Whether it's your first Bonnaroo or you’re a music festival veteran, we welcome you to Inforoo.
Here you'll find info about artists, rumors, camping tips, and the infamous Roo Clues. Have a look around then create an account and join in the fun. See you at Bonnaroo!!
oh and one other thought for the author...how do you reconcile boozing all weekend, which is just as good as any no no word at wiping out your memory for a given night, if not better, with your disdain for users of "drugs"? and do you really not consider alcohol a no no word? how very republican of you...
i mean...i can smoke an absolutely retarded amount of "corn", as they call it here, and i wont forget one thing about a show...but give me a 24 case of beer and ill wake up facedown in my tent, bed whatever, the next morning and not even remember how the hell i got there... not that i dont like to booze, which i do, but come on, get down off your pedestal
If you must know...a good friend of mine died as a direct result of some party favors she was enjoying...at 18.
I'm not one to tell people what to do with themselves...but I'm also not one to keep my mouth shut when I think they're doing something they probably shouldn't.
Now some of you, I don't know who, but some of you, are reading this, and are now smiling, and nodding your heads at the text. The ones doing that, are the ones familiar with Manu Chao's work. If you've experienced it, it's pretty much impossible not to smile when you think of it.
That was altogether a good read Moby. All the way through it I was thinking, "this guy must be one of the regular posters on inforoo". Many of your pictures have shown up on this site in other threads.
It's funny what you said about everyone's Bonnaroo being different. That is true but our Bonnaroo's were strikingly similar. I was at 2/3 of the shows you mentioned and I have a very similar hat that I only were at festies.
I've been sitting at my computer all afternoon with a smile on my face. I really enjoyed reading about your experiences and the way your story was told. Well Done.
"That's not funny! You need to take it off."
"Ah…no I don't lady, and I'm not going to, so you should probably just leave this alone."
"How does it feel to be a weiner?"
"It's actually really liberating. You should try it."
Classic.
I also must say that I believe you handled that situation quite well, with the lady demanding that you take off the hat. My response to her would have been along the same lines, poor use of tact from the lady. IMO, she was being more of an A**hole than you were.
Post by esprituptohere on Mar 1, 2008 14:06:02 GMT -5
shhhhh said:
If you must know...a good friend of mine died as a direct result of some party favors she was enjoying...at 18.
I'm not one to tell people what to do with themselves...but I'm also not one to keep my mouth shut when I think they're doing something they probably shouldn't.
Have a good time...just be careful.
Plenty of people die every year from alcohol poisoning. I heard a story on the news last night about a 21 year old who died on her birthday because she drank too much. Her parents are now suing a bar she visited that night, as well as her best friends, for "being negligent."
Where has personal responsibility gone in today's world? That's why I am carefully choosing who I indulge in certain things with these days, because I don't want to get stuck taking care of someone who can't handle what they choose to do, or getting sued by some busybody who is looking for someone to blame other than their loved one. That said, I feel for you and am truly sorry about your friend.
you shoulda kicked his 8 foot duck a$$. how many times can you say that? "I went to Bonnaroo, had a burrito, rocked out to insane gypsy's, and faught a Duck"
Here are my first two blog posts from last year's Roo:
Moe Train's Bonnaroo 2007 Blog - The 15 Hour Drive to Bonnaroo
We've been waiting months for this day, and it's finally here... Wednesday June 13, the day that King B and I set off on our journey to Manchester, TN from Bear, DE (right outside of Philadelphia)... Stay true to our insanity, we decided to finish up our last minute shopping at the Elkton, MD Walmart (at around 1am). Picking up some last minute supplies, we were feeling good about our preparedness for the festival. All of our camping supplies seemed to be in check, as did our miscellaneous festival fare. However, leave it up to the "party guys" to forget the essentials. (More on that later)For some reason (vanity), I decided to do a little cleansing and detoxing fast before heading off to Bonnaroo... So, I didn't really eat anything for almost four nights prior to leaving. On our way back to King B's house, the golden arches grabbed me by the balls and summoned me for some late night fattening goodness. If we didn't stop at that moment, I probably would have completely lost my mind, as well as consciousness. Nine pieces of Chicken McNuggets, five packs of honey mustard and a small fry later, I was back on the scene, and rarin' to go! Unfortunately, I got an energy burst at 3am but screw it.
