Summary of My first Bonnaroo experience

I think each year has different changes to ones soul. Each Bonnaroo, while the same set up, provides a unique experience for you to enjoy...

In my life I've only physically spent 8 days on the farm.
But in my mind, I'm there for maybe an hour each day.
So I also feel like I've spent way more time there then I actually have.

If my obsession with Bonnaroo continues throughout the rest of my life, I'm thinking I'd like to have my ashes spread on the farm when I die. No joke.

Thanks thats really good advice, because I can totally see myself falling victim to worrying about my other friends and fraternity brothers being equally prepared and having a good time and whatnot! I so excited about this upcoming year, I can hardly wait!

I'm a Kappa Sig, your an AGD?! I'm good friends with a lot of AGD's from UGA! Where did you go to school?!

I'd add to be prepared for it to not be life-changing again. You've already experienced the culture shock and had your way of thinking changed. So there won't be that same rush. This time, it will be more comfortable, more like coming home. A confirmation that this is where you're supposed to be.

Or at least that's how it was for my second Bonnaroo. It took me a while to figure out why it didn't feel as life-changing and then I realized - duh - life had already changed the year before! I feel like your mindset is the most important thing to Roo and I'm really excited about my third trip because I feel like my head is in the right space again.

this is definitely true. i went went with my dad my first year in 05 but i was by myself most of the time and i enjoyed myself a lot more than i have the 2 years i have went with my wife. it was hot and muddy and all kinds of things my first year, i just didn't care. the music was so good that i didnn't worry about anything else. in 07 the first time i took my wife, we had a horrible time of it. lots of difficulties with the heat, getting lost the first night, her being tired and it took away from what was probably the best year. last year we had a much better time of it but there were still things that were really difficult.

my first bonnaroo was in 05. i was 24 and went with a few of my best friends from high school. we don't hang out as much now (everyone's getting married, having kids - but thats besides the point). it was great getting to experience something like this together for the first time. the moment we drove onto the farm, our minds were blown. just seeing how big the place really is. i think we all had a bit of culture shock too. our camping location sucked cause we had like a 30 minute walk to the arc, but was great cause we could hear the what stage from camp. i pretty much went out into the wild on my own there, saw a few shows with the group. i think the first show we saw together was dave because we met up back at camp to drink the "special tea" we had made. after the show we didn't catch any music, we were hanging out at the sonic forest, if you remember that. but i guess we could hear a bit of i think it was galactic who was playing a latenight show in this tent. this was the first i'd get to see of bands who were pretty new to me: panic, mmj, umphreys, kol, yonder, rilo kiley, john butler, xavier rudd. so i told all my friends they had to check all these bands out cause they would not be disappointed. went to a couple of those with some of my friends. the biggest mistake was when my friend and i were watching mule on the what stage and he was looking thru the schedule and was like "lets go check out something else. mouse on mars sounds pretty cool." well i guess they're ok, but i was pissed when i heard about the rest of that mule show. my friends didn't make it to panic for any of their 2 shows, but said they could hear from camp and it sounded ok. i think the best show for all of us the whole weekend was trey latenight on the which stage. only one of my friends had ever seen trey, and thats because he used to follow phish around. that show was awesome, even though i was alone. wish i would've been with them especially for the abbey road medley. we spent a lot of the last day together because when we tried to turn the car on around noon on sunday it was dead, so we had to figure that out. we all started freaking out, thinking we'd be stuck on the farm. we left that night after modest mouse, and were probably off the bonnaroo grounds by around 9 or 10 and back on the highway. i was disappointed with the modest mouse show, i don't like their early stuff, i just like the album we were dead before the ship even sank. i told my friends how we missed the word who was playing on the what stage the same time as modest mouse and they were kind of pissed. we stopped at a wendys or something on the way home and saw a tourbus in the parking lot. turns out it was ratdog. but bob weir wasn't with them cause he played with panic later that night.

went back to roo in 07 with a couple of these friends and their wives/girlfriends, and pretty much spent the entire weekend alone. the music was much better than 05. and how can i forget where we camped. in the handicapped area, right behind the other tent. laid in my tent one night listening to sasha and digweed. matter of fact, i could also hear tool and the police from our camp. missed the f-lips and mule that year and really pissed about that. that had to do with the after effects of a little something something and wanting to hide inside my tent for the rest of the weekend.

went back last year, alone, and had a blast. sober the entire time, covered the festival for my music blog, went for free, saw over forty bands, mostly in tents and at the which stage. a lot of the bands i saw in tents i had access to the side of the stage. so it was really mind blowing watching bands like chairlift, passion pit, elvis perkins, aa bondy, brett dennen from the side of the stage, as well as seeing other musicians watching these guys play. stood like 10 feet away from mike gordon as he was watching bela fleck. also got about that far away from grace potter, justin vernon, the guys from elvis perkins band. when i was watching chairlift or passion pit play, i was standing right next to this chick i knew was an artist, cause she just looked like one. later found out it was janelle monae. didn't spend a lot of time at the what stage, i prefer the tents. and even though i'm 28, i have to say that i'm not too crazy about the latenights at bonnaroo. i enjoy the day sets a lot more, although i guess the mindset you have of the latenights when you're sober is a little different than when you're not.

can't wait for this summer and my fourth trip to bonnaroo. all my friends are now married and have kids, so theres a good chance i'll be going alone again, hoping to get that press pass again. but i'm trying hard as hell to talk my friends into going. keep telling about all these bands rumored and bands people think may be there and they want to go badly, but with kids, i'm not sure what their vacation plans are or how much time they get. i really hope they decide to go again cause i think i'd have more fun with them there, even though in the past we didn't really spend that much time together there.

^^^ totally agree

I suggest on thursday night that you go into centeroo with the friends you're bringing with you, show them where the weird stuff is that they might miss otherwise (like the Art of Such n' Such and the Silent Disco), keep wandering so they get nice and lost, and then take off and leave them to find their way back themselves. It might sound like a mean prank, but when you meet back up with them you'll probably hear something like "Dude! You totally missed it. We were trying to find our way back and then this [insert story of awesome thing here] happend and it was awesome....and then... dude! WE SAW BOOBIES! WHAT IS THIS PLACE?!?!?!"
Then you can say something wise and sagelike such as "Yes, grasshoppah, many very awesome things happen when you let go and let roo. And then there are boobies. Such is the nature of the Farm."

DO NOT COME FRAT BOY

That's the spirit.

AEKDB!!!!

hah AEKDB. Nice to see a few of us are on this board

My one word of advice is to not try to keep the whole group together at any point. Everybody wants to see all different things at any given moment. It's not worth the hassle. Just go with the flow so to speak. Hang out in small groups or go it alone.
If you prefer the large group thing, that's cool. It just never worked out for me.

Whats with the negative statement man?