Rock history being made right before your eyes

What a Saturday this year’s festival provided!

From the sweet and sweaty gypsy punk mosh-pit at the Gogol Bordello show (pictured) to Ben Harper’s soulfully seductive late afternoon set, I chose quality over quantity today, attending fewer shows but staying at them longer. This fit my “injured reserve” list status (see yesterday’s blog), and the shows I chose were all stellar, with the best being the last.

Every Bonnaroo seems to have at least one show of pure legend, one undiluted, blissful, and transcendent nugget of rock history being made right before your eyes.

Last year, My Morning Jacket’s late Friday night magic marathon surely secured that band’s ascendant fate and future reputation.

Even though the What Stage sets I’ve seen so far were strong, with Ben Harper’s being the best, the true headliner of the festival did not play the main stage. Move over Maynard. Move over Sting.

This year, the revered and revelatory set of pure legend transpired at midnight on Which Stage when Bonnaroo became Wayne’s World. After an enthusiastic sound check of “War Pigs” at 11pm, the masses waited for an hour. Then, The Flaming Lips arrived in a space ship, blew our minds for over two hours of absolutely insanely beautiful psychedelic pop, and then left in the space ship again.

The battery on my computer is dying, and my free time in the shade is running out. I hope to finish this journal later—probably tomorrow. Another great Bonnaroo ends today.

My day two battleroo

The complimentary guidebook that comes with each Bonnaroo ticket includes much sage advice; unfortunately, many of us do not heed the words of wisdom. If the mountain of debris at the Tool show last night is any evidence, the “leave no trace” idea still seeks time to really sink in.

The other pearl of guidance that some mellower folks have no problem abiding is the amazingly obvious: pace yourself. Frankly, I have a big problem with this at Bonnaroo, and yesterday, I paid for it.

Having tripped onto a giant metal tent-stake and incurring an injury that makes last year’s bonnarash pale in comparative misery, this reporting reveler refused to stop enjoying himself, and instead, pushed back into the party like a warring masochist making his last stand.

Times I cried: listening to Michael Franti lecture on the Solar Stage about doing a gig at San Quentin; listening to the Cold War Kids, Richard Thompson, and later Tool. I did not cry during my accident or at the medical tent where I got excellent and friendly attention.

Shows I saw most or part of: Drops of Water, Cold War Kids, Richard Thompson, Tortoise, Michael Franti and Spearhead, The Nightwatchman, Tool, The String Cheese Incident, STS9, and EL-P.

Shows I listened to but did not see: Kings of Leon (I was trying to get there when I fell); Manu Chao (my needed rest and nursing hour.

Some high points: The crowd support at the shows—people loving musicians and musicians loving their people; a new Cold War Kids song about “dreams that old men dream” and taking us from “the gutter to the mountaintop”; Richard Thompson’s “Dad is Going To Kill Me” about the Iraq War; Tom Morello leading thousands in a rousing version of “This Land Is Your Land” and later joining Tool onstage to play guitar during “Lateralus”; the STS9 dance party, which even for the walking wounded is as uplifting and ecstatic as we expect these shows to be.

Let’s see if I can manage to make it through today without too much trauma and transform my lesson into a listening feast and time for friendship.

Hot and Dusty By Day, Delicious Dancing At Night

Our Bonnaroo so far has ranged from hot and dusty by day to delicious dancing at night. All of the Academy volunteers are doing such a great job, so I have been able to connect with the music, and to these fine souls, I am forever grateful.

The first day of Academy tent workshops seemed surprisingly slow, but this morning, after around 500 people took a yoga class, we had our best crowds yet for theater and painting classes.

Walking around this wild place, I have this to testify: Love to the Clean Vibes people, who provide phenomenal waste recovery infrastructure of a miraculous scale. Litterbugs decorate the grass with plastic at night, and in the morning, Clean Vibes folks sweep the field. They say separation is easier when they do it. Apparently, some inebriated folks don’t understand how to use a recycling bin

A short update of shows so far:

My first show of the festival was an abbreviated version of the Sideshow Bennie experience with Miss Lollypop’s burlesque on the Solar Stage. A fellow traveler from the activist community questioned the relevance to Planet Roo of some of their shtick—like a game of “strip darts”: where the lovely lass threw darts at Bennie’s back, and when she missed, she discarded clothes.

At night, the Black Angels turned up the feedback and fuzzed the freaks with a loud nd lusty contact buzz. Still at “This Tent,” Mute Math provided a passionate sonic surprise, and we found our dancefloor down front.

Leaving Mute Math early for the National, we were disappointed that the show had not begun. What band shows up 30 minutes late for a 60 minute Bonnaroo set? I still stayed for some, and as much as I love this group, it didn’t quite gel as well as it could have.