After King B went to class at The University of Delaware the next morning, we headed out. B had a big jar of coins on the floor that he wanted to change for Roo, but it seemed as if every single Coinstar was broken in the tri-state area, so he was screwed. Oh well... On our way! His Honda Accord was packed to the gills with our bags, tables, random hats and crowns, and about everything else you could think of. We packed so much stuff that we couldn't have missed anything, right? (Yeah right.)Hours pass, and we're feeling good about the time we're making... That is, until we took at look at Mapquest, and saw that we were LESS THAN HALFWAY there! Oh man. Our faces dropped. "We're f$*!ing less than half way there?" Sweet Virginia, we're screwed. Speaking of Virginia... I don't know how many of you have taken a trip on I-81 through Virginia and West Virginia. Some people call it scenic... I call it a PAIN IN THE ASS.
Sure, I love great scenery, and new places, but driving through this stretch was pure hell. To make things worse, it felt like we were driving through hell at one point, when the heavens opened, and gave us a storm like I haven't seen in years! Golf ball sized hail pelted the car (B did NOT like that), and we could barely see a few feet in front of us! The rain and hail was so loud that it truly was deafening! To make things worse, I get a call from someone working with Ziggy Marley's TuffGong. It's hard to be professional when I could barely hear King B talk to me from a few feet away! Something about that phone call had me really worried. It sounded if they were weeding out interviewers for Ziggy at Bonnaroo, but I really couldn't tell for sure, due to the deafening hail and rain! I admit that I started to freak out a bit, and B said for me to call them back to confirm about the interview. I had to wait 15-20 minutes until everything slowed down enough that I could hear everything on the phone call clearly. I called one of his managers and TuffGong just to make sure everything was ok. Luckily everything was on the up and up, and they were just re-confirming all interviews. After getting the comforting news, I blurted out the mantra for the weekend...
"EXCELSIOR (King B and I) DOES NOT quack!NG LOSE!!!"
That got a good laugh from the both of us, and definitely eased the tension. Hey... We didn't want to lose the interview that I was most looking for to doing for months! It also assured my recent realizations that you just can't take no for an answer. Before Bonnaroo, I was a bit more of a procrastinator and a "free spirit." Let's see where the day takes us, and we'll go from there. I have to admit, that I'm not so much like that anymore... I've become much more structured and focused, which certainly is a good thing.
Let's zoom ahead a few rest stops, and a bunch of hours later to Tennessee... We decide to crank up the Zoom H4 and do a little commentary while driving. Damn, did we sound like two sorry individuals! Although we may have only been an hour or two away from the Manchester Walmart (our pre-Roo party destination... Odd but true), we just couldn't muster up the energy to express it on the mic. Instead, we sounded as if we'd been dragged across the desert by our cajones, and deprived of water for weeks. I'll be posting that audio fairly soon.
Two hours later when we finally got into some sort of civilization, we tried to find some good radio stations, but everything sounded the same! (We're NOT country boys by any stretch of the imagination) All of a sudden, we came across this thumping... deep bass... This HAD to be a Bonnaroo station. Surely enough, it was Roo Radio, and we were DAMN close to our destination. I couldn't help but to get a late night energy boost (3am), but B just wasn't feeling it. But in his defense, he was driving the entire way down. Finally, we pulled off the highway, and into the Walmart parking lot.
My first thought? 'Let's get some booze out of the trunk and celebrate our arrival!'
King B's first thought? 'I'm going to sleep.'
People have always said that my spiky hair hides my devil horns, and that night was no different. I sprung out of the car, put my feet down on the hot Tennessee pavement, thrust my fists into the air, and breathed in the insanity that we'd be experiencing for the next four days. The Manchester Walmart parking lot was pure insanity. There were so many people tailgating... just waiting for the moment that the gates would be opening. We popped open the trunk, and out came a bottle of wine, that I promptly proceeded to spill all over my white T-shirt. Another omen of things to come. 'Screw it! I may look like an asshole, but it's Bonnaroo!' That also seemed to be a bit of a mantra for the weekend as well.
