My hubby's 'roo Diary

Thanks for the link Aly. Tell your boy it was a great write-up.



Oh, and Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad was the nuts!! So so so glad I found them and stayed till their last song at dawn.

<~~~said hubby

here's the whole deal and that's all i have to say about that.

Bonnaroo Diary

By Kelly Morse

Flouting the Vegas odds-makers and in defiance of all of the health sciences, I have once again returned alive from Bonnaroo. If you do not already know, The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival (Camping Equipment Exposition, Glass Art Fair, and Hot Young Tail Symposium) is a four-day extravaganza that each June exists simultaneously in rural Manchester, Tennessee and deep in the heart of bat country. It is an amazingly diverse bunch of music, a gathering of eighty thousand people in a spirit of communal fun, and a camping adventure. It is the silliest refugee camp tent city ever. It is also one of the sickest parties on Earth. Earth is right near Mars. Blue and squishy, you can’t miss it.
This year’s Bonnaroo was as much fun as I have had since grade school. Accompanied by my lovely wife, Alyson, along with Bama and Collin from, well, Alabama, Scooter from Berkeley, and joined by Jackson, Lori, and Thom from Jersey, we spent Thursday morning setting up camp in our primo location one hundred yards off the side of The Other Tent. Though we had driven all night, we were amped with anticipation as we assembled our massive vacation home of a campsite. The brothers, Scooter and Bama, are like the hippie MacGyvers and we all obsess year-round about crap to bring to make life nice so we had all the comforts even in the middle of a cow pasture. That included plenty of electricity for the industrial fans (with mist), lights, microwave oven, etc. Sitting around our table under our giant, carpeted shade structure enjoying a fruit salad from our working freezer while someone cleaned up in the shower Scooter built (running water, of course), it was easy to understand the envious looks from less equipped passers-by. Bama even built an electromagnetic thermal induction coil air conditioner into a backpack, as one naturally would. We like roughing it. Satisfied with our Taj MaTarp, we relaxed in our lounge chairs and tried to fight through the frappuccinos and get some rest before the music started. Instead, we drank and laughed and smoked and joked, glad to be reunited with old friends and stoked to be at the dawn of the whirlwind of Bonnaroo about to take off.
Before you send emails saying, “I can’t believe you didn’t go to see Wilco, or Regina Spektor, or insert your favorite here,” there are some things you need to understand. Conflicts and compromise are part of every Bonnaroo. With simultaneous concerts in five big venues and many smaller ones, you just cannot see everything that you would like to. You are constantly making choices and strategies about your agenda. You have to be sort of Zen about it and enjoy the concert that you are at to its fullest and then move on to the next fun thing. It is also great to let your friends drag you to the bands that they are excited to see. Their enthusiasm rubs off on you and you approach the show in a different way. Then you get to turn them on to the stuff you dig. Besides, I don’t care if God and Santa Claus are sitting in with Elvis, Jerry, and Randy Rhoads at Which Stage, only a fool stands in the noonday sun in Tennessee in June after dancing until dawn the night before. Being only moderately foolish, I don’t stand in the sun until 1:45 under those conditions. What follows is my account of the shows that I got a chance to check out this year. My memory may be flawed, my understanding limited, and my perceptions skewed but this is how I remember it.

