Bonnaroo 2009, Day 3: Saturday - Compromising

Journeying out on Saturday was brutal. Unlike the Thursday and Friday, there was barely a cloud in sight and the sun was blazing. So, the first place we headed was the This Tent where folky Elvis Perkins played with his backing band Dearland which was a superb, mellow way to start another extremely long day. He played the popular single "While You Were Sleeping" which was pretty well done. The most enjoyable part for me was watching the backing band rock out - especially the trombonist, who I met walking around Centeroo later in the day and I estatically thanked him for the performance. The concert was spent half on the ground chillin' and the rest talking to this other guy in a dress and tie dye about his adventures.

After resting up we went over and bought some merch then headed over to That Tent to see some of the legend Allen Toussaint who was all right, he played some funky stuff but none of it was really memorable. Just like the day before this was a precursor to the upcoming night.

From That Tent we headed over to the back of the What Stage where we found the Where Cafe with William Elliot Whitmore playing some country and/or folk tunes. In truth we just happened to stumble upon him because we were waiting for Rodrigo y Gabriela on the big stage. However, he did play this cool little ditty that described him blowing up a crator out of the ground while lighting up a bowling ball. It was pretty amusing but not exactly my taste in music.

However, Rodrigo y Gabriela were pretty damn amazing. This is my first time seeing them and I was pretty impressed, especially Gabriela's rhythm guitar who held down the fort while Rodrigo went off on so firework latin solos. I think that they highlight one of the main musical differences that seperates the electrical and acoustic guitar: rhythm. Some of my favorite moments were not so much in the melodies but in the fullness of the rhythm and driving power. For this show I got to the front of the What Stage right before the pit.

After a short hop over to the Which Stage to see the beginning of Gov't Mule's set which featured my favorite Steppenwolf songs "Don't Step On The Grass Sam" I hightailed it over to This Tent to see Of Montreal. Of Montreal proved to be one of the most awesome bands of the the day coming out in full makeup and costumes. I sat on the edge of the railing near the sound stage for almost the entire show and got a pretty good view of the camp theatrics. On the stage the guitarist had feathers in his shoulderpads, dress, and wig to boot. Mastermind and singer-songwriter Kevin Barnes was in a blue outfit and spandex. Periodically, a troop of characters - giant hands, gasmasked creatures, white body painted devils etc. - would march onstage like it were a Roman amphitheatre and play out a scene which may or may not have pertained to the theme of the music. Regardless, this made the whole ordeal even more trippy. I'm kind of a new fan of their music so a lot of the deeper tracks were lost on me, but I did recognize a few like my favorite "Id Engager" and "Nonpareil of Favor." It's truly a shame though that the thing that could have made this show a thousand times better would have been better mixing. I kept looking back at the guy at the mixing board and he looked seriously in panic. The bass was waayy too loud and the vocals were barely audible. I stayed for just about the entire set except the last 10 minutes which I kind of regret now because they played "The Past is a Grotesque Animal," which apparently led to the destruction of the stage. I would have enjoyed that and it was rather foreshadowed by the antics by the guitarist (at one time throwing his guitar in the air and catching it). But anyways - I needed to get to the Which Stage for a good spot for my favorite band of the festival: The Mars Volta!

