Current mood:
ecstatic I was fortune enough to catch a good portion of the shows that Jamie and I had earmarked to attend. The problem with Bonnaroo (albeit a good problem to have) is that there's just too much going on all at once! At any given time the two main stages, three main tents, as well as a handful of smaller stages were simultaneously presenting talented artists putting on a phenomenal show. It's impossible to see them all and we also found it damn near impossible to just catch our top picks.
On Thursday we wandered the Centeroo area, getting the lay of the land and checking out our food options for the week, should we want a reprieve from the granola bars, crackers, and peanut butter that we brought with us. In the process, we caught What Made Milwaukee Famous, some of Newton Faulkner (including an acoustic one-man version of Bohemian Rhapsody that blew my mind), some karaoke, and a bit of Grupo Fantasma. We tried to catch the earlier Janeane Garofalo comedy show and were instead ushered into a line to pick up tickets for the 8:15 showing, which was lackluster until the final comedian, Mike Burbiglia. From there, we wandered into a smaller tent with energized fans standing on chairs and loving a dude called K'NAAN. After this, we spread our blue and white striped towel on the lawn and relaxed a bit until Dark Star Orchestra. On the walk back to our tent, we heard enough of Lez Zepplin to make us wish we weren't too tired to hang a little longer...but there were three more days of solid music to come and we'd spent more than 12 hours just traveling to the site, so we crashed.
A few hours of sleep later, we woke up in a smolderingly hot tent and brilliant sunshine that was, alas, not to last. Overcast skies loomed overhead all day as we took in part of a movie about Bela Fleck's travels to Africa to learn about African instruments and have some killer jam sessions...then Drive-By Truckers, Stephen Marley, part of The Swell Season (of the film Once), and The Raconteurs (AMAZING show, easily one of my favorites at the festival). We checked out part of Willie Nelson, but after The Raconteurs his show was a little too low-key so we headed back to the camp site to get my rain jacket and ditch the camera and sunscreen. We walked around and checked out all the vendors outside of Centeroo and marveled at how huge of an area the campsites covered. It seriously went on forever! We heard part of Chris Rock and the settled in for Metallica. Now, Metallica is not a band that I've ever wanted to see and I was not excited for them...but we had to go, right? It's Metallica! Not my music, not my scene, but I will say this: the amount of energy they brought to the stage for 2 1/2 hours was unreal! It was an incredible performance. From there, we wandered to the second stage for My Morning Jacket's late-night, nearly four-hour-long set. The events that occurred during this set are a separate story for another time. (Cliffs Notes: MMJ controls the weather and Bonnaroo staff are good people to know.) We danced at Tiesto's set on the way back, but left when there was a lull in the rain for the walk back to the tent.
The next morning, Saturday, marked the halfway point of the festival. It was a little harder to wake up as it was still overcast and the sun did not give us our wakeup call of turning the tent into an oven. We actually slept in a bit, then visited the tent where you can get your hair washed. Jamie, with his short hair, was lucky enough to get his hair washed right away but I had to take a number which was not destined to be called until mid-afternoon, which meant that I had to keep checking back throughout the day. We started with Donovan Frankenreiter who called up onto the stage a Hawaiian dude who rocked out on ukulele at the end of the set. From there, we wandered to Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet featuring Bela Fleck, a little of Gogol Bordello, (here's where I finally got my hair washed) then Ben Folds, Jack Johnson, and Pearl Jam. A word about Pearl Jam: inspired. I've never seen them live before and I was hooked from the first song until the end of their 45-minute encore. We wandered from their to Phil Lesh & Friend's jam session, then Sigur Ros, then Lupe Fiasco performing "Superstar" (the only song we stayed for, but we were both impressed at how good it sounded). Heading back to the main stage, we had intended to stay for Kanye West's last night performance, but after 2:45 came and went and he hadn't started, the crowd began to get restless, as did we. The big screens announced at 3:07 that he would start at 3:15, so we stuck around. At 3:15, the time changed to 3:30, which set the crowd to boooooooo-ing. We were tired and couldn't wait any longer for an act we were lukewarm about. A good portion of the crowd must have felt the same way because we left in the middle of a mass exodus. The next morning, we heard that he didn't start until 4:30 and that it was too light out by halfway through enjoy the whole "Glow in the Dark" aspect of it. Fans, and other artists, were pissed and not quiet about it.
By Sunday I was exhausted, and it was too hot to wander around in the sun. Instead, we picked a few shows that we would watch in their entirety. We started with the Lee Boys, then Robert Randolf (who called Robert Plant and T-bone into his set and also harshly criticized Kanye during his encore--Kanye Sucks!), then we saw O.A.R. and finished the festival with Death Cab for Cutie, in the end deciding to forego Widespread Panic. Instead, we watched the lineup of cars waiting to leave the festival and hoped that the line would not be so long in the morning when it was time for us to leave. Lucky for us, we made it to the airport in plenty of time to return our rental car, check our bags and find a discarded newspaper with articles about Bonnaroo, as well as some of the news we'd missed while we camped on a farm in the middle of nowhere surrounded by thousands of people and some of the best performers I've ever seen.
