Bonnaroo Friday started out a little later than usual, since the clouds were doing their job and completely covering up the sun after a long night of storming and tornado warnings for central Tennessee. And we woke up to a flooded tent.
A little backstory: We brought a five person tent for the two of us, so that we could have space for living: chairs, coolers, gas grills, etc. The only problem was that we didn't check the tent's bag, and didn't realize until we arrived that our tent was missing its rainfly. Luckily, I had my smaller two-person tent in my trunk, so we were able to sleep in that, but the monsoon that was Thursday night took its toll. Our larger tent that we were spending our time when we weren't sleeping that was missing its rainfly was flooded with water about 2 inches deep.
After tipping over our tent to get the water out, we started our lunch, which I would recommend to any person at a festival or camping or just cooking with a gas stove. Here is a little Bonnaroo recipe for you:
Take jalapeno peppers, cut off the stems, cut them in half length-wise and hollow them out so you have a bunch of canoe-shaped jalapeno bowls. Boil these in water for about fiveminutes (put in Ramen noodle flavoring if you're feeling frisky). Take the peppers out, fill the bowls with cream cheese, wrap them in bacon, and cook them on a griddle until the bacon is cooked. It's easy, delicious, and camp-stove-friendly. Try it out.
So, after our gourmet lunch, we headed over to Centeroo to see Toubab Krewe at The Other Tent at 12:30. I was excited to see them, because this is a band that I had heard a lot about, but had never actually seen live. The band doesn't sing, they have a traditional drummer, an alternate African percussionist, a bass, a guitar, and their closest thing to lead instrument is a 21-string West African harp called the kora, played by Justin Perkins. They were an amazing start to my Friday, and when they broke it down into a five person drum circle at the end of the show, the crowd was bouncing up and down to their tribal beats. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that these guys were a highlight and the biggest surprise of the festival for me. There were bands that were better, but I knew they would be great. I didn't know what to expect from the Asheville-based Krewe, but they know how to bring it. In short, if you don't know Toubab, you best get to learnin'.
My biggest up was followed by my biggest down: not sticking around to see Animal Collective. I watched a little bit of them, but really wanted to check out the Galactic show on the main stage. From what I hear, Animal Collective is at their best right now, and, having seen Galactic a couple times, I don't think they put on their best performance. The Galactic show was good, but I don't think the time or the place was right. If Galactic had played a later show on one of the smaller stages (like That Tent, where I saw them play with Jurassic 5 and Lyrics Born in 2007), it would have been a better performance for them, since they are a band that feeds so much off of crowd energy. Congrats to Galactic, however, for getting a big-time crowd at a big-time venue. The What Stage at Bonnaroo is a dream venue; it is truly larger than life. (Side note: Corey Henry was the most talented musician on the stage. I don't know what his plans for the future are, but he is young and extremely talented with the trumpet and trombone. It will be interesting to see what he does in the future).
Leaving Galactic, we cruised by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Grizzly Bear on the way back to our tent. We didn't stick around long for either, because we wanted to get some rest for the big night, but it was nice to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs play a slow, acoustic version of Maps. We headed back to our tents for some food and to sit down and recharge for the night.
8:00 rolls around and we are walking back into The What Stage to catch the Beastie Boys. As a big David Byrne fan, I was bummed that I had to miss him, but seeing the Beastie Boys is one item on my live music "bucket list." I was a little disappointed in the Beastie Boys show, because they stayed in a traditional band set-up for a long time, something that I was expecting to see occasionally, not the majority of the show. I was expecting to see a DJ and three MC's, but instead saw a DJ, a guitar, bass, and vocals with more of a Rage Againstthe Machine-style of hard rock plus an MC. When they did more of their old-school stuff was when I most enjoyed the show. Legendary rapper Nasshowed up in the middle of the show, but it was a strange appearance, because he only came out for one song, and, if I remember correctly, didn't even have a solo. He just sang along with the choruses and stuff, and then one song later was gone. When they announced Nas'sarrival, the crowd went wild, but, in the end, it wasn't that big of a deal. Highlights of the show for me were Inergalacic Planetary and No Sleep Till Brooklyn.
Next up, the moment we were all waiting for: Phish, Bonnaroo 2009, 11:00 at The What Stage. For me, a younger Phish fan, I started listening to Phish after they broke up, so in my head, they were like The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin: great bands in the past that I would never actually be able to see. I wasn't even going to go to Bonnaroo this year, but when they announced that Phish was playing two shows, I knew this would be my best opportunity, considering how quickly they sell out other venues. There was a lot of questions in my head coming up to the show (as I said in an earlier post) about how the time off would affect their performance, but they put those thoughts to rest quickly.
They started out with a bang, with an explosive rendition of Chalkdust Torture. It looked like they had never stopped playing. Trey Anastasio was still piling on guitar solos, Mike Gordon still looked like a bobble-head Snoopy character, plugging away and bouncing his head to the beat, Page McConnell was hacking away at the ivories, and yes, Fishman was wearing a dress. Highlights of the show (to me) were Chalkdust Torture, Down with Disease, Alaska, Harry Hoodand a cover of Highway to Hell. Follow that up with a cover of The Beatles' A Day in the Life, and that is one amazing concert. In my head, it lived up to all the hype (the good hype and the bad hype) and I would definitely see one of the most prolific live bands of all time play again.
After the Phish show, it was kind of hard to get hyped up for another concert. I did check out Girl Talk for about 15 minutes, but Girl Talk is a guy that I have seen several times already, and the crowd was too big to get really close to. It was a wake-up call for me, because I didn't realize how big and popular Girl Talk actually was. Mr. Gillis probably had the biggest crowd that I saw at That Tent all weekend, so kudos to him for his monstrous success. This was the same problem I had in 2007. After seeing bands like Tool (in 2007) or Phish this year, it is hard to get up for another show after seeing bands like that. I had a good time at The Pretty Lights show, but they are a band that I would like to see again, because it would have been a lot more fun if I was up and energized, but the reality was it was getting close to 4:00 in the morning and I had been hearing live music all day, so I was crashing pretty hard.
So, with the mini-earthquakes from the bass vibrating through my head and fireworks still going off in the sky, I laid my head to sleep about two and a half hours before the sun would come again.
Stay tuned! Daily wrap-ups of Saturday and Sunday of Bonnaroo 2009, including MGMT, Nine Inch Nails, Snoop Dogg and another Phish show!
Until then,
Your bona fide Bonnaroo blogger
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