Thumpin' Icky

"bonna-ROO!" The cry went out for hours, from midnight when I first arrived until after the sun broke the Tennessee morning. It lasted for days and fell from every mouth in attendance, used as a noun, verb, and adjective. Bonnaroo is, in fact and often, a perfect, logical argument with no counter explanation.

I felt prepared when I left, but knew true ignorance by the time I came home. For every first time visitor there is a sharp learning curve in nearly every area, however, physical limitation seems to be the lesson most take to head. The tendency is to gobble up as much experience as possible without remembering the after-effects, or the quick adaptive properties of the human body, until finally your mind and limbs shut down and run completely on the brain stem's limited functions. If you plan to take this journey, then remember a person can only take so much dirt, sex, drugs, and rocknroll, so try and keep a big-picture mentality at all times to avoid partying as if the angel of the lord secretly told you the next morning would bring the apocalypse.

I don't know if I'll ever go back to Bonnaroo. The festival is too hip now. My ticket came with a free year of Spin and while at the festival I was asked if I wanted to rest in a hammock and listen to an iPod. Giant trailers and expensive SUVs littered the land. A tip for next year's guests, if you have enough money for VIP access then the staff will practically wipe your shit covered ass with the hair of someone who dared to only pay $250 for their ticket.

Tool was the biggest act this year, which is fine, because: Tool is totally METAL! Tool is probably the most metal band touring right now. I base this on the number of people who were doing, seriously man, a lot of cocaine right before the show. B and I had too much of the Bonnaroo Experience, which resulted in the show being far too extreme for us to take comfortably located in the front of the crowd. Creepy vibes. The actually crowd of people, oddly, were pretty tame.

Tool's laser show was fucking awesome though. Not as incredible as The Flaming Lips laser show, but then it was impossible to top a band who gave out 10,000 laser-pointers to the audience who could interact with the performance.

Kings of Leon are regulars at Bonnaroo, and this year they secured a spot on the main stage. The family band is excellent live, too bad the sound was cut during the middle of their set, easily making the fans miss at least two songs from band's set-list. The main stage had two screens on each side so that the 70,000 plus people in the back could see the stage action. Unfortunately, two of the best bands playing this year, The Flaming Lips and The White Stripes, did not play on the main stage. Luckily, B stuck with me for hours so that we could be within fifty yards of the stage for the midnight, mindblowing performance of The Flaming Lips. We decided to enjoy the very last drop of music from Feist's beautiful lips, so The White Stripes looked like tiny, red dolls somewhere out in the far dusty field by the time we got to the back of the crowd.

One of the best aspects of Bonnaroo is the number of amazing covers played during the festival. On the first night, The Black Angels ended their show with a dark version of "I Wanna Be Your Dog" that would have made Iggy & The Stooges proud. On Friday, The Roots played Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" by setting the lyrics to the tune of "The Star Spangled Banner" which moved into a funky version of Dylan's original tune, then showcased a drum solo by ?uestlove, then dove into Hendrix's "Machine Gun" while the guitarist ran back and forth through the crowd, and finally ended back on the funky interpretation of Dylan's classic protest song. The same day, Tom Morrello performed an acoustic version of "Guerrilla Radio" and Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Our Land". Even The Flaming Lips started their show with a blistering cover of "War Pigs".

The Hold Steady, Spoon, The Black Keys, Martha Wainwright, Regina Spektor, and The Decemberists were all very good. From my tent I heard DJ Shadow throwing a good show, and I heard SuperJam was absolutely fantastic. So, all in all, musically speaking, Bonnaroo achieved its goals. In terms of providing a low-cost, happy, positive festival that moves people to be more good-natured and positive, it failed. But at least the last band I got to see was The White Stripes which made the whole experience end on a very positive note. I even got to hear a couple of new songs before I bought the new album. For those wondering, the new White Stripes album is great, just go get it and rock out with the rest of us, even if you didn't drive to Tennessee to see them.