Paste Magazine???

They were handing free issues out last year that had a free sampler cd in it. Not a bad mag.

In 2005 & 2006 Paste had a booth set up in the Sonic Stage area. Maybe they will be back this year with swag.

Here's my favorite Paste article:

Bonnaroo 2004 - Come Together, Right Now
Writer: Jay Sweet
From www.pastemagazine.com ~~ Issue 11

I’m fried. That’s what Bonnaroo does to you. It’s like a huge Tennessee deep fryer. It immerses you in a massive vat of sizzling hot music for three days and you come out the other side extra crispy. How else do you explain the madness? You could try to extract some sense of logic from the numbers (3 days, 80 bands, 90,000 people, 700 acres, 7 stages, 1 million pounds of ice, over 6,500,000 watts of electrical power, three scattered hours of torrential thunder and lightning sprinkled with a couple of hail and tornado warnings), but like any good mind blowing, logic is useless. However, here are the tender deep-fried, greasy, morsels that encapsulate the spirit of such a blessed event as ingested by one overfed attendant.

• Randomly finding an old college buddy’s drivers license on a hotel lobby floor and then running into him 10 minutes later amidst 90k people after not having seen him in eons.

• A twisted Abbott and Costello routine being played out in a Lewis Carrol-designed theme park, as we navigate around the What Stage, the Which Stage, past This Tent and That Tent and the Other tent to see Papa Mail at Another tent.

• Watching Black Keys drummer (and Hanson Brothers doppelganger) Patrick Carney beat and whip his snare with the wingspan of a turkey buzzard while wearing a shirt that reads “Keep Your Emotions in Motion.”

• Seeing Wilco—in all their jean-jacket coolness—crank, twist, jolt and spank out a “War on War” that has a sober Tweedy playing over his head, literally. Jaws clank off the aluminum bleachers with a resounding din.

• Chris Robinson serenading the merciful sunset with a gut-ripping and salacious send up of “Ride,” while the audience convulses and contorts like a bunch of boneless chickens in a swirling sauna of backstage “dry-ice” smoke.

• Dylan challenging Madonna as the champ of revamp. Ditching the pencil-thin mustache, swingin’cowboy, bow-legged crooner from the carnival circuit for Mr. Piano Man on cough syrup, which of course bows to his enigmatic, contemptuous, impervious, poetic, sardonic and (at times) insufferable mystique. I miss the troubadour in the neo-Nudie suits already.

• Gillian Welch and David Rawlings pining for beautifully poor souls, like a lost Steinbeck book on tape.

• Watching a new friend weep openly at the poignancy and validity of Dave Matthews’ and Trey’s Anastasio’s acoustic version of “Waste,” just before most of the 90,000 people start softly clapping and humming to “Bathtub Gin” with intimate fervor, Trey gently rapping his guitar with a single knuckle, like a massive sing-along where no one wants to wake the baby.

• Tim Reynolds releasing the parking brake on Sly and The Family Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” savagely accosting his guitar by biting it, slapping it and twisting the tuning pegs until his amp seemingly gives birth to the Death Star. He delivers last rites by ripping off his shirt, throwing it over his convulsing guitar and leaving us and the band to wallow in the waves of screech owl feedback bleeding into our ears like the Emergency Broadcast System on steroids. No one moves; no one knows if it’s music or if it should simply be put out of its misery. Bravely, the band rides it out and the bad joke comes around again, but this time it’s dirty. Tony Hall bobs and weaves through its nastiness. Anastasio stands over drummer Brady Blade as both play the same drum kit, like some Hindu deity with countless appendages. Matthews dances as if being attacked by a tickling swarm of millipedes; pure joistless frothing as the bolts on the hinges slowly turn lefty-loosey.

• Waking up in a 120-degree tent at 8:00 a.m. the next morning , downing three quarts of water and a stack of blissful blueberry pancakes.

• Having a private acoustic show from My Morning Jacket’s Jim James in the press tent where you can actually see he’s human and not Cousin It from The Adam’s Family.

• Gomez, Mindy Smith, Grandaddy, Gov’t Mule and Del McCoury overlapping, leaving me wanting to speak with the manger of this establishment.

• My Morning Jacket preaching high on the mountaintop, conjuring up the souls of Duane, SRV and Ronnie Van Zant, complete with rolling thunderheads, lightening balls and tornado warnings.

• Warren Hayes encoring with Prince’s “When Doves Cry.”

• Chris Robinson mourning the death of Ray Charles in the food line, “It should be a catalyst to start recognizing Great American Musicians in their lifetime, before they’re gone.”

• Doc Watson telling everyone to “Keep it quiet or I’m out of here.”

• Watching riggers scale the monolithic What Stage, relieving the roof of the remnants of a two-hour rain delay, which fall in 60-gallon bursts on the patiently waiting people in the front row.

• All the people in the front row laughing.

• Steve Winwood playing bass for his entire set with his left foot.

• A soaking sea of people chanting “Rain or Shine” as sheets of spitting precipitation lash out. The PA answers them by blasting The Beatles—“Come Together, right now …”—and then kills the volume so the audience can answer… “OVER ME!”

• Jigging onstage, arm-in-arm with cyber genius, cattle rancher, Grateful Dead lyricist and Cognitive Dissident John Barlow as the Dead unleash the soundtrack for this bewitching primordial hootenanny.

• The Master of Ceremonies of the Mardi Gras parade—complete with beads, buskers and belly dancers—is the real American Idol, William Hung, in the flesh, belting out Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs” on a monstrous Mr. T float at the stroke of midnight.

• Triangulating myself to clearly hear Primus, Ween and Robert Randolph playing simultaneously on different stages depending on which way I cup my ears.

• Sunday with Taj Mahal after a long Saturday night.

• Robert Randolph and the boys from moe. glued to David Byrne singing a song in Italian, then in Spanish, before breaking into the “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody).” Goosebumps and throat lumps abound.

• Trey Anastasio conducting a 40-person orchestra through a self-composed fugue and ripping “Devil Went Down To Georgia” (both within an hour of each other—both for the first time, both in front of 90,000 deep fried, tender, crispy, happy people).

• Having the good fortune of interviewing, Los Lobos, Gomez, My Morning Jacket, Guster and Kings of Leon, but getting the best interview from Laurel Brown, a10-year-old from Knoxville, Tenn. “I saw reggae—not Britney Spears but Burning Spears—and on the stage their music would come up through my feet and shake my whole body.” Amen.

But the one defining moment was sharing a beer with the baritone sax player from Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra as he offered, “everyone is music; we all listening carefully and dancing wisely, for music can break the chains of violence and bad hatred.” Thirty seconds later Femi Kuti’s baritone sax player comes over with wet eyes and shows us his sax, which has been severely damaged during its trip from Africa. With a few hand gestures and no interpretable words spoken between them, the man from Japan handed the one working baritone sax at the entire festival over to the African with a shy smile. Ten minutes later we stand on the side of the stage watching Femi’s horn section rip a hole in the sky. “You see my friend?” Fully converted, I nod bewildered.

Digesting the weekend I realize Bonnaroo is simply music with heart, soul and foresight—with some mud wrestling thrown in for good measure.

Paste is yummy.

And it's out of Atlanta, right?
I recommend it, Hil.

^You should! I want to check it out now!

After Roo 05 my dad started checking it out, I got him a subscribtion for his birthday, and I check his out when I'm home, its a sweet mag, this year had a 'Summer Festival' issue, it wrote about all the festies all over the country, pretty bad ass