Tennessee Road Trip Part 4: Bonnaroo... at least give other festivals a chance, you know?

Bonnaroo.  Holy crap.  The word "epic" is actually justifiably used in the following transcript.

Thur. 6/13/13
It turns out that Scott made it back to the campsite at some point in the night AND brought the remainder of our car stuff too.  Good man.  The three of us tent people woke up early, when the Sun started baking us in our tent and people outside started stirring.  A lot more people showed up to the festival today.  Our mini neighborhood started to take form - a lot of really cool people are grouping around our "city" structure.  Apparently people had a really tough time getting in - like leaving Nashville at 6pm and not getting past security until 4am.  I guess there was an accident that exacerbated the horrendous traffic, so we were kind of lucky.

So Tennessee is fucking hot.  I had to keep applying sunscreen every 20 minutes until the clouds and wind eased the situation a bit.  Today was really crowded when they opened the Centeroo gates just because everyone was trying in at the same time and were really excited I guess.  So we hung out, had some beer, hydrated, and got to know our neighbors a bit.  We met Phil and Liz, who are great people, and Phil had us on the edge of our seats with a crazy intense story about Navajo Indians trying to kill him.

Also, Phil has a didgeridoo

Right when we got in line to enter, it rained for about five minutes.  It was perfect.  It cooled everything off and made life a bit more bearable.  Although now we were coated with a gross sunscreen slime: oh well.  Our first goal was to go to "the Other Tent," (all the tents/stages are named something confusing and stupid like that) to see Twenty One Pilots.  I had never heard of them before, but I had some positive recommendations and they certainly delivered.  Sarah and I watched from near the front and center, which got EXTREMELY hot and sweaty.  But these guys put on a hell of a show - so energetic and so fun.  At one point they had the crowd hold them up on platforms and they played drums while being held up by the crowd.  It really was a great show.

They're not actually skeletons, don't worry

The crowd is holding them up right now like at a normal concert

There's got to be an easier way

After the fantastic Twenty One Pilots show, I explored for a while with different groups of friends since it's so difficult staying as a cohesive unit.  I took a mini "shower" in the main waterfountain, which helped quite a bit after that last band.  Alissa and I (owe yeah, Alissa showed up for Bonnaroo today) got some meatball hoagie thing at a foodtruck for dinner, and I continued wandering.  I got a ticket at the comedy tent to see Mike Birbiglia  with Michelle and Alissa, which entailed getting the ticket two hours early.  We're lucky that we're camping right outside the festival entrance, because a stop-off at the tent for a beer and a shirt is so feasible.
The comedy show was great; Mike was funny but his opener was hysterical.  After that we meandered from tent to tent listening to a few new bands.  We wanted to do the Silent Disco (where everyone has headphones only those people can hear the music that the DJ is playing), but the line was ridiculous.  So we went to this Christmas-Pizza-dance club thing... it was weird.  But a lot of us were waning and in need of sleep, so we called it an early night with bands still playing on the nearby stage.

Fri. 6/14/13
We woke up early in the morning... somehow.  The first order of business was of course sunscreen.  And then a gin bucket - which is almost exactly what it sounds like - followed by Can Jam.  Hanging out with our neighbors is pretty great.  Really fun, interesting people.  The atmosphere and the culture here is so friendly.

Let's just say that Michelle was "not pleased" with missing this picture.  The word "livid" could be used if we wanted to though.

After a fair amount of hanging out, we went to go see a band called Reptar.  They were a 9-person band that played kind of pop-rocky kind of music.  They were ok: kind of reminded me of a highschool band.  We left early to go wait near the front of the stage that Of Monsters and Men would be playing at.  But first: we wait 2 hours in the hot blistering Sun!  It was worth it though; they put on a great show.  Exactly what I would imagine - a fun band playing some really good songs.  And the Icelandic/Elvish accents were pretty great too.  I guess I was applying sunscreen every two minutes during the wait, so I somehow got out of it sans sunburns.

I would assume Icelandic people would melt in this heat...

o hello

We then booked it over to the main stage to catch the second half of Passion Pit, which incidentally is when they played all the songs that I know and enjoy.  We were towards the back of the crowd, but it didn't make much of a difference to me.  At this point we only had a couple of hours before Paul McCartney, so a lot of people went back to camp for a quick nap.  I instead toured around the Centeroo area, got some dinner: just kind of walked around the festival area.  We are camped so close to the Centeroo entrance that I was able to head back to camp for a little food and beverage action before the concert.