On Thursday we wandered the Centeroo area, getting the lay of the land and checking out our food options for the week, should we want a reprieve from the granola bars, crackers, and peanut butter that we brought with us. In the process, we caught What Made Milwaukee Famous, some of Newton Faulkner (including an acoustic one-man version of Bohemian Rhapsody that blew my mind), some karaoke, and a bit of Grupo Fantasma. We tried to catch the earlier Janeane Garofalo comedy show and were instead ushered into a line to pick up tickets for the 8:15 showing, which was lackluster until the final comedian, Mike Burbiglia. From there, we wandered into a smaller tent with energized fans standing on chairs and loving a dude called K'NAAN. After this, we spread our blue and white striped towel on the lawn and relaxed a bit until Dark Star Orchestra. On the walk back to our tent, we heard enough of Lez Zepplin to make us wish we weren't too tired to hang a little longer...but there were three more days of solid music to come and we'd spent more than 12 hours just traveling to the site, so we crashed.
A few hours of sleep later, we woke up in a smolderingly hot tent and brilliant sunshine that was, alas, not to last. Overcast skies loomed overhead all day as we took in part of a movie about Bela Fleck's travels to Africa to learn about African instruments and have some killer jam sessions...then Drive-By Truckers, Stephen Marley, part of The Swell Season (of the film Once), and The Raconteurs (AMAZING show, easily one of my favorites at the festival). We checked out part of Willie Nelson, but after The Raconteurs his show was a little too low-key so we headed back to the camp site to get my rain jacket and ditch the camera and sunscreen. We walked around and checked out all the vendors outside of Centeroo and marveled at how huge of an area the campsites covered. It seriously went on forever! We heard part of Chris Rock and the settled in for Metallica. Now, Metallica is not a band that I've ever wanted to see and I was not excited for them...but we had to go, right? It's Metallica! Not my music, not my scene, but I will say this: the amount of energy they brought to the stage for 2 1/2 hours was unreal! It was an incredible performance. From there, we wandered to the second stage for My Morning Jacket's late-night, nearly four-hour-long set. The events that occurred during this set are a separate story for another time. (Cliffs Notes: MMJ controls the weather and Bonnaroo staff are good people to know.) We danced at Tiesto's set on the way back, but left when there was a lull in the rain for the walk back to the tent.
The next morning, Saturday, marked the halfway point of the festival. It was a little harder to wake up as it was still overcast and the sun did not give us our wakeup call of turning the tent into an oven. We actually slept in a bit, then visited the tent where you can get your hair washed. Jamie, with his short hair, was lucky enough to get his hair washed right away but I had to take a number which was not destined to be called until mid-afternoon, which meant that I had to keep checking back throughout the day. We started with Donovan Frankenreiter who called up onto the stage a Hawaiian dude who rocked out on ukulele at the end of the set. From there, we wandered to Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet featuring Bela Fleck, a little of Gogol Bordello, (here's where I finally got my hair washed) then Ben Folds, Jack Johnson, and Pearl Jam. A word about Pearl Jam: inspired. I've never seen them live before and I was hooked from the first song until the end of their 45-minute encore. We wandered from their to Phil Lesh & Friend's jam session, then Sigur Ros, then Lupe Fiasco performing "Superstar" (the only song we stayed for, but we were both impressed at how good it sounded). Heading back to the main stage, we had intended to stay for Kanye West's last night performance, but after 2:45 came and went and he hadn't started, the crowd began to get restless, as did we. The big screens announced at 3:07 that he would start at 3:15, so we stuck around. At 3:15, the time changed to 3:30, which set the crowd to boooooooo-ing. We were tired and couldn't wait any longer for an act we were lukewarm about. A good portion of the crowd must have felt the same way because we left in the middle of a mass exodus. The next morning, we heard that he didn't start until 4:30 and that it was too light out by halfway through enjoy the whole "Glow in the Dark" aspect of it. Fans, and other artists, were pissed and not quiet about it.
By Sunday I was exhausted, and it was too hot to wander around in the sun. Instead, we picked a few shows that we would watch in their entirety. We started with the Lee Boys, then Robert Randolf (who called Robert Plant and T-bone into his set and also harshly criticized Kanye during his encore--Kanye Sucks!), then we saw O.A.R. and finished the festival with Death Cab for Cutie, in the end deciding to forego Widespread Panic. Instead, we watched the lineup of cars waiting to leave the festival and hoped that the line would not be so long in the morning when it was time for us to leave. Lucky for us, we made it to the airport in plenty of time to return our rental car, check our bags and find a discarded newspaper with articles about Bonnaroo, as well as some of the news we'd missed while we camped on a farm in the middle of nowhere surrounded by thousands of people and some of the best performers I've ever seen.