We finally were able to relax a bit, but were just bombarded by so many different sights and smells. (The smokers were out in full force... just like they would be for the next four days at Roo.) I reached in my bag of recording equipment, and thought that it was time to start our audio coverage of the weekend. There were a few cars to our left that had been partying for a few hours, so I stopped over to talk to them first. They came about the same distance as us from Ohio, but they got to Manchester in about 4 less hours! How in the hell does that happen?! After a few minutes, we decided to break out the Seagrams 7 for a round (or 5) of shots. Yeah... The first of MANY shots for the weekend. GOOD TIMES!
A few shots later, I head off to get some more audio (which is basically unusable... people are just to f'd up... NO, I wasn't THAT bad!) I walk around checking out the scenes, and it's pure insanity. That parking lot was so trashed, that it would take a day or 2 just to clean it up! There were people sprawled out all over the parking lot, nitrous tanks going off, shots and joints being passed around... I talked to a few people, but eh... It just wasn't the best of audio, so I headed back.
"B! LET'S GO! WE'RE GOING SHOPPING!"
He was standing there talking to a girl who was selling "brownies" and "cookies" to get enough money to get into Roo. There was an interesting interview topic! I handed B the mics, and they chatted for a bit. I was drunk and restless, so I was happy when they were done their interview, so we could head on into Walmart.
Damn, Walmart is an interesting place when you've got tons of inebriated Bonnaroonians walking around doing their last minute shopping! OK, the lines sucked, but it was interesting. We picked up a ton of random crap that we didn't even use, and then realized that it was almost time where they could start selling beer! (PA, get with the times! Put beer in your Walmarts!) We waited about a half hour, and then picked up an old college "favorite," Natty Light. Yeah. I know. Moe Train's Tracks is slummin' it. F*ck it! It's Bonnaroo!
We then swung over to the local SMALL radio station where we picked up our tickets and media bracelets. Ah... We're now official. Not that we weren't official before, but this made us super-official... I guess. There were ticket wookies passed out in front of the station (including our very own King B), but the scene cleaned up very quickly once everyone got their tickets from will call. Moments after people got their tickets, they flew out of the parking lots, and headed right over to Roo.
Not us. We needed to get our liquor! We pulled up to the first LQ store that we saw, and I must say... The Manchester people were EXTREMELY hospitable. The owner of the liquor store saw our media bracelets, and we had a little talk with them about Bonnaroo, and the impact that the festival has on Manchester. They really did seem to be very gracious about the incoming barrage of people. (THEY DID raise the prices of liquor before everyone got there... F*ckers.)
Food? Check.
Camping Stuff? Check.
Beer, Ice and Liquor? Check... Double Check.
So we get in line to get into Roo... It started off on the highway, and took us quite a while to get in. All of a sudden, I got this horrible sinking feeling... 'WHERE DID I PUT THE RECORDING EQUIPMENT?!" I jumped out of the car on an overpass and started to look through the trunk. 'Oh doodie... where is the bag?' (Yeah, I was still pretty drunk when I put the stuff back in the car.) The line started to move, and B moved the car up about 60 yards! So here I am, half-lit, running behind a car with an open trunk in sandals.
Welcome to Bonnaroo, jackass!
So I'm sprinting behind the car, and there's people cheering as I get closer to the car. All of a sudden, stuff starts to fall out of the back of the car! So I've got a car behind me that's laughing, people cheering me on, B's yelling "Come on," and I've gotta pick boxes of wine and other random stuff up as I run towards the back of the car. The cop directing traffic was half laughing at me, but still trying to maintain some semblance of professionalism.
"Come on! Get in your car," he yelled to me.
"I'm trying, but the traffic keeps moving! Look at all the stuff I have in my hands!"
I finally make it to the back of the car... throw all the stuff in the trunk that had fallen out on the road... Jump back into the moving car, and we're on our way... AGAIN. We had a good laugh about that... then it hit us....
