Atomictumor

Friday:

Coffee and a Sandwich in the morning:

I woke up Friday amazed that I had slept so well.

I was also amazed that it was so hot and sunny at - what was it - 8 in the morning?

I had set myself up on my nice comfy queen sized air mattress, in my tent solo, next to the big tent that Nodbob, Bonnaroo Ben, and Droo were passed out in. I got up, and took a look at the coffee we brought. Now, it was bean coffee, for various reasons, and I had brought a grinder from the Farm, along with a handy little plug in generator, not a gas powered deal, but one that you charge up, and then it delivers 300 watts of goodness as long as the charge lasts. I got the stove out, hooked the tank up, plugged up the grinder to the generator, and POW…

Nothing happened. The thing whirred maybe 2 rotations in a big hurry, then stopped dead. Tried again, same results.

Well, hellfire, this is Bonnaroo, and I was damn sure not about to let that get me down. I dug out a Camelpak that I appropriated from the farm (the Blueberry Farm, the place for all your high maintenance festival camping needs), my phone, my camera, my hat, my shades, and my wallet. I moseyed over to the Nox to put on some sunscreen, and considered the pop up van next to us.

The van had parked there shortly before we did, with what appeared to be a very timid, burnt-out, older woman inside. She had a bucket of water outside the van. I had occasionally seen her peeking through the screen at the top of the pop up, and she once asked me what it was that the gentleman wandering down between the camps was selling (this time, it was “Molly, Opie, Nugs, and Shrooms”… five points if you can identify three of them), but she kept to herself. I don’t know that she ever left that pop up, other to stand on top of it and sway while looking around the night sky occasionally.

Once I was protected from the mighty and jealous rays of our father sun, I threw my shirt on and headed off to the festival.

This early in the morning, only fools like me were awake, those of us too used to “real jobs” and getting up early. It was wonderful. I emptied my pockets at the gate to the Centeroo area, a procedure that would become commonplace over the next few days, let them frisk me, and moseyed on in. There were maybe 200, 300 people that I could see. I headed over to the only place I could see selling some sort of breakfast, a pizza place, which also sold Bacon Egg and Cheese sandwiches ($4) and a nice big cup of coffee ($3).

The tables were full in the shade, so I took my breakfast walking. I headed up to what became my favorite section of Bonnaroo, the shade trees near “The Other Stage”, and sat down. After I ate, I wrote a post about how filthy the place was, and about how filthy my feet were (notice the bandaids… that was my first attempt to cushion this massive blister that I developed that first day from my sandals. It didn’t work. Eventually, I found success triple-wrapping my feet with medical tape, with a bandaid over the affected area. This lasted for 3 days, and my foot’s fine now, thanks) and pondered.

I sat there, in the middle of nature, and reflected on the fact that it’d been a long time since I sat in nature and reflected on anything.

In fact, it’d been since November. It had been such a weird and twisted year, and so much of me hadn’t begun to process so much of it. I pondered things, and reflected that sometimes my life had felt like a dog on a chain, that I had freedom to move around, but that I was tied irrevocably to one point, one singular axis, from which I couldn’t escape, no matter how much or how fast I moved. I had one thing that tied me down, until eventually every place I could go, every step I took, was over the same worn down ground that I’d trod a million times before, and that green grass in front of me was always out of reach.

Only, this was different, different from anything I’d ever done before. This was me, sitting under a shade tree, as the sound check guy gave up the never ending Bonnaroo chorus of “A hey-hey, check check, one two” from the tent to my left, and as 80,000 people slept, ate, and walked all around me.

I laid my hat on the ground, stretched my feet out, put my phone away, and watched the woods in front of me. I stayed there until I was surrounded by people lying on towels, couples talking, people reading, napping, eating, smoking, planning out their day.

Eventually, as I always did, I got up and moved. Always, at Bonnaroo, I had the urge to move.

The RX Bandits, and the quest for Mohawk perfection:

Part of the deal, the previous night, with bring the beer over was finding out that this person drove a Matrix, which is a car equipped with an on board DC - AC converter, and a resulting 110 volt AC plug. Nodbob had arranged to head over in the mornings, the 30-45 minute trek from Lando to Camp Pussy Galore, and spike his hawk up.