Thursday

8:45 pm The New Orleans Klezmer Allstars at The Other Tent
These guys were an interesting start. Jewish folk music mixed with Dixieland jazz and jazz/rock fusion; it is not something you hear much. The music was pure fun. You rarely get a chance to say, “That was a bad-ass clarinet solo!”
10:00 pm Mute Math at This Tent
I had insisted on this show. My friends all thanked me repeatedly. Mute Math melted all of our faces off. Our buzzes were kicking in and their high-energy performance was just what the doctor had ordered. I have excellent health insurance. Mute Math was energetic and quirky with fantastic rhythm reinforced with extra kick drums and various percussion for all the members to use periodically, a piano solo headstand, and a circuit bent keytar. I am a sucker for keytars. Singer, Paul Meany, has cutting melodic sense and a voice in a high-ish register, akin to, say, The Police or even (damn, I’m a dweeb) The Outfield. They ended the show with great rock bombast by destroying the elaborate fluorescent light stage set and flinging guitars and gear about to thunderous applause. They made many new fans and everyone was talking about how exciting the set was for the rest of the festival.
12:00 am Rodrigo y Gabriela at That Tent
We took a stroll through the bizarre village fair that is Centeroo to the Beer Garden where you can trade money for tickets and tickets for samples or cups of fine ales from any of the dozen attending artisan breweries. Equipped with large amounts of rye nut ale, India pale ale, India brown ale, and various lagers we dropped Jackson and Lori off at the Clutch show and headed into the sandy expanse of That Tent. Rodrigo y Gabriela was a must-see for Alyson and me. The duo plays flamenco guitars in the most rocking and untraditional way. The white hot Gabriela Quintero is as much a percussionist as guitarist, laying down pulsing Latin rock rhythm on the top, sides, bridge, and strings while keeping incredible finger style chording churning. Rodrigo Sanchez adds to this his own unique soloing style. Part flamenco passion, part metal intensity, part fluid jam, his chops and harmonic choices are first rate. Jackson and Lori rejoined us after the second song and we moved up. We were close to the front, as is our general M.O., and the powerful performance was moving and impressive. The show was capped with a crowd sing-along of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You were Here”. It was a good end to the short schedule first day. We wandered about a bit past the fountain and the Ferris wheel, the giant bobble heads and very large lightning bugs, the silent disco and the disco arcade before taking the party back to the camp to talk crap and compare notes with Bama and Scooter, who had gone to Tea Leaf Green, and Collin who had crashed in his tent and missed everything. By now, we had been up for thirty-six hours or so. It was time to retreat to our comfortable array of tents.

Friday

Consciousness makes me poop. At Bonnaroo pooping means Port-A-Johns for everyone but the patrician VIP camping section which gets flush toilets and free showers and free food (with the purchase of a twelve hundred buck pair of tickets). I’m sure being rich is cool. Thankfully, the plastic pods for the commoners are generally well maintained and, with a little denial, quite useable. Business attended to, we cleaned up, enjoyed a nice lunch, and listened to The Richard Thompson Band from camp. Our camp was closer to the stage than many areas in the venue itself.

