17 Hours have never passed so quickly. Maybe it was the stop at Sonic that kept us going (us New Englanders think of it as some Holy Grail of fast food), but most likely it was the excitement of Bonnaroo finally becoming a reality. Honestly, I feel like my visit in Manchester, TN was a fantasy I dreamt up for my own fun. But it happened, and I have the lime green wristband, 3D ticket, and tie-dye t-shirt to prove it.

Even when you talk with people who went, Bonnaroo is hard to describe. If there’s a God, I hope heaven is a big ol’ Bonnaroo in the sky (sure as hell I’d go to church more often). Some friends from Boston College plus some and I all arrived around 5 am on Thursday, pitching our tent and canopy by the light of the sunrise. We napped, and then the adventure officially started.

Here’s the layout of Bonnaroo, 700 acres of former farming lands: Centeroo is an area where all the stages are located and carnival-like vendors. That majestic red archway you see in your friends’ Facebook albums? That’s the entrance to Centeroo. They sell anything from traditional pizza to deep fried gator, and as far as souvenirs go, buy a cool band posters or a didgeridoo. When and if you go, make sure to stop at the Wonder Waffle stand to get the hot waffle sandwich: a cube of vanilla ice cream between two thick waffles smothered in chocolate syrup. Surrounding Centeroo are all the campsites grouped by movie titles and divided by that movie’s characters. Ours was Pussy Galore in the James Bond area… we all got a kick out of that. Port-a-potties are located throughout, and you get used to peeing in the dark after the first two nights. Showering is a no-no. I mean you can for a little less then 10 bucks, but if you’re going to Bonnaroo you might as well do it up right.

Say hi to my friends Kristen and Josh.

Bands play all the time, til everyone’s strung out at 4 am and dancing their asses off. But considering an audience of 75,000 sticky-sweaty people, getting to the front can be a complicated process. Due to a string of great shows on Saturday, we made it to the front for some out-of-this-world entertainment. We edged in the side of This Tent as Bon Iver’s falsettos shivered my bones in 80-degree humidity. He closed with ‘Wolves,’ having the audience sing over and over “What might have been lost” until we were shouting the line 10,000 strong. At that point the crowd headed out and we headed in, close to front row for Of Montreal. I had already seen them in April at Paradise Rock Lounge in Boston, so I was expecting an identical set. Same costumes, different experience. There’s just something about seeing Kevin Barnes in a smoking (literally emitting smoke) fur poncho doing the cha-cha in broad daylight as a brontosaurus with giant arms catapults balls into the audience. After bopping around to ‘Rapture Rapes the Muses’ and grooving out to ‘A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger,’ they smashed their instruments in a distortioned cacophony that simply defines Of Montreal, and proceeded to hurl their bodies atop the audience to crowd surf.

Here’s a taste of a live Of Montreal show that I recorded at the Paradise show, apologies for the quality.

Barnes once explained his performance style in an interview with the Daytrotter crew:

I’ve always loved the theatrical side of performing. I never really got into the whole indie rock approach of taking the stage in your street clothes and just playing the songs. That isn’t fun for me. I really want to put on a performance that people will remember. That means considering the visual aspect of things. I hate going to see shows that just have this static image. I think it’s important to have lots of movement on stage, lots of changes in the images you present to the audience.

Of Montreal

The Decmeberists were up next. If I had to narrow it down, I went to Bonnaroo mainly to see Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Of Montreal, Phoenix and MGMT. The Decemberists were my favorite show at Bonnaroo 2009. A fan informed me that their set was a straight play through of their latest album The Hazards of Love, and they did so without conversation or even a pause. Dark lighting, robotic dancing, violent timpani banging followed by a half-hour encore of fan favorites, which showed a lighter side of congenial performance. I can’t tell you the set list, and I don’t know the names of the band members without Google-ing them, but I can tell you it was just phenomenal.

In the flesh, the Decemberists

This article could easily be longer than a senior thesis. To list my favorite performances is like naming all of the places in the world I’d like to visit – it’s endless and actually sort of boring to everyone but me. The last thing I want to squeeze in here is a note about the people. For four glorious days, I shared a really strange freedom with tens of thousands of other people from all walks of life, ranging from all ages, with different intentions. I watched teeny boppers play around in the mushroom fountain, babies strapped onto ambitious parents, young bucks drinking beers with their friends, and I particularly remember these two middle-aged women swaying their arms with floor-length dresses and mom haircuts. The Healing Shaman was seen daily, carrying a sign advertising his services, doing yoga and chanting “heeemmehpennay, huuuuhhhh” behind us as we walked to Centeroo. There were bearded men wiggling their hips to sound checks, and a man whose bad trip required 8 paramedics and a needle to a neck.

Everyone was just really satisfied to live in a tent, meet new people, and listen to good music.

In your lifetime, go to Bonnaroo. If you’ve already gone, you don’t need to me to tell you to do it again. It is beyond an experience.

Heeemmehpennay, Huuuuhhhh. Photo Cred: Evan Waters

We all know that there’s a time and place where it’s acceptable to be fashionably late. Bonnaroo is neither the time nor the place. Kanye West was scheduled to perform at the Bonnaroo Music Festival at 2:15AM Saturday night/Sunday morning on June 14th/15th 2008. His original performance time was pushed back from 8:15PM Saturday night at Which Stage, due to the fact that Kanye requested a later time and a bigger stage to accommodate his critically acclaimed Glow in the Dark tour.

