BonnaReview pt. 2

Friday 6/13
I actually managed to stay asleep well past 10 o'clock, which is quite impressive considering its Bonnaroo and all. We were roused by the noon time heat and moved very slowly and deliberately to the pizza near Minus The Bear at That Tent.

Minus the bear, from what I can recall, was cool-ish but not in a particularly memorable way, but that could be because I'm not familiar with their tunes. They basically rocked out appropriately for a while and were able to hold my attention despite that ADD nonsense. After that ish we hit our first major festival schism, our very first "Bonflict."

The Raconteurs vs. !!!. People say that !!! is pronounced chk chk chk. But according to our resident Brit Matt and Asian Alien Toonz. !!! was more like blah blah blah. Apparently their set was fine except as soon as our boys started getting into the groove a crowd surfer killed the vibe via shoe to the dome or something. Oh well for them, I was digging the Raconteurs on the What Stage like an archaeologist.


Don't get me wrong, The White Stripes are awesome and all, but the Raconteurs are straight up titties. The Raconteurs play my kind of in your face guitar rock that world is so brutally lacking. Jack White and Brendan Benson work so well together its hard to believe this is a side-project, but with Meg White going totally bananas lately we may not see the White Stripes together again for a while. Shitty for the White Stripes but phenomenal for The Raconteurs. Benson and Jack White guitar battled, head-butted each others shoulders, destroyed all kinds of shit on stage, took blistering guitar solos, and performed all sorts of awesome rock-roll maneuvers. They killed it when they played Level, Carolina Drama, Steady As She Goes, and a personal favorite, the Zane Lowe rendition of Store Bought Bones. The set was truly masterful, complete with some sort of filtered can/microphone doodad attached to a delay/stutter effect shitter; it was gimmicky as hell but I ate that shit up like late night arepas.

On a side note... We watched The Raconteurs with this 40 something dude and his lovely wife. This couple camped in the VIP lot, and they claimed a killer spot on the barrier of What Stage for Metallica. His wife brought him beer, made him sandwiches, he wore fresh socks, sat on in comfy chair, and she even had clean feet! WTF man, I'm springing for VIP tickets next year, and we'll get wives or slaves or a harem of bitches to get us beer and sandwiches as well.


Now I really could have gone to see the legendary Willie Nelson, the super hyped MIA, or even stuck around in our primo-spots for Metallica. But I'm straight up in love with Jenny Lewis, so we rolled to This Tent for Rilo Kiley. I got my fix of watching Jenny Lewis be all hot and indy so we strolled about Centeroo to take care of our necessities; re-filling our shitty nalgenes, eating shitty slices, and dropping shitty deuces. Eventually we made it to the tail end of MIA which looked like it was a bit of fun in the tent but we simply had no time for those kind of shenanigans.

We gathered ourselves at the Silent Disco, reunited with Toonz and Matt, and moved on to Chris Rock at the What Stage. Holy shit was the black man funny. He touched on popular topics like racism, faggetry, and bitchhood. Rock ended his bit and came back to introduce the "baddest band on the planet" Metallica.


Metallica definitely delivered at Bonnaroo. They opened with my personal favorite Creeping Death and tried to get the crowd to sing the chorus. Since Bonnaroo really isn't Metallica country the vast majority were unfamiliar with the lyrics. They wandered through a couple of other songs and made it a point to interact with the crowd which was nice. James smiled a bunch, thanked the audience numerous times, proclaimed his support for killer live music, and had an overall positive attitude, which weirded me out a bit considering Metallica is certainly not known for their pleasantries. Kirk Hammet shredded all his solos as if he'd been touring for 20 years or something. From all indications Metallica "won over" a largely skeptical hippy crowd. We didn't see the whole shebang since we headed over to My Morning Jacket rather early to situate ourselves near the stage; but I bet the pyrotechnics were hot shit.


My Morning Jacket was transcendent on the notoriously overcrowded Which Stage. A nasty shower hit us while waiting there but that didn't matter once MMJ hit the stage, which they did promptly at midnight. What really impressed me was how professional the entire production was. Not one sound glitch, no feedback, no serious downtime between songs, even when Jim James looked over to ask for a monitor boost mid song it went down without him missing a single note. The entire show was painfully epic. They rocked out so perfectly on every single moment of every single song. There was definitely a horn section at some point, and they fucking covered Kool & The Gang's Get Down On It. Kirk Hammet joined the band for One Big Holiday. They played for about four and a half hours without holding back a shred of energy. At the very end Jim James called for "Orphan Annie" but instead Zach Galifianakis' weird ass took the stage and joined in on a heart warming rendition of Mötley Crüe's Home Sweet Home. I swear this happened and it wasn't just the drugs.


After MMJ's monster set we were all drenched by unrelenting summer rain, so we wandered over to This Tent to for Tiesto. I needed an energy boost so I figured some high bpms would entice me to bounce around and dry me out. Now, I really don't want to hate on the Euro-Trance genre more than I already have but in this case I must rant. Tiesto was pathetic, he no longer deserves the superstar status he has attained. His productions are unbearably cheesy, his light show was utter garbage, he played diva track, after diva track, after diva track, while standing in the classic Jesus pose, laughing at the retards who willingly chugg his dick flavored cock. Maybe, MAYBE! ten years ago Tiesto was working for his exorbitant DJ fee, but now he is clearly just fucking with us. When I go see top DJs I expect there to be some euphoric hands in the air freak out type shit especially towards the end of the set when I get to blow my outrageous load. Tiesto's finale was the exact opposite, the absolute slowest of jerks. Tiesto should talk to Sasha, who unequivocally slayed The Other Tent when he played in 06 and again in 07 with Digweed. Sasha proclaimed Bonnaroo was his favorite show of 2006 and he played the shit out The Other Tent until the sun was uncomfortably high in the air. In Search of Sunrise my ass, fuck you Tiesto, other DJS would kill small children to play Bonnaroo and they would have played until their carpal tunnel syndrome got carpal tunnel syndrome.

I was so baffled at the Tiesto situation that I actually wandered over to That Tent to see the Disco Biscuits. After poking around for a couple of minutes I made the classic "whack'n it" motion with my right had and let my invisible jism fly off into the night and trudged back to my uninflatable inflatable mattress.

Music to come soon...