"DO YOU KNOW WHAT WE FORGOT!?!?!" I yelled.
"WHAT?"
"ONLY THE MOST IMPORTANT THING THAT WE NEEDED FOR A FESTIVAL THAT'S GOING TO BE A HUNDRED DEGREES EVERY DAY!!!!
"WATER!!!"
Yes, in a festival where alcohol isn't the "party favor" of choice... two of the biggest party dudes forget the most essential ingredient to staying ALIVE... Water. Damn... What idiots we were. "We can just drink the melted water from the cooler!" Sure! Easy solution. One problem. We have HOT DOGS sitting in that ice! Hot dog water does NOT equal the best drinking water. Hot dogs have sodium! It's a virtual Dietz and Watson Gatorade! (How f*cking disgusting does that sound?) Then we said... Eh, screw it. We'll figure something out.
There were a bunch of people on the sides of the roads trying to scalp tickets. They all LOOKED legit. We had our red and silver comp tickets, so we were good to go. Maybe "brownie girl" got her tickets that way. Shortly after, I fell asleep... I awoke to a sea of cars all at the gate. Some were getting checked, some weren't. We didn't have anything that would get us in trouble besides a BIG bottle of Jagermeister and some Moe-jito (it turns into a Moe-jito when I make it!) mix. (Hey, I NEED my Jager!) I really didn't even think about it when we bought them, since we bought some cheap ass bottles of liquor in plastic bottles. Thankfully, we didn't get searched and we got our 2 bottles in. (Next year, we'll go all plastic.)
Once we got past the checkpoint and got our booklets and maps, we were separated into four different lines. We were stuck in the line all the way to the right, which seemed to not move for an hour! What was going on? We were getting a bit restless as were the tons of cars behind us. Someone actually went up to the traffic people and mentioned about our line. That got us moving thankfully.
Finally, we were on our way. There were a few ladies passing out calendars... I remember thinking, 'Cool! Bonnaroo calendars!' Cordially, I took a calendar, thanked them, and we continued on our way. "Yo! Check this doodie out!" I said to King B. I couldn't stop laughing. It was some calendar advertisement for some detoxifying product! But, for each month, there was some topless chick! Free boobs! But as we scanned through the pages, our smiles turned to frowns. "This is the shittiest topless calendar I've ever seen! Were these pictures taken by a Polaroid? Haven't they ever heard of a thing called Photoshop??" OK, I admit... There was ONE girl in there who was pretty smokin' hot. Come to think of it, she may have been handing out the calendars. But one out of twelve? ha.... Screw it. Good for them. They got some semi-free press. I think a ton of other people thought the same thing about the calendars as we did... They were strewn all over the grounds.
So, almost 24 hours after we left Bear, DE, we arrive at our campsite... Thus starts the weekend!
Bonnaroo 2007 Blog - Festival Day #1 - LET'S GET THAT TENT UP!
Finally, we're here! We make it through all the windy roads and side streets of the fifth largest city in Tennessee (for the weekend), and are directed to our site. Everyone jumps out of their car to stake their claim of land in a mad fury. All we want to do is get out of the f*cking car and have a drink! Soaking this scene in was a bit surreal. The eager campers all seemed so calculated... Long pole in this hole... make sure you cover everything... (Get your mind out of the gutter.) King B and I basically looked at each other and said, "Let's get this doodie up!" Of course I had to go in the trunk and grab us some fine brews which they affectionately call "Natty Light."
"B! CHEERS!" I throw him a beer and almost clock him in the head. He just gives me a look and starts to take the tent out of the bag. All around us, the Hooverville is being constructed, as we just have our small plot of land in front of B's car.
"Dude, we REALLY should have tried to put this tent up before we got here," I said to B with a grin. Hey, we're "Excelsior"... By the way, all of the Excelsior references are made to King B and I. We are collectively known as "Team Excelsior." Check out Team Excelsior's MySpace if you don't believe me!