Pearl Jam, who performed on What Stage prior to Kanye, did not help the problem when they went 1 hour longer than scheduled. Pearl Jam’s closing song “Alive” ended at around 1:15AM Saturday night. This gave Kanye 1½ hours to build his set and get on stage to perform. That’s a decent amount of time, right? Well, no. This was because there were major difficulties disassembling Pearl Jam’s set and assembling Kanye’s.

As an observer in the front row of the pit, I noticed that the majority of the stagehands were just standing around doing nothing. It was actually quite appalling. A heckler near me called them out for standing idly, and they seemed to disappear backstage after that. If they actually contributed to assembling Kanye’s set, it would have been assembled in half the time. About 5-7 people out of 20+ were doing all the work.

When 3:50AM rolled around, the set looked to be finished, but Kanye was nowhere to be seen. Fans began to grow restless. Glowsticks, water-bottles, toilet paper rolls and numerous other objects were hurled onto the stage and at the set. It was an endless barrage of flying objects. Chants of “BULLSHIT”, “WHAT THE FUCK”, and “FUCK KANYE” were being shouted throughout crowd. One pissed off fan threw either a glowstick or water-bottle (I’m not sure which) at Kanye’s huge, hanging LCD screen that took forever to assemble. The LCD panels were cracked and seriously malfunctioning. It was hilarious.

Finally, at approximately 4:30AM, Kanye emerged from backstage and onto his set. By this time, the sky was just beginning to lighten, and most fans had passed out or retired to their tents. When Kanye took the stage, he made no effort to even acknowledge the crowd, let alone his extreme lateness. Kanye stuck to his lame, scripted act with a female computer named Jane for the entire performance. It was like the audience wasn’t even there. Throughout his performance, he was forced to avoid the constant barage of glowsticks and bottles being hurled at him.

His entire performance lasted about an hour. After his last song, he just left the stage. No goodbyes. No apologies. Not one acknowledgement. Nothing. I had heard that Kanye West had a big ego but never thought much of it. This experience definitely changed all of that. I was a pretty big Kanye fan and super excited to see him live because I heard he was amazing. But, all I ended up seeing was his gigantic ego. He was the only person on stage for the whole performance for God’s sake. No backup dancers, no DJ, no musicians, no guest rappers. There isn’t a single person who witnessed Kanye’s Bonnaroo performance that will think of him and his music in the same way. He basically slapped all of his fans in the face. I should have seen Lupe Fiasco and Talib Kweli instead.

Be sure to watch the videos.

Below: Kanye performs “Heard ‘Em Say” and dodges glowsticks thrown at him. Notice the cracked LCD screen.

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Below: Kanye performs “Champion” and dodges glowsticks.

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Below: Kanye performs the end of “Get ‘Em High” as colorful flames shoot out from the stage.

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Below: Kanye stands idly as “Stronger” plays in the background. By this time it was basically bright outside.

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So on Friday June 13th, Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., performed at the Bonnaroo Music Festival
in Manchester, Tennesee. All I have to say is HOLY FUCK. Her set was probably the most intense, high energy performance at Bonnaroo. I know this because I was lucky enough to witness it first hand and up close.

After an amazing set by !!! (chk chk chk), M.I.A. was scheduled to perform. !!! had set the bar quite high, and it was questionable whether or not M.I.A. could top it. There was even speculation that M.I.A. would literally be missing in action – nobody was even sure if she would show up for her Bonnaroo performance. This was because the Sri Lankan MC canceled her European tour, citing exhaustion as the main reason.

Right around 6:15 PM CST though, the heavy bass of “Bamboo Banga” could be heard emanating from the DJ booth. At this time, everyone knew that M.I.A. was ready to deliver the performance of a lifetime. She came out donning white sequined short shorts, a large orange t-shirt, wayfarer sunglasses, and big 80′s hair and earrings. M.I.A. kept telling the sound technicians to turn up her bass in order to blow everyone away. She and her 2 dancers passed out horns to the audience. Then, in somewhat of a surprise move (I say ‘somewhat of a surprise’ because !!!’s singer had hinted to it an hour earlier), M.I.A. then told the crowd in her heavy British accent that,

“This is my last show, and I’m glad that I’m spending it with all my hippies! Peace and love! Aight! They’re kickin’ me out, but I’m goin’ in peace! I will be back though, they ain’t gettin’ rid of me that easily!”

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During her electric performance, M.I.A. blasted her horn, danced on top of the speakers, jumped into the front row, and even invited tons of people to dance on stage. Everyone on stage and in the audience was going absolutely crazy. The energy throughout the performance was through the roof.
As RollingStone put it,

“M.I.A. delivered a mind-blowing set of ass-shaking jungle-disco tonight”

Check out the videos. I apologize in advance for the shakiness.
Below: M.I.A. invites girls onto the stage and performs the end of “Jimmy” and the beginning of “Boyz.”
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Below: M.I.A. dances and grinds with the huge speakers on the left.
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Below: M.I.A. comes into the front row about 3 feet away from me. I am really upset over this because I thought I was recording the entire time, but I wasn’t, and the video ended up being 7 seconds, instead of 2 minutes. Noooooooooo!!
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Below: M.I.A. wraps up a song from behind turntables.
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Below: M.I.A. comes back for an encore with her crew. Nigeria’s own Afrikan Boy makes his first appearance of the night.
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Below: M.I.A. ends the show with “Paper Planes.”
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