From Mute Math, I traveled to the tightly packed Troo Lounge for a sweaty, skanking, high-ranking reggae jam with my new best friends called Dubconscious.

During the day, this lounge has tables, and since no one bothered to clear the floor, some of us ended up topless on table tops, shaking our asses and waving our fists. This worked until we worked the table into the ground, in crashing cacophony. Not phased, the people crowd-surfed the table and many chairs out to the perimeter without losing a beat. Amazing. Later, some of us did our best reggae mosh into the final minutes.

Easily, my favorite show far, with Mute Math ranking a close second. The Dubconscious folks allowed me to announce their Academy panel from the stage.

Eli, one of my Academy colleagues and dancing buddies, raced me across the fields to catch some Tea Leaf Green at “The Other Tent.” I danced until ravenous and tired and ready to stroll back to camp for a late-snack and needed sleep.

This morning, I already had my morning music fix with the first few songs of Drops of Water on the Solar Stage, including my favorite, “Forever Wild.” That's the amazing Ashley Ironwood singing above!

Back to work and play until its time to try to post again tomorrow morning!!

Some people don’t like hippies

According to one webzine’s coverage of Bonnaroo last year (the site is rivalfish.com, from which we borrowed the picture of winged dancers--all the other pictures here are from today!), the festival is “America's biggest, most impressive, most eclectic gathering of hippies, hipsters, former frat boys, former sorority girls, former Deadheads, backpack clad drug dealers, and as of 2006, some of our nation's most notable corporations.”

But just saying the word “hippy” causes all kinds of knee-jerk reactions. In fact, an entire sub-genre of Bonnaroo Inc.’s media and public relations should be devoted to dealing with the hippy question. Why has a word once associated with enlightened, laid-back, and loving attitudes suddenly become such a catch-all curse, an-all-purpose pejorative pruned for permanent patchouli-bashing?

Also in 2006, an entire blog (thesequitur.com) focused on the “Daily Dirty Hippie Update,” complete with such brilliantly analytical statements such as: “not only are hippies dirty, but they are stupid too.” Then, when the Nashville Rage published a Bonnaroo preview last week, the whole project seemed fueled by a passionate desire to bust the Bonnaroo myth-makers. So, in a talking-points fashion, they went-a-debunking:

MYTH: Bonnaroo is only for people who wear their hair in dreadlocks, don't bathe, take in strays off the side of the road, make their clothes out of hemp and travel crosscountry in Volkswagen bus caravans.

MYTHBUSTER: Bonnaroo is for anyone anywhere who likes music. It regularly attracts more than 80,000 music fans from across the world of every color, age and ethnicity.

Now, while I genuinely appreciate the Rage for all they do to keep the other Nashville weekly (known Hippie-phobes who have reported a deep allergy to natural human body odor and drum circles) from owning the audience, the “mythbusting” mission did not deal with the core issue. Why do people love to hate hippies? What’s the big deal? Amazingly, the hippies are feeling the heat and may even suggest that they are marginalized and oppressed in their own jamtastic utopia.

A young Deadhead asked on one of the Bonnaroo message boards whether the festival was still “Dead-friendly,” bemoaning, among other things, the non-headline status of Bob Weir and Ratdog. As a post-Dead closet-Deadhead friend-of-Jerry for whom indy-rock is a much more relevant passion, I wish the jammie scene would take off the blinders and realize how something like Bonnaroo encompasses everything it needs and so much more it wants to discover.

Last year when the Dresden Dolls played an impeccable cover of “White Rabbit,” we “got it” without needing to download a primer on smashing stereotypes and breathing the eclectic that the Bonnaroo programmers brag about.

Don’t we know it’s about time that the notions of “jam” and “psychedelic” and other such labeling limits need to crack the code of convergence that popular music has achieved in the space odyssey that is the twenty-first century? If Jeff Tweedy and Wilco or Jim James and My Morning Jacket or Wayne Coyne and the Flaming Lips have anything to do with it, we should be able to lay these desperately dumb dichotomies into the Clean Vibes refuse pile once and for all.

I have my own hippy issues. We know it’s a predictable and cheesy song to lay into the mix, but the only theme song for the pre-Roo week that’s not from a current record by a band on the 2007 bill was the classic “Tennessee Jed” by the Grateful Dead—from the Live Europe 72 record.

Having my inner punk and indy-rock-snob beat the living crap out of my inner hippy for the last twenty-odd years has not stopped me becoming again the love-child that I am: arm-waving, patchouli-soaked, convulsively-grooving-as-barefoot-and-shiny-happy as some might predict to see at Bonnaroo.

