Reality as the absence of Bonnaroo

By my estimation, Bonnaroo is a fantasy. A dream that should never have come true—but somehow does: the convergence of contradictions jamming on the head of a psychedelic pin. It’s the end of civilization, and this is one of the parties to end the world with style.

Even music fans of the hardcore variety might not make the effort to travel so far, spend too much cash on food & fuel, dealing with the general discomfort. But somehow, the comfortable insanity intoxicates & infects the roo-sters. “Reality is a condition caused by the absence of Bonnaroo,” the graffiti & t-shirt proclaim.

And for those who like festivals, digging on the spontaneous cooperation and funky flirtations, the ‘roo might be too massive. Aren’t there smaller, less chaotic, temporary autonomous zones?

Do we love the punishing heat or the even more sweltering social contradiction? Do we condone the teenage wasteland, the underage drug & alcohol abuse? Doe the libertarian in us enjoy the overpriced consumeroo or the outlaw outskirts with its freakified flea market, the blossoming black market based on cash-only commerce & barter for pharmacological wonders? Does all the fun justify the accidental deaths & boneheaded frat-like pranks?

I suppose I would have to be considered one of those set-hopping whirlwind wingnuts who did the festival with devotional veracity. In four days, I saw over 30 performances: several full sets, even more serious chunks of sets, and finally, a grab bag of snippets & slivers. I think I must have walked at least 10 miles during my time there. Weary & without regret, we left during the Phil Lesh set on Sunday night.

The delicate balance barely manages itself. And I barely managed myself on a well-steeped brew of healthy, (brought it from home) snackfood, short doses of sleep, & strategic blend of mind-altering substance. Rolling & rocking between the stupendous & the stupid, the ecstatic & exhausted, I somehow tapped the spontaneous wonder of why some people must come here every year.

But Bonnaroo has an underbelly of drug busts, petty crime against innocent patrons, internal bickering, & bungled moments. These won’t stop the organizers from proclaiming their own proud success. The boastful phrase “nearly flawless logistics” must be taken with caution. Without the dose of necessary disclaimers, the bragging is almost embarrassing.

Preaching “green” is great (which Bonnaroo proper does with precision & vision), and the tireless effort of the Clean Vibes (recycling & general cleanup) crew truly inspired me, but the festival itself is on the excessive side of sheer excess in every imaginable way. But even eco-star Bonnie Raitt simply praised Bonnaroo. It seems almost sacrilege to call out the blazing disconnect between the Planet Roo message of earth democracy & the ridiculously arbitrary and undemocratic reality of the massive, wasteful roo-ocracy.

But for every stressed-out security supervisor, I saw at least a hundred younger employees who clearly loved their summer temp jobs. Bonnaroo attendees come from privilege, but many kids who couldn’t afford the ticket came to work & clearly felt good about that decision.

Of course, we all know that something exists to allow these organizers some slack, to tolerate and even pay for their hierarchy of flawed politics & institutionalized hypocrisy. We know the reason why we also put up with heat & the dust, the bursts of parking lot stupidity & the undercover cops & private security possee on horseback.

Yeah, I swallowed some of my values & didn’t start a protest because of that one common thread. This thread tightly wove a wild carnivalesque community out of all this apocalyptic decadence. Because I went there for the sound, for the song & dance, for the performance art & temporary sculpture, I could honestly honor the way in which the postmodern, watered-down version of the Woodstock Nation still can get it together to dance.

I danced & danced hard; the sweat poured from my pores. The music I saw so ran the gamut from very good to truly exceptional. Excepting the mammoth main stage where I only saw two shows, I got real close for every set. The love of my weekend was the Tent Stages of Centeroo and the after-hours jams. Who couldn’t feel some love for the vibrant village that surrounded the tents with its mood of a music-lovers’ theme park—like the Cedar Point for the hippy-punk-raver set, where we have rollers instead of rollercoasters.

Bonnaroo provided an illicit amount of fun: including the scandalous set by the Bindlestiff Circus & my own preachin’ performance on the solar stage & so much more that I will have to add to this thread later.

My work cut out for me

36 hours 'til liftoff, and I really have my work cut out for me to get ready.

I've read some more online posts from the four previous festivals, & if I want to write about this convergence well, I have my work cut out for me.

I have to sleep some, stay sober some, & study the crafty journalism of those that covered the previous festivals properly.

This diary from last year's 'roo--penned by a professional posting for the AP--does an excellent job of mixing musical & cultural commentary. This & Maxzine's rant (see the first long post) are my new standards.

If I can't say something memorable & important, why bother?

Not the first blogaroo

There's going to be an air-conditioned movie tent at Bonnaroo, but the schedule boasts a bunch of purely popcorn pics—not the round-the-clock screening of obscure & classic rockumentaries I would expect & enjoy. I might still go there to get cool or catch a minute of the soccer game Saturday, but not to devour the hopelessly mediocre menu of Hollywood.