Anyway, back to the story... So I grab the directions to the tent, and put my beer down on top of B's car. "Ok, we need to spread this piece out and then thread the poles through the loops on the side of the tent." "Yeah, no doodie!" B says... The whole time I'm thinking to myself, 'We're going to be sleeping on TOP of the tent,' and 'Damn... it is hot as hell out here!' (Yeah. We're in Tennessee. Great observation.) So we grab a hold of the collapsing poles and start to extend them. We almost took out a few neighbors with our errant poles, but everyone's was ok. They kept looking over and grinning...
"You guys didn't practice before you left did you?"
GREAT observation, Sherlock! B replies, "We bought this tent on the way down! We didn't have time!" (That's total horseshit. We had the tent for about 2 weeks before we left. The tent only saw the light of day long enough to check that it came with stakes. Hey, we didn't think that we could get it back in the bag, so we rolled the dice!)
The Gods were on our side that day, 'cause I'll tell you what... We got that tent up! Maybe it wasn't the exact way that the directions stated, but there was a tent standing in front of us! "Don't forget to put on the tent condom!" Oh yeah... The top cover. Well, that went on pretty easily, but not without a fight! Then we took out our super ghetto Walmart blue "canopy." That was NOT a canopy! That was a crappy little piece of tarp! Glancing around the campsites, we see that everyone has draped tarps over their tents. Ok, to me, that looked like a bit of a health hazard. Suffocation, anyone? Then again, I thought back to when I was doing Roosearch (Roo Research), and it seemed as if the extra tarp would help extend the sleeping hours in the morning, so we figured that we'd do the same thing. Ghetto rigging is an understatement. Our tent looked so freakin' ugly, but at least it was standing. A big ole- brown tent with a blue hat on it. That's what it looked like. Speaking of the tent, it was NOT NEARLY as big as we thought it would be! 17x11. Now if you think about the dynamics of a tent that size for 2 people, you'd think it would be a palace! Nah. Not even close. OK, it's true that B and I are both over 6 feet tall and 200 lbs+, but it was NOT that big!
Oh well... So, we go to grab our beers from the top of B's car, go to have a sip, and almost spray the beer all over each other. Not in celebration (though we should have shaken up some of those crappy beers and sprayed them everywhere), but the beers had BOILED on top of the car! (Yeah, another obvious mistake that we had made. 100 degrees out + a hot car acting as a skillet + an aluminum can = HOT doodie! Sorry if I'm cursing a lot... They were trying times!!) Screw it, it's Bonnaroo! We grab a few more beers out of the cooler and look approvingly at our sorry excuse for a campsite.
Suddenly, I feel the power of something higher... No, I wasn't high (though everyone else had already started to spark one or ten up)... I see the face of... who is it? Is that Bob Saget?! YES!! Danny Tanner is here!
"Excuse me, do you go on the Inforoo Message Board?" (The source of so much of my Bonnaroo research... Thanks to everyone on that site for all your help!)
She took me off guard, but after sifting through the fog of the heat and my boiling beer, I reply... "Yeah! Do you?"
"Are you Moe Train?"
Why yes! Yes I am! Talk about a small world! I have to say... We REALLY lucked out having those guys as our neighbors. I guess there were 6 or 8 Inforoosters camped right next to us, and talk about hospitality... "Mr. Burger King" said, "Hey guys, we've got some barbecue cooking over here. Feel free to help yourself!" Bells were going off in my head. 'Barbecue? Are you serious? Oh man... Food. I love food. We're in the South, right? Barbecue is supposed to be the best down here!' After all that internal monologue, I smiled and accepted. Holy hell, it was amazing. "Did you cook this yourself?" I asked. "I had it cooking all last night." Oh man... I'm such a foodie at heart, and this was the work of a master. Actually, even thinking about it right now is making my mouth water. "Don't forget to put some of the sauce on it." Oh.. I won't.