3:30 pm Gillian Welch at The Other Tent
Joined by her long-time partner David Rawlings and none other than Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones on mandolin, Gillian delivered with her timelessly eerie Americana. This would be the first clue this was really John Paul Jones’ year at Bonnaroo. Zeppelin covers were common all weekend. Thom headed over to What Stage for Kings of Leon while we went to get our reggae on.
4:15 pm Michael Franti and Spearhead at Which Stage
This was a blast of fun in the sun. We positioned ourselves mid-field to the right of the shade trees and beer stands situated in the middle of Which Stage’s broad lawn and soaked up the good time Jamaican jam of Spearhead. The highlight for me was a pair of covers. Sublime’s “What I’ve Got” into “Stir It Up” was a true crowd pleaser. Franti probably asked, “How ya feelin’?!,“ twenty times in two hours and told us to jump at least five. We caught the last song of The Nightwatchman on the way back to camp to change and re-equip for the night’s festivities. Bama and his crew had been at The Roots, which they said was amazing and had included a cover of “Roxanne”.
9:00 pm Tool at What Stage
Refreshed and resupplied, we set out for What Stage to take in Tool. I wore a crown of dozens of glow sticks tucked into the band of my headlamp and, as usual, we were armed with several hundred more. Maynard insisting on searching the crowd for cameras and that is kind of weak. Still the show was cool. Tool played a hard-hitting set. We were mightily impressed with their state of the art laser show. At first, I worried that lasers were bad. Lasers kill Ewoks. But we talked it over and agreed that lasers don’t kill Ewoks; clones kill Ewoks. They were joined for two songs by Tom Morello from Rage, Audioslave, and The Nightwatchman. So we all stared at the pretty lights while Lucy and Alyson took an adventure to the front of the crowd.
12:00 am Superjam at The Other Tent
Each year Bonnaroo presents the Superjam set. Speculation is always wild concerning who could possibly be playing. Since you never know what you might get, we always start there. This time it was John Paul Jones, Ben Harper, and ?uestlove. The impressive trio blasted through a Robert Johnson tune and a couple of Led Zeppelin classics. When it became clear that God and Santa Claus were not going to show, we decided to go and take our last chance to see Cheese before they retire later this year.
1:00 am The String Cheese Incident at Which Stage
Cheese was underway when we arrived to find Jackson and Lori by looking for the LED lights of their hula-hoops as arranged. They stashed the hoops and we began the twisting push to the stage, inciting glow stick wars all the way. Cheese was laying down their usual laid-back dance jam. The crowd was congenial and having a ball. After strutting Travolta-style across the stage three times, Keller Williams joined in for a magical cover of The Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive”. The crowd went ape-shit.
3:30 am DJ Shadow at This Tent
We caught the last few songs of this set from in front of the fountain. Then some of us headed to camp to act strange while the rest set out for Shakedown Street to acquire pointy hats, pin the tail on the donkey sets, and other party favors.