It’s the fortieth anniversary of the Summer of Love!! In honor of all the acid that your parents and grandparents ate that year, can we finally and fundamentally lay this debate to rest?

Instead of arguing about who hates hippies the most (even as these same anti-hippy dogmatics enjoy all kinds of hippy pastimes—not just the holy trinity of sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll), let’s find a new Bonnaroo hobby. One I discovered today is inventing a new deity, based on one of my camping companions outfits. Our new God is Jallah, a hybrid patriarch who is equal parts Jah, Allah, and Jello Biafra.

Out with the old god and in with the new god. Now who has my goddamn stash?

Only thirty-nine miles from home

Wednesday morning, we left not long after dawn for the short jaunt down some two-lane Tennessee highways for our destination in village of groove.

According to Yahoo Maps, the Bonnaroo festival site is only thirty-nine miles from my home. Of course, one could travel 390 miles in any other direction and not find a place as foreign yet familiar to the Tennessee fields as this. For a few days every June, the beautiful and bizarre Bonnaroo nation lives by its own amalgamation of extremes.

And here lies the Bonnaroo charm: it’s a lovely chasm away from reality—yet fully realized in the here and now with all the paradox that the present reality provides. We’ve found ourselves working as volunteer teachers and organizers in a place called Planet Roo, running arts classes and environmental workshops in the tent called The Academy. Because of the music, I want to be at Bonnaroo so badly, and I’m blessed to be with a team of eleven volunteers who will share the duties of keeping The Academy afloat.

Thrilled by the opportunity yet overwhelmed by the organized chaos, we settled into to our temporary and remarkably shaded enclave in the back corner of the Guest Camping compound. Snakes and even a little poison ivy, and it’s still a perfect place this rockstar Eden. If we kept our purple, pink, or rose-colored shades on at all times, we could get lost living in this bastard descendent of the Woodstock family, with Joni Mitchell stanzas about the garden rewinding in our heads. But the profitable Bonnaroo is not the reckless Woodstock, and some of the revolutionary spirit may have been sidetracked.

The revolution will not be sponsored by Citibank or AT&T, and so early on, I listened to my friends rant against the corporate culture and determined that the ‘roo was counter-revolutionary. But of course, it’s more complicated than that. Listening to the radical purist, I never would have visited and discovered the vision within. But fellow travelers come anyway—from Mountain Justice Summer to the Sequatchie Valley Institute (SVI). (My photos from today are inside the temporary straw-cob house built by the SVI crew.)

People who want to protect the planet are here—even as we pay a price to the planet just to get so many people here. And granted, we’re a node of sanity in a mode of insanity. We can’t yet get most attendees to simply “leave no trace,” much less trace their desires for festive indulgence to a place that feeds radical resistance to consumerism. Radical at Bonnaroo is a form of consumerism. And when the best music in the world is the commodity, we are still buying.

Several things lure us here: primarily the opportunity to participate in the erection of a temporary city and share in its inherently communal and cultural exchange created by rubbing shoulders and sharing the dusty dance-floor with thousands of your best friends.

And then, at the end of the day and well into the night and the next morning, the music draws us in. The armchair critic and passionate volunteer collapse into the unabashed fan, dancing to the beats without cessation, without fear, without apology. For my second year, thirty-nine miles from home is home.

Bonnaroo Founder Ashley Capps Interviewed by Landin King

Last fall semester, Landin King--one of my Writing 1010 students--approached me about doing his required profile--an assignment where all writers must conduct primary research (usually personal interviews) on a topic of their choosing--on Bonnaroo.

When I asked Landin who he might interview, he suggested a friend of a friend in the Manchester Police Department.

"Are you primarily interested in law-enforcement issues at major music festivals?" I pursued.

When we realized that music and the real meaning of the event itself were his interests, we decided to contact Ashley Capps of AC entertainment.

So, I'm excited to share the following MP3 and his edited essay in article form:

MP3:

http://www.wikiupload.com/comment.php?id=156460

Essay:

http://www.interference.com/stories/id170693.html

My Blogaroo is back--four days and counting

For the last month, I've had Bonnaroo on the brain, and it's hard to imagine that my departure for the massive miracle and delicate monster that is the corporate-sponsored autonomous zone of the music nerd nation is only days away. I'm going as a participant, a volunteer, a fan, and of course, because I can't help myself, a writer and a critic.

I remember my first Bonnaroo so vividly as much as I remember the line-up rumors in early 2007.

I remember the day the line-up was announced like it was a national holiday.

I remember all the work I did to bring myself back as a volunteer for the second consecutive year. Thanks to all my Planet Roo friends who have made that possible.

My posts last year were sparse--can I do any better this year? We will see. Stay tuned!!

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.