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Published: August 29th 2009
Fire Dragon
Its name cleverly describes what it did during the nightThe sky grew darker at 2 in the afternoon on Thursday as storm clouds rolled in and the wind picked up. A massive bolt of lightning streaked across the sky followed seconds later by the accompanying rumble of thunder. We could see the torrential rains sweeping across the tent grounds and as they reached us a few minutes later we took shelter in a vendor tent and laughed. Off to a good start and we hadn't even seen any live music yet!
Bonnaroo is a 4 day music and arts festival held in Manchester, Tennessee, which attracts some 80 to 90 000 people, held this year from the 11 - 14th of June.
Matt and I had only managed to secure a ride down to Tennessee the day before, which given my organising abilities is about standard, we were driving with a friend of a friend, Mercedes and Kevin, and picked up a fifth in Kentucky, Christine. The drive down was uneventful and long, 25hrs type long.
The main venues were named thus,
What Stage,
Which Stage,
This Tent,
That Tent,
The Other Tent, as well as a whole host of smaller stages and tents. Confused? Try organising
to meet somewhere at two in the morning after being awake for 18 hours and not at your full mental capacity due to a day full of shenanigans!
Day One Our camp site was, unfortunately, a good 30 min walk from the entrance to the festival grounds so over the course of four days we put some good miles under our feet. We spent the first morning setting up our camp, an area where we would spent little to no time. We went exploring and got wet, see above, and then wandered around the festival grounds looking at the art work and some of the small bands playing. That night we saw a few bands and went on the Ferris wheel over looking almost the entire festival, well worth it for the views of the area all lit up. We got a relatively early night in preparation for the next few days. It started pouring with rain as we were walking back and surprise surprise our $20 Walmart tent wasn't completely waterproof, which led to me sleeping in a puddle in the tent. Off to a good start!
Day Two Friday dawned with much live music on the
agenda. The highlight during the day was definitely
Galactic with Trombone Shorty and Boe Money, it was excellent. Trombones can now be added to the list of objects with which two people can duel (see photos). Adding to the already incredible energy at the show, Boe Money ran off the stage and spent a good 15 minute playing in the crowd, amazing.
That night we saw
David Bryre, who was dressed all in white with choreographed dancers behind him, we had a great time running around and getting into mischief.
Phish, a jam band extraodinaire, were also excellent closing with a Beatles cover although I suspect they were taking it easy as they were closing the festival Sunday night.
Late night saw us running around between the three shows, see below, the undoubted highlight being
Girltalk, a mash-up DJ who will almost definitely be sued at some point due to very liberal "sampling" techniques. He had let people up on stage by the time we got there and it was madness, the stage was a seething mass of people, we couldn't even see him until he stood up on the table where he had his laptop to dance.
There were people crowd surfing everywhere and generally just going mad. The music cut out a couple of times because people were standing on his laptop and pulling the cables out. At one point he had to stop the show as people were getting crushed at the front trying to get on stage. Great show.
Day Three Saturday dawned far too early for my liking. Most of us just relaxed in the camp until late afternoon before heading into the festival grounds. That afternoon we stumbled upon the best discovery of the four days,
Of Montreal, a kind of electronic, indie, pop band who were significantly better than that rather poor description. They were all dressed in crazy outfits, one of them looked like a punk angel. We were only there for 5 minutes before we pushed forward towards the front to get into the heart of the action. While the band was excellent, the weird performances in the background with people dressed up as pigs pushed to another level. Great band.
That night we saw the tail end of
Ben Harper and a little bit of
MGMT, who weren't actually that good, I felt like I was
The Car Gang
Me, Matt, Mercedes, Christine and Kevin just listening to one of their albums, no lights or video behind the stage or anything. We also saw
Moe., another excellent jam band who played a great set. Unfortunately my body was starting to rebel against me at this point and I had to leave before they finished, which was disappointing as they played till 6 am finishing with a 40 min version of one of their best songs. But I missed that unfortunately as Matt constantly reminded me.
Day Four We got off to another late start on Sunday, we saw
Citizen Cope in the mid afternoon and then
Brett Dennen a bit later, a great singer/songwriter. We spent a lot of time just relaxing near the main stage and playing frisbee and listening to the music that was on at the time. Later that night
Phish, played a great set to close out the festival. Then it was time to leave.
The Drive Home The Drive Home can be easily divided into two very distinct "shifts", if you will, the first three hours where Matt and I were not in charge of driving and navigating and the next 25 hours where we were. Needless to
The Moon and the Prayer Flag
Josh brought a prayer flag so that we could find our tents among the thousands of others say there was an incident during the first shift, namely getting lost and driving 3 hours in the wrong direction, which was extremely frustrating to put it mildly. We pulled off the highway in the middle of nowhere Kentucky and figured out where we were, which is not where we should have been. Kevin mentioned that he was getting tired driving so I immediately volunteered to drive, nominating Matt as navigator.
We immediately got the show back on the road, driving for the next 25 hours on a steady diet of funk, talking crap about the previous 4 days, mean beans and laughing deliriously at the situation followed by periods of one of us passing out while the other drove! Taking care of business getting home 😊 To be honest neither of us should have been driving given what we had got up to during the festival and the chronic lack of sleep we were both suffering from, I was so tired at the end I felt like I was drunk and had to keep slapping myself to stay awake 😊
And that was that. Not a bad few days. I also didn't shower the entire time we
were away. Just thought I'd throw that in there 😊
Who We Saw
Thursday Now the River: Eco Folk Music, Julia Hunes, People Under the Stairs and Midnite
Friday Toubab Krewe, Animal Collective, Galactic with Trombone Shorty and Boe Money, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beastie Boys, David Bryne, Phish, Pretty Lights, Paul Oakenfold and Girl Talk
Saturday Gov't Mule, Of Montreal, Wilco, The Mars Volta, MGMT, Ben Harper and the Relentless 7 and Moe.
Sunday Citizen Cope, Brett Dennen, Snoop Dog and Phish
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justin
non-member comment
girltalk was sued ages ago! those heartless production companies dont mess about