So after getting settled and meeting our new friends, I have to return the hospitality, so I go to the cooler, and grab my illegal contraband... A BIG dose of bottled heaven.... JAGERMEISTER! Regretfully, I didn't have anything to bring to the table in a culinary fashion (not that I could or would even want to compete), but I can make a damn good drink! "Who's ready for Jager shots?" I say with a smile on my face. Up shoot the hands. "Me!" "Me too!" "Jager?" "Jagerbombs!" Out come the Red Bull... Gotta start the weekend off with a bang, so we mix up some massive Jagerbombs. "I've never had a Jagerbomb! What do you do?" "Well, you drink it right to the head!" We toast to new friends and to Bonnaroo, and you could see that it hit some people harder than others. Being the boozer I am, I was ready for another. Hey, we were at Roo! My sense of reason told me that I had work to do today, and I couldn't get hammered already.
"Let's get this coverage going!"
"The cords are so tangled! What are you doing??" B said... For the first time in about 2 million times during the weekend. No matter what I would do, the cords would become instantly intertwined. There's GOTTA be some invention that can cure this! So... We spend about a half hour trying to get the cords untangled. Finally, we get everything going... grab my trusty Zoom H4, our Shure mics, and head out. (Ok, we needed to make some very refreshing Moe-jitos for the trip to Centeroo before we headed out) I threw everything in my backpack, and we headed down the lane with mics in hand. I thought to myself, 'We've gotta capture all kinds of insanity!'
"Moooooooooooooooe Traiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin!!!!"
"Someone's yelling your name!"
"Mooooooooooooooooooe Traiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin!!!" Ah... It was one of the dudes we interviewed last night. I'm surprised he remembered us. He was shitfaced!
"What's up bro? Where are you staying?" He turned and pointed towards his tent.
"Get the hell out of here. You're staying THERE!?!" It was a palace! A pure palace of comfort. They had comfy chairs, things hanging from the tarped living room, tables, and every other amenity that you could ever ask for at a festival! Damn, did we feel like doodie! I wanted to ask him if we could move in for the weekend! There was a contest held by Coleman for the best campsite, and they were certainly high in the running for that award.
Feeling lower than low about our tent, we gave him an Excelsior salute, and headed on our way towards Bushy Branch Road. At least that's what I think it was called. 'Damn, does this whole place smell like pot? Yeah, it does.' There were people piling in as we walked towards Centeroo, but there were still thousands of people already there.
"Wait, what did he just ask me?"
There it was again... People already pushing their "party favors." Eh, it's Bonnaroo, and there's no drukqs at Bonnaroo! We crank up the Zoom and start to give our commentary of the grounds. I'm sorry, but we had NO IDEA of just how immense Bonnaroo was. MMM... The smell of food. Yeah, I love food. So what? There were tons and tons of vendors off to the right side of Bushy Branch. Food, drinks... Glass... Some more glass.
People were walking all different directions, but we generally went in the flow of the people. We took a left and went through what we determined was "Shakedown Street." I'm telling you... you haven't experienced Bonnaroo until you've gone through Shakedown Street at different times of the day. You know the song, "The Freaks Come Out At Night," right? Well, at Bonnaroo and Shakedown? The freaks are out all day AND night! Holy hell. Ok, I admit, I'm not the most hippie-ish of people, and I was basically infringing on their hippiness, but wow. I was smacked in the face with a wall of patchouli, dust and clouds of the MJ. God, I HATE PATCHOULI. It smells like a combination of Nag Champa with vomit and fermunda cheese. (Don't know about the fermunda? Oh... You know about the fermunda!) I said, 'Screw the mics, let's check this scene out!' It felt like my head was on constant swivel mode. I kept running into B, because I was too busy checking everything else out. "Headies!" Who's giving out... oh... nevermind... We spy the first drum circle of the weekend. About 8 glass-eyed Roonians sat around and just tore it up in their little way on the drums. "I told you we should have brought your bongos," King B said to me... "Damn, it's f*cking hot out here!!"
The fermunda began it's fermentation period earlier than expected...
The rest of the story is on audio. However, this year, I do plan on doing a ton more writing. After all, journalistic/creative writing is where I got my start. I'm glad I made the transition to audio. You can feel much more emotion in our voices than in the writing (though you can tell a bit in the text).
These two blogs/articles were written primarily before we turned on the mics to officially cover Bonnaroo. We're going to be unveiling a totally new format at Roo this year... Be ready for that and our new website!