Now, the Nodbob hawk is an amazing thing, and like all amazing things, requires patience, determination, and nerves of steel. I had a mohawk in my day, but because I lacked those three key traits, mine only the weakest shadow of Nodbob’s. It breaks down something like this:

Well, he had the patience, determination, and nerves of steel, but unfortunately, the Matrix didn’t. Apparently that little car just wasn’t up to running Nodbob’s mighty hairdryer, and, alas, he had to watch RX Bandits without the mohawk.

Now, I had heard of the Bandits before, but hadn’t really heard much of their music. Its a punky band, and I tend to leave most of the punk stuff in my little brother’s domain, while he’s good about leaving the indieish stuff to me. I sat down on the grass and listened to them for a little while, while texting Nodbob about his mohawk situation (he was in the front of the show).

I enjoyed the show for a bit, and got that urge to get my feet moving, so I moved on.

Pizza and burlesque:

I ended up moving on to Bonna-Rouge, the Baz Luhrmann-ish tent that the Yard Dogs Roadshow, among other things, played in. I headed in there, frankly, because it was nicely shaded, and I could see a chair. As I wandered in, damned if I didn’t bump into, out of 80,000 people, good ol’ Nodbob. We sat and watched the Firecracker Jazz Band as it wound through old 1920 jazz and big band/swing standards. For a few songs, they had a singer pop up, who I fell completely in love with for the 5 minutes she was on stage singing and dancing.

Eventually, the band ended, and Nodbob and I moseyed over to a now-free table. I saved the table while he got us some pizza and beer, and we decided to stick around for the Yard Dogs show. He’d seen it the previous night, and highly recommended it. I didn’t really have anywhere I needed to be until the Black Keys went on around 5 or 6, so I kicked back.

It was one of the best shows I saw the whole time I was there.

It started with a drummer who walked out alone. He started laying down a beat, and was joined by, in turn, a Rocky Horrorish guitarist, a guitar playing old man, a trumpeteer, and trombone playing gal, a doll with an accordion, a derby wearing ringleader shouting gibberish into an old harp microphone, and a flamboyant, cane tossing, stage prancing front man.

The band rocked. They started off with the accordion doll singing and tap dancing through the first number, and then the dancers came out…

I’m not going to sit and describe the entire thing to you, other than to say that there were three of the most beautiful women in the world dancing in front of one of the better bands I’d ever heard. Between the dancers sets, which included belly dancing, striptease, and some weird marionette dancing, we saw a sword swallower, some damn fine music, and the trombone girl rip up the stage with some deep Janis Joplin kinda singing, the kind of voice that just doesn’t seem like it can come from a human throat.

Indeed. The Yard Dogs. Check em out. You’d be doing yourself a big favor.

Buying stuff at Bonnaroo, Hot Chip rocks, but The Nightwatchman lets me down:

I was getting reports around this point about Jen’s impending bundle of baby, and was pretty anxious to find out what the deal was. I moseyed off towards the market area, to try to find a baby gift, and to get the boys something. MastaG had forbid me from attending the Franz Ferdinand concert, as they’re his favorite band, unless I was there for the sole purpose of buying him a t-shirt. Then, I could listen to the music while I was in line, and then promptly leave.

Thanks, G.

Problem was (other than my tendency to tell my 10 yr old to stick it) the t-shirts were not sold at the shows. They were sold only in the Bonnaroo market area, and all they sold were t-shirts, so my plans to get the new White Stripes record on vinyl, like I normally would at a rock show, fell down by the wayside. I got to the market, found a rocking Flaming Lips shirt for G (they didn’t have Franz ones, for some reason), and selected a lovely White Stripes shirt for myself.

I headed over to a shop selling baby clothes, and found a little hippy onesie for the Bonnaroo baby. From this point on, I think I’m going to steer Violet towards being the hippy baby. Hell, why not?

I kept looking, and found a cute little alligator picture t-shirt for Pigpen, that he was tickled to have when I put it on him. Shopping done, and it only cost me the better part of a Franklin to do. BonnaROO!