The allure of gigantic Meatwad is too great

We all went in about half an hour early for Paul McCartney and got relatively decent spots; every person in the festival was there.  This show was amazing.  He played a great mix of Beatles and Wings songs, singing tributes to John Lennon and George Harrison: it was definitely the best concert I have ever seen or will ever see again.
Such a great combination of amazing songs including Blackbird, Hey Jude, Band on the Run, Let it Be - a crazy gamut of emotions.  I was belting out every single song.  SO MUCH FUN.  He also played some songs never before performed live - All Together Now and For the Benefit of Mr. Kite - I had a blast.  It was seriously almost too much.  And then: Live and Let Die.  I can only describe my feelings with a quote that was heard on the way out of the concert: "I laughed, I cried, I shit my pants - full fucking gauntlet."  Just as the heavy guitar riff of Live and Let Die set in: fireworks erupted and fireballs spouted from the ground.  One of the best moments of my life.  I lost it.  I will never forget it: legitimately epic, comparable to Homer's "Odyssey."  One of the fireworks exploded a little too close to the crowd, but whatever - it felt like a warzone anyway and that would be an awesome way to die.

SO LIVE AND LET DIE

After he finished, he came back for an encore with hilarious quips like "you guys still want to hear more? ... ok."  Then he blew my mind with Helter Skelter, my favorite Beatles song.  I freaked out.  I have never had so much fun at a show before.  I can't even describe it.  Imagine the Universe around you is filled with just pure awesomeness in the form of music and lights and Paul McCartney's unstoppable rocking out is the cause.  And then ANOTHER FUCKING ENCORE.  Someone threw up a stuffed animal Walrus, which he proceeded to serenade on the piano with the medley from Abbey Road.  Ending with "And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make."  I will never see a concert as good as this.  If I were capable of producing tears, I would have been weeping like a little girl.
But the night was still young: we had some EDM bands to see.  We heard one pretty good DJ for a bit after getting through the monstrous crowd leaving Paul McCartney's stage.  We followed this up by seeing Pretty Lights.  This DJ is aptly named because the light show was nothing short of exquisite.  They were projecting 3D images onto the smoke surrounding the stage, and people hurled up their glow sticks every time the bass dropped.  It was a lot of fun, but we were a bit too far back to experience the optimum awesomeness.  So we left and went to the Silent Disco.  It was hilarious, because whenever you remove your headphones, everyone looks really really stupid.  But it was a lot of fun nonetheless.
We finished our night with a pretzel from the Amish food truck (yeah I don't really get it either) and then went back to the tent as the Sun started to rise.  Great night.

Sat. 6/15/13
Our late night inevitably led to a late-ish morning.  I finally got out of my sleeping bag, drenched in sweat, as the Sun was already insanely hot.  We hung out at camp for a while because the first band I was interested in seeing, Matt+Kim, wasn't until later in the day.  Remaining at the tent meant beer, didgeridoo: the usual.
The Matt+Kim concert, however, was great.  A lot of fun energy going on.  We managed to get to the front of the stage, which was just a wild sweaty mess.  More crowd surfers and balloons than one can count.  Kim was quite "vulgar," which isn't the best word to describe her antics, but I'll stick with it for now.  Anyway, it was a lot of fun.  By the end we were all packed together as close as people can get without pain (there was some pain) and everyone was sweating all over each other and I think Sarah's hair was in my mouth for the entire last song.  It would make a germophobe want to puke in the sink.  When we got out, we all needed a crapload of water.  I was bummed about missing Portugal the Man, but being near the front of Matt+Kim was definitely worth it.

I left this concert covered in sweat, 50% of which was my own

After a much needed dip in the fountain, we went over to the Lumineers show and actually got decently close.  They played their two songs early in the set, and the rest of their music was only ok, so Scott and I went over to the main stage for Jack Johnson.  Mumford and Sons was the scheduled headline for today, but there were some medical issues that forced them to cancel the rest of the tour.  Everyone is ok, so that's good, but a lot of people were unhappy about the cancellation.  Not me.  I had seen them last year in Portland and I have a hard time believing this show would be better.  Also Jack Johnson is my guilty pleasure musician.  And he was so damn good.  I belted out Bubble Toes (like there's even an option).  A lot of my friends were too tired or whatever and didn't go, and Scott eventually left after napping in the grass, so I was on my own.  So I snuck into the VIP section up at the very front.  It was amazing.  I was so friggn close.  Even though he and his band hadn't played together for over a year and he only got the call to headline at Bonnaroo with only two days notice, he still rocked it out.

