents ablaze.
The looting went on all night and numerous sexual assaults were reported.
Kiedis “could have done something to stop it,” former Mayor Joe Griffo told reporters later.
Now the band and the promoter are back, sponsored by Heineken, but the Woodstock name is not coming with them.
“It’s a ‘mash-up’ festival,” said the source. “The Red Hot Chili Peppers will have Snoop Dogg fronting them.”
Carli Smith, a Parks Department spokeswoman, said Lang explored other locations in the city, including Governors Island, but eventually settled on a soccer field on Randalls Island, next to the newly minted Icahn Stadium.
The city has permitted Amsterjam for 30,000 fans. Ticket prices and the names of other headliners have not been announced.
Lang, who last produced a New York City concert in 2001 – a charity event featuring Marc Anthony – did not return calls.