I moseyed over to the location of my shade trees from this morning, and listened to the band Hot Chip perform. I hadn’t heard of them before, but I was digging them. I mentioned that I’ve been getting into the Rapture, and Hot Chip seems to follow a bit on the post-punkish kinda dance thing that Rapture has. Its a bit more sedate, but still something you can shake your ass to, and live it was a nice listen, from my comfy shade tree spot (now completely surrounded by people… I had to work my way into a spot in the shade, kinda like a vulture in a parking lot).

Unfortunately, I couldn’t say anything good about the band playing in the tent that the Black Keys were going to be preforming in. After listening to Hot Chip for a while, I moseyed back across the grounds to “That Tent”, where The Nightwatchman, a solo act consisting of Rage Against The Machine’s former guitar player, was performing.

Man, it was awful. He was doing this solo folk singer thing, in the vein of Billy Bragg or Woodie Guthrie, which normally I can agree with, but Tom Morello had no voice for this kind of thing. It was gadawful.

I could be completely wrong, but I got the impression that the entire gig was this great big ego stroke for this guy. Here he is, formerly with a big dissident band, and then with Audioslave, which is essentially a pretty-boy-of-the-week band, and now he’s back trying to do the dissident thing again.

I kinda felt bad for him, but at the same time had no clue how he ranked his own stage at Bonnaroo. I guess plenty of people disagreed with me, because while the place wasn’t jam-packed, there was still a big crowd there to see him.

I planned on waiting to get up front for the Keys, but I couldn’t manage. I headed to the ferriswheel.

Round and Round:

So, 5 bucks got me onto the ferriswheel. The previous day, 5 bucks seemed like a lot, but after spending 4 on pizza, 3 on coffee, 6 on beer (6 packs of Bud? $15… getcher wallets out for bonna-ROO!) 5 dollars really didn’t seem like a lot. I got in line, and eventually got on board the wheel with this couple. We started going up, and stopped at the 3 o’clock position so somebody else could board (they were only filling 4 cars at a time). When we stopped, the gal sitting across was starting to get nervous.

She was white knuckling the rail with one hand, and burying the other hand into the arm of the guy with her. He was trying to be nonchalant, but it was obvious that the girl wasn’t keen to be on the ferriswheel. I asked if I could help, but knew there wasn’t going to be much I can do except try to stay the hell out of the way. She was hyperventilating, trying to play it off as a joke, but turning pale.

I snapped some pictures, as we stopped again at the 12 o’clock position, and again at the 9 (we’re going counterclockwise, dig?). By then, they had decided to try to communicate to the dudes running the thing that they needed to get off. Problem is, the dudes didn’t speak English, and we weren’t sure what the Spanish for “stop” was.

We all made some noise at the bottom, but the guys just looked at us strangely, and the great wheel kept turning. By now, the poor girl was starting to show some signs of strain. I had assumed that they were mostly sober (which is a difficult and often foolish assumption to make at Bonnaroo), but she seemed to be getting THE FEAR. As somebody who’s experienced The Fear, I wasn’t keen on witnessing this poor girl go through it, so by the time we made it to the bottom again, I made sure the wheel stopped by damn near grabbing the dude holding the lever.

That done, the relieved couple exited. They were replaced by a dad with a cute little 4 or 5 year old girl, who was tickled pink to be getting on the wheel. I spoke with him for a bit, and he asked the girl “What were you excited about seeing at Bonnaroo, sweety?”

“HIPPIEEEEEES!!!!!” the girl replied.

Ahh, I missed the boys. The ferriswheel was made even more fun by the bubbly enthusiasm of this cute little girl, and the next 4 or 5 rotations went by in a flash.

I hopped off, and by now the Nightwatchman’s set was over. I made my way over to That Tent, and got ready for the Keys to rock.

“Baby this ain’t me… grown so ugly, grown so ugly… don’t even know myself”

I ended up under the shade of That Tent for the Black Keys, which was turning out a pretty big crowd. Its interesting watching how these crowds are formed, theres a different dynamic for shows in the tents (which had big covered roofs), and for shows at the stages (which had the bigger acts, and no roof). You’d start out with the hardcore audience, the ones that either waited through the last show or muscled their way up front. That was a tight nucleus of crowd up there, no room to move, dance, turn around, blow your nose, nothing. You’re up there for the view. And the smell, heat, etc.