Saturday

Mother Nature loves to mess with Bonnaroo. It seems like every year there is some new environmental hazard to survive. It makes you work a bit and adapt to have your fun. In 2002, it was blistering heat and humidity. We all bought tarps. In 2004, rainstorms left Centeroo knee deep in mud. Rain boot sales to hippies skyrocketed. This year it was dust. In the midst of the worst drought in a hundred years, Manchester is parched. When you put a crowd this size on the march on baked clay roads, the results are spectacular. At times, it looked like footage you see of volcanic eruptions engulfing weirdly named Pacific island towns. I’m recommending buying stock in Acme Bandana Corp. and the
Dust Mask Division of 3M. If I read Exodus right, next year I expect either toads or locusts.

4:00 pm Xavier Rudd at The Other Tent
We enjoyed Railroad Earth and Hot Tuna from camp and then headed over for a seat in the shade under the trees to the right side of The Other Tent. Xavier was cool but the sound was lackluster. With didgeridoo, djembe, bass, and growling slide, it sounded a bit farty. Even with the sub-par sound there was a good time to be had.
6:00 pm Keller Williams and WMD’S at The Other Tent
Keller had a long sound check and put things to right with the PA. We took the opportunity to make many new friends with our portable mister and general craziness. We got close to the stage for Keller. He’s been one of our favorites since he provided us with our first late night at Bonnaroo 2002 at the same spot. We felt bad for the girl we saw that had waited through the sound check only to pass out just as the WMD’S took the stage. The new band is Williams, String Cheese’s Keith Moseley on bass, hot shit guitarist Gibb Droll, and Jeff Sipe from Aquarian Rescue Unit on drums. All four were smiling broadly, dancing, and nodding the whole show. It was definitely a memorable set, both for the music and the great kids we enjoyed it with.
9:00 pm The Police at What Stage
With everyone on the move at once to see The Police, this was the height of the dust. We rolled in to the strains of “Message in a Bottle”. We used our usual secret strategy to skirt the crowds and get in pretty close. It was fantastic to see the band grinning and having fun with the festival crowd. They played their greatest and stretched them out a bit to jam for the special occasion. It was surreal to be so close to a band that had loomed so large over my childhood. The surreality level was generally high in the vicinity anyway. Clowning around like much younger men, Stewart joked that Sting would get naked and dance among us as Sting‘s shirt was pulled off. We were close enough to see Sting’s nipples! At the perfect moment of silence as the applause died out, I shouted, “TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS!,” getting a huge laugh and an acknowledgement from Sting on stage. He would not be the last music legend to respond to my exhortation to de-pant that evening. After the show, we ducked under the chain at the staff gate and cut across a strange parking lot of forklifts and backhoes. We made it far enough backstage to see Sting through the front window of his tour bus before being turned around and forced to reenter through the shuttle bus line.
12:00 am The Flaming Lips at Which Stage
The Flaming lips had the crew throw out thousands of red laser pointers to the crowd as we waited. They spewed forth balloons and literally filled the air with confetti and ticker tape. The giant round rotating and levitating combination lighting rig, screen, and mammoth beach ball launch pad, known as the UFO was the craziest stage set I’ve seen since Tommy Lee’s thrill ride drum set. After the UFO landed, Wayne Coyne climbed into a giant bubble at the top. As the crew diddled with the re-inflating mechanism, I again took the chance to yell, “TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS!” Coyne responded, “No, you don’t want that!” He then crowd surfed the ball a bit and then the music started. It was a crazy spectacle but, forty minutes in, it was still fairly ambient and visual so we split for Gov’t Mule.
12:45 am Gov’t Mule at This Tent
This turned out to be the Superjam. When we got there and got right in, Bobby Weir was sitting in . Next up was John Paul Jones for an ass shaking “Living Loving Maid”. He stayed on playing piano after that. They were joined by Jourma, Jack, and Neil from Hot Tuna/Jefferson Airplane for a few songs. Lewis Black came on and playfully berated us when some knucklehead threw a water bottle at him. We have been called “little pricks” by Lewis Black. I may put that on my resume. The final guest was North Mississippi Allstar, Luther Dickenson. The guitar interplay between Dickinson and Warren Haynes was jaw dropping. The music tasted orange to me and it smelled like coke in there. For the first encore, Mule floored us with Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf” into “War Pigs”. With that song and a raised peace sign, Haynes made a stronger political statement than any speech Morello or Coyne could give. The second sincerely demanded encore was my wife’s favorite, “Soulshine”. After the festival, we would all agree, this was the most amazing set we saw.
4:00 am Sasha & John Digweed at The Other Tent
This was a full rave with lots of blinky, spinning, and glowing toys. Thom and I adopted a confused and barely intelligible local kid named D.J. while Alyson want to go grab a sweater. There was a great sharing friendly vibe for the last set of the night. There was one exception. As we were sitting back in the lawn chilling and people watching and sort of understanding what D.J. was saying, a couple set up their lawn chairs behind us. After a moment, she said, “Eww, somebody is SMOKING!” They folded their chairs in a huff and he yelled, “Cigarettes cause cancer!,” at us. “Self-righteousness causes constipation,” I replied. Alyson and Thom finished out Sasha and Digweed until they finally ended well past dawn. I vaguely remember tripping over a tent rope on the way back to camp.

Sunday

We awoke to the sound of Mavis Staples leading the Other Tent crowd through “This Little Light of Mine”. It was a nice Sunday morning touch (1:00 pm being effectively morning for us). We took it easy for the hottest part of the day, enjoying the rest of Mavis and then T-Bone Burnett. Then we strapped on our astronaut worthy gear and headed to Centeroo’s various stages. Thom, Jackson, and Lori were headed for Bobby and Ratdog. The Alabama contingent was off to Ralph Stanley. Alyson and I however had an appointment with greatness.