My camera sucks with this lighting, but here's how close I was to the screen on the stage

And there's Jack Johnson a stone's throw from me!

After that, there was a plethora of shows I wanted to see, so it was go time.  I was on my own, so I had the mobility to move around quickly to actually see a lot of them.  I caught R. Kelly sing Remix to Ignition, some Billy Idol, and stayed for most of Weird Al, which was hysterical.  Definitely a stranger fanbase at that show than anything else at Bonnaroo, but it was great.  I lost it at Amish Paradise.
I managed to meet up with Michelle and her friend from Harpoon (everyone seems to just collect friends here) and we wandered around the festival for a while enjoying beer and music.

This was basically my shower for the past few days

We created a unique, depressing game called "the grass is lava," where you can only step on pieces of garbage to get around.  It was devastatingly easy to traverse around the festival area.  We stayed for a bit of a Zeppelin tribute-ish band, which I loved.  Except there was usually no singing, which was weird to me.  But then some more wandering and eventually bed after a really fun night of walking around Centeroo.

Sun. 6/16/13
Sunday we awoke, still struggling.  Not sure why.  Probably because of the number of continuous days camping and the various odors emanating from the immediate area.  Phil and Liz had brought a portable latrine: great for us because we could avoid the lines and shitty conditions (literally).  However, the smell was fairly overwhelming.  And some unknown drunk person took a dump outside of the latrine.  So I had the opportunity to step in human feces... so messed up.  Who the hell takes a dump behind someone's tent?  Anyway, to help pitch in, I offered to empty the latrine one morning.  Michelle and Alissa joined for moral support.  The idea is simple: go to a port-a-potty, dump out the top, unscrew the storage container at the bottom, and then dump that out.  What happened was: dump out the top making sure to get urine all over my hands, unscrew the bottom making sure to get a frothy mixture of excrement on my hands, and dump the storage, getting some on my feet.  There weren't enough Wet Wipes in the world.  I can't believe I didn't vomit.  A shower at least helped.  Worth the $7.  Plus - free Frucktiss shampoo.
Anyway Sunday was our day to finish off all the infinite number of beers that we didn't drink.  It was also the final day of the festival.  I'll leave some stuff out and jump right ahead to the first show we went to - Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.  Our entire tent area family went in together and loved every second of that show.  They were great.  How can you not love Thrift Shop?  And We Danced?  Holy crap.  I was feeling great.  I found a pack of gummy sharks in my bag, which delighted me.  And the soles of my feet were sweating WAY too much, which I didn't understand, but whatever: the concert was great.  Today was the first day we had a little cloud cover, and it is amazing compared to the direct, 100 degree heat in Tennessee. At one point during the concert, Phil screamed out "If it starts raining right now I'm going to lose my shit!"  Probably the funniest thing I've ever heard.
We all broke off after that: Phil and Liz to go make a drum, Sarah to hang out with her new makeout partner/boyfriend/husband, Alissa to go do whatever it is Alissa does, and Scott, Michelle, and I to go sit and wait up close for the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros show.  A very hot and... interesting wait.  Anyway, the 19 person band that is Edward Sharpe came on and played some fantastic songs.  At this point Scott went to go lie down and take it easy near some structure, but Alex from our tent are somehow found and joined us.  The show was great, Alexander from the band came out right near us singing really strangely, as he is wont to do.  At the end of the show the mentioned that they would play a bit longer at another stage, so we crept over there for a few more unplanned songs.  We requested Wagon Wheel (of course) but it was a no go.
We checked out a bluegrass band while devouring fried oreos, which are just the best things ever, and returned to the campsite to prepare for Tom Petty (aka more adult beverages).  It started raining, but our chant of "four more days" and bittersweet excitement for the last show overcame the rain.  Tom Petty played some great songs that we danced to, sang to, and and some slow ones that we nearly slept to, and of course Free Fallin'.  We hung out back at camp for a while just shooting the shit until I realized how exhausted I was.  I attempted some cleanup, but it was not going to happen.

Thus describes a majority of our time at Bonnaroo.  There was so much going on that I had to leave some of it out, but trust me: it was a great time.