As you moved back, maybe 60 or so feet from the stage, the crowd would start to thin out. Its still standing room, now, but you’ve got some room to dance, or stagger, if that was more your speed. If you staggered too much, you’d have a pretty easy exit, excusing yourself past the other standers behind you, until you hit the layer of sitters. Now, the sitters usually didn’t get in the shade of the roof, but didn’t really care. They had towels, and were content to just sit on the grass and listen to the show.

I was perfectly happy to be a sitter for some shows, but I hadn’t seen the Keys play before, and I was keen on checking out the action. Like the White Stripes, they’re a guitar/drum blues duo, and kicked a little ass. They were one of the big draws for me, and I was gonna get down.

They finally took the stage a little late, and played a kick ass show. I’d love to put some of it up here, but unfortunately, didn’t record any of it myself, and couldn’t find the show online. I’m popping up one of my favorite songs they played, this taken from a show last year in Memphis, to give you an idea of the sound. I ended up being about 60 feet, and was dancing away, right next to a couple of girls who had the same idea.

Now, I’m shit for dancing. I’m an awful dancer. I don’t dance, as much as I spazz to the beat of the music, but times like this, its about all that needs to happen, so I gradually lost all self restraint, or stopped caring what I looked like, and just boogied down. Every song. It was a GREAT show, certainly the best thus far at Bonnaroo (excepting MAYBE the Yard Dogs), and I had a great time.

The band played their set, the gal next to me congratulated me for my dancing through all the songs.

I smiled, tipped my hat, and said “It was a pleasure to dance with you”.

She laughed, I said ‘goodbye’, and walked off.

Dinner and Tool:

I wandered back to Camp AT, where everybody was waiting, and cooking hot dogs. Good ol’ Nodbob was a great camp chef, he fired up some dogs and chili with gusto.

There was a good hour to kill before Tool opened up, and they closed down all the other stages during the headlining act each night. The ferriswheel, fountain, and shops, etc, were open, but no bands played. This would mean that 80,000 people were essentially going to converge on Tool at the same time, and to me, Tool just wasn’t a band worth that.

After the rest of the guys ate, they took off to the festival, and I hung out in the empty camp. The sun was going down, my belly was happy, and Bonnaroo surrounded me. I watched the sunset, and after it went down the sounds of the band starting up came from the festival. I started heading down, to find an enormous crush of people trying to get past the gates.

As the band played, the 200 or so people trying to get in were getting rowdy. A chorus of “LET ME IN” was coming up, but eventually the security guys got everybody in without much pushing or shoving.

Man, that would have been a shit job. Whenever I start bitching about my job, kindly remind me that I could be working security at Bonnaroo, frisking party people in the hot sun in exchange for a free ticket…

I don’t have much to say about the Tool show, other than it had a bad ass laser light show, and I had some very talented people swinging neon hoops right in front of where I was sitting, with my back against the side fence. I couldn’t see the band, or even the Jumbotronic screens on the stage, but thats OK. Never was a big Tool fan, and tho I went with an open mind, the show really cemented the fact that I don’t like Tool very much.

Nodbob, however, is a Tool fan, and his ass ended up hugging the rail at the very front. That would have been a mighty feat, even for a 6′3″ tall dude with a 11″ mohawk, but he managed it. I was impressed.

He saw some interesting things up there. Apparently, some guy dropped like $700 in twenties up front, and wandered off. Another dude picked it up, and started spreading it around, when the original dude came back asking for it. Apparently things were going to turn ugly, and I’m not sure how it was resolved, but Nodbob reported no fighting in the situation. He also didn’t report getting any money out of it, unfortunately. He did report that from the looks of things, the drunks up there were all wild eyed and cranked up.

Bonnaroo. Its not just for hippies anymore..

I went back to camp after the show, and ended up going to sleep around 11. Tomorrow was going to be a big day, with the Flaming Lips going on until 2 AM, and I was going to be ready. My sorry ass hadn’t seen 2 AM in quite a while, so I went ahead and let the multicolored moons and wild sounds of Bonnaroo drift me off to sleep for another night.