So, to spice up my countdown of packing, planning, & manic multitasking, to get myself in the mood while I get things done, I’ve got my DVDs of Coachella & Woodstock. The Who’s “Summertime Blues” is blaring in my headphones & playing on the desktop ‘puter as I tap these notes into a Word file on my laptop.

It's still uncertain if I'll pull off posting to this blog from the actual Bonnaroo festival, but I'm certainly not the first writer to try to do a blogaroo. 2004 appears to be the year that local papers in Memphis and Tennessee sent their writers to blog-on about the goings on. Cultural commentary mixed with complaints about missing credentials and uncomfortable camping seems to be the preferred approach.

This blogaroo seemed more upset about the sketchy wireless access than anything else while this one really did its best to cover the festival with some enlightened depth & appreciation. Finally, this piece from High Times really seems to capture the spirit of why people return to Manchester every year.

I’ve spent days reading posts at the Inforoo site, studying maps & aerial photos, asking myself if I’m about to waste four days in a sweltering field or fulfill my mad rock music desires with an overflowing cup of sonic brew.

I’m grateful to my east-coast radical circus comrades who are performing & helping me get there, & I’m curious as they must be how a mainstream, corporate-sponsored festival in the deep south compares to other more earthy & explicitly alternative gatherings.

So, in 48 hours, I’ll find out if my efforts, intentions, & anticipations were worth it.

“Are you on the way to Bonnaroo?” Palliative for the people or place of radical possibility?

“Are you on the way to Bonnaroo?”

Someone working in a local store has innocently asked me this every June since 2002 (the year that the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival began). Even though I’m probably more middle-class & mainstream than I want to be, even though I’ve only flown my freak-flag at half-mast since moving to the south a decade ago, I still get profiled as hippy, peacenik, other.

“Actually, I live here.”

While my friends & I prepare to celebrate the summer solstice in proper pagan fashion, another annual party draws thousands to a farm a mere fifty miles south of my rural, communal home. Even if one weren’t a tuned in music fan & conscientious student of cultural phenomenon, you would always know what’s up.

View the traffic jams on I-24. Study the lineup at Bonnaroo-dot-com & discover a sonic feast that should interest any serious fan of alternative music. Witness a distinct case of economic opportunity for every business within regional radius. See how some of the curious locals mix religious disdain with crass cultural voyeurism.

Until this year, the closest I’d physically come to this spectacle was get stuck in traffic in Murfreesboro or listen to mixed reports from my friends who have been as vendors, activists, & volunteers. Last year, I even had a student write an essay in composition class about his personal “musical utopia,” the place friends & family warned him not to visit as hive of criminal immorality.

As a participant in & promoter of many festivals & convergences for all of my adult life who is also infested with a lifelong case of critical rock fandom, I had to finally let my curiosity get the best of me. This year, I’m finally going to check out Bonnaroo.

At one selfish & self-indulgent level, I’m going to see a long list of cutting-edge bands, singers, & performing artists that might never visit Tennessee if it weren’t for this musical orgy. At another level, I’m going as a friend & ally of those I know working the festival as performers, vendors, revolutionary educators. Finally, I want to discover if the corporate-sponsored spectacle-as-carvival has anything at all in common with the more authentically subversive communal feasts of foolish defiance, those that define the deeply countercultural: Burning Man & its offshoots; Rainbow & its regionals; Mardi Gras & its deep meaning to the post-Katrina continent; raves or Reclaim the Streets protest parties, house parties or backyard hoedowns, faerie & anarchist gatherings.

My neighbor & friend Maxzine went in 2004, & he was offended, challenged, & dismayed at what he saw as merely superficial rebellion, essentially an all-white “Hippie Plantation,” a sort of trustafarian “club Dead” for the suburban masses of weekend-freaks, upper-crust misfits whose caste came with an unquenchable taste for mind-altering substances & good music. I want to see if I can skim some radical & redemptive cream off the top of the sour milk he tasted & eloquently expressed in this rant.

Will I confirm the thesis of Mat Callahan pursued in his provocative book The Trouble With Music? He contends, “The modern festival is disconnected from history, astronomy, the bounties of the earth or the celebration of tradition. It is a baldly commercial affair which might, at times, present great music & a lot of fun, but it cannot be a Feast.”

I’ve heard that Bonnaroo is unparalleled for the sheer party of it all. Is the partying just the opiate of the people, the putrid palliative, a spectacular & even shocking safety-valve to prevent real rebellion? Or can this ostensibly crude convergence of the ex-Deadhead set mixed with alt-rock nerds actually capture a whiff of the spirit of subversion, no matter how watered down? Will the people who make the festival not just a show actually transform it into something at once immanent, transcendent, & truly challenging?

Anu goes to the 'roo

It's June 2006, & I've decided to keep a Bonnaroo blog, sharing advance speculation & anticipation, then after 'roo reflections & reviews.

If I can find an actual 'hotspot' (the whole festival allegedly has wireless access, but I've heard that in past years, it was incredibly slow), I'll be posting from the site in Manchester while I'm there.