3:45 pm Flight of the Conchords and Demetri Martin
We wound through the crowd of kids waiting at Yet Another Tent, the comedy venue. We masterfully bullshitted our way in and were seated second row center in the cool semi-air conditioning. As we waited for the rest of the big top tent to fill in, many people played with their new laser pointers from The Lips. They came on the PA several times to tell us to knock it off but no one did. Demetri opened and he was funny and played guitar and a tiny crap keyboard while he did his Gen Y take on Stephen Wright one-liners. But it was The Conchords we came to see. After seeing their special, we were hooked and I have been annoying my friends with clips on their Myspace pages for months. Flight of the Conchords is New Zealand’s forth most popular folk parody duo. Their new HBO series was debuting that night and they seemed thrilled to play to the Bonnaroo fans. They sang some old songs and some new ones from the series. Jemaine even sang “Business Time” directly to Alyson. They have since started the first stages of what will probably become a torrid Myspace affair.
6:00 pm North Mississippi Allstars at That Tent
We met up with Lori and Jackson and took in some Allstars while Alyson had a massive corndog and I enjoyed the unlikely combination of a giant pile of alligator burrito and a frozen mocha latte. Nourished by the food and the blues-rock, we decide to take a stroll and see what we could catch before The White stripes came on.
6:30 pm Ornette Coleman at The Other Tent
Terrifyingly, Ornette Coleman fell out face first. The seventy-seven year old had blown the shit out of his trumpet for the better part of an hour in a yellow three-piece suit and a porkpie hat before the heat got the best of him. They scooped him up into a chair and produced a ten-dollar box fan for him to try to continue but they ended up evacuating him to the hospital. I read later that it was just heat exhaustion and he was fine and en route to Norway for his next show.
6:50 pm Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys at The Sonic Stage
We stumbled across Ralph Stanley playing to maybe fifty people at the tiny sonic stage and were drawn right in. I told the kids in line for the adjacent autograph tent that they were looking at a national treasure, the musical equivalent of a face on Mount Rushmore. Standing there so close and seeing the reverence the younger musicians had for Ralph, I was moved by his performance and our good fortune. When he sang “Hard Times”, everyone in earshot knew they were hearing the real deal, perhaps the most achingly sorrowful voice of his century. Ralph joked with the crowd, took requests, and deferred to his fellow musicians. One felt honored just to be there.
7:30 pm The White Stripes at Which Stage
Alyson and I had a perfect sight line to the stage from the cooling comfort of the mist tent. The White stripes are the stuff. In addition to his manic vocals and blistering guitar and octave pedal playing, Jack White knows a subtle musical secret. He starts with traditional music contexts and then adds an element from outside of that context. He may play a twelve bar blues with a thirteenth bar. He plays pentatonic blues rock and then throws in a phrase from the more exotic harmonic minor scale. He plays country songs influenced by simple Appalachian music and then uses key changes and harmonies not usually found there. He sets you up with stuff where you know what should come next and then it doesn’t . It keeps you off balance and makes the music exciting to listen to whether you understand why or not. It is genius. His whisper-to-a-wail cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” was worth the trip by itself. Plus Meg has so much ass in her kick drum foot that she makes most other drummers sound like she looks.
8:45 pm Widespread Panic at What Stage
The last set is always bittersweet. We alternated between dancing and relaxing on the lawn. Widespread has changed with the addition of Jimmy Herring’s guitar acrobatics. It’s like shred-jam. We had a great time and soaked up the last bit of concert ambiance. Keeping the Black Sabbath theme, they covered “Fairies Wear Boots“. After the show we helped clean up. Thom was the king of ground score, netting four bags of mushroom bits and a small quantity of schwag. We later gave it to some dude that came by looking for boomers. We milled about Centeroo wistfully for a while before heading back. That night we set up a series of glow stick ambushes of passersby near our campsite with all they glee of TPing middle schoolers. The fun part was convincing the recently ambushed to throw the sticks back to us over the fence so we could lay in wait for another. They all did. After I had sacked out my wife decided that things were still too pretty to shut her eyes. Alyson and Molly took a long walk through the campground and were drawn towards the only music left playing. She described it as a smooth groovy jam laced with a reggae beat. It was the soundtrack to Alyson’s wander as she said goodbye to Bonnaroo 2007. Upon returning home and doing some research it was discovered that the band was Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad.

In the end, we all agreed that this had been our best Bonaroo ever. We enjoyed the music, the festival, and the time with friends old and new. We were tired, broke, dusty, and somewhat smelly. We can’t wait to go back when Bonnaroo springs up again like Brigadoon to create its magic and music. I suggest you start planning to go now. Do some research about what you will need on Inforoo. I have a couple of free pointers for you. Wear a ridiculous hat. Buy a camel pack water-dispensing bag to keep hydrated. On a hot day, Gold Bond Medicated Powder feels like a thousand pixies gently blowing on your junk. Look into it. I’ll see you at the ‘Roo. I will be up front towards the left.