The Mars Volta The Mars Volta The Mars Volta! This was the third time I've seen them live and the first time I've seen them in a festival environment and they sure as hell didn't disappoint. Playing eight songs over an hour and a half they were the jammiest band short of Phish. On this tour they've scaled back on the sound a bit and instead of an eight piece monster like they had on the last tour there's six (removing the extra guitarist - Pablo Hinojos, formerly of At The Drive In, and flute/tenor/soprano sax player Adrian Terrazas) which left a much more stripped down sound than they've had in years. With that in mind, the set was raw! Lost was the jazz-fusion aspect that the woodwinds brought to jams like "Goliath" or "Roulettes Dare," and in its place was a heavier and straightforward jam/prog rock aestetic. It also freed up the keyboardist Ikey Owens to be heard for the first time in years. Unfortunately, the set anchored mainly on older songs and only two songs played from their forthcoming album "Octohedron" to which the lineup was taylored towards. This made me sad because I was really excited to see what the guys would do live with the new stuff. However, the best jams for me were during Drunkship and Cygnus..Vismund Cygnus which were two of the best musical highlights of the entire festival for me. Cedric and Omar were in fine form aside for some minor slip ups like Omar forgetting how to play the beginning of Goliath or some botched vocals during Cotopaxi, but overall, it was steller a steller performance. The crowd responded well and everyone I saw went away satisfied.

Moving over to the "Troo Music Lounge" for the second time of the festival, a real gem performance was going on: Russian Circles. Since The Mars Volta cut into their set by more than half way I only got to see the last two or three songs but man were they powerful! This is one of those bands that I was really looking forward to see and headbang along with. However, The Mars Volta completely wore out my neck and head area in general and my headbang was little more than a head bobble, but nontheless it was HEAVY! Stylistically Russian Circles might sound little more than an "Explosions in the Sky" or "Pelican" rip off - which by no means is a bad thing - but a closer listen shows them drawing riffs from a far heavier source, engaging in more of a doom-like atmosphere that takes little time to build and more time to pummel. I thoroughly enjoyed the part of the set that I saw and would love to see a full set by them in the future.

I've been trying to ignore it the whole time I've been here, but the time came when my homeland came back to bite me in the ass. Yes, I'm talking about Bruce Springsteen. I'm from New Jersey so I grew up with his growling croon and I'm at a point in my life where I'm absolutely sick of it. But I did give him the benefit of a doubt and laid down for about 50 minutes until he played a requested "Santa Clause is Coming to Town" and it would have been helarious if I were middle aged and had a framed vinyl of "Greeting from Asbury Park" but I'm not and I don't. So anyways, I left and went to go hang by the fire show and met a group of friendly people in a circle with a man rapping over some guitar (which I joined with some vocal exercises of my own) until The Boss finished and the night acts could begin.

It's usually pretty rare to feel uncomfortable at Bonnaroo, but this year somehow Nine Inch Nails accomplished that but in a weird good way. Unlike most of the heavy headlining acts in the past (Tool, Metallica) Trent still sounds angry as hell after all these years. Whereas Keenan waxed whimsical self-depricating poetics with an intricate attention to dynamics and James Hetfield lumbered around feigning anger with a smile, Trent is still in-your-face-I'm-mad-as-fuck, even after twenty years. And it really was jarring - if only because of the schedule. The next day I spent most of my day at the That Tent listening to heavy metal and was completely fine with it. I think it was too much, too late, coupled with poor scheduling. But the music itself was excellently executed! The whole band was in fine form and some highlights include "Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now)" and "I'm Afraid of Americans." Not to mention the superb light show - there must have been 200 strobe lights going at least every 10 measures - epic. However, even with a half-dozen years of listening to NIN, I can still barely tell one song apart from another, and it takes a lot of listens for me to be able to name a song (apart from the obviously more popular songs). Anyways, I didn't stick around long enough to hear Trent's announcement that it's the last song in the U.S.A., but for my crowd there were much more interesting fish to fry.

And that fish was indie rock megahitmaker MGMT. Last year when I came to the festival I saw them on Thursday night and I saw a fledgling band who were rather, erm, green - they had the look but lacked conviction. This year it was a completely different band - for one, it was one of the most anticipated acts of the entire festival - and the crowd proved it. People were climbing up the railings near the side of the tent, smooshing themselves in as far as they could to even get the tiniest glimpse of this little rock band from Brooklyn who are now internationally known rock stars (through a certain crowd). I attempted to get inside of the tent but that proved all but impossible and settled for dancing in the mud. I guess I should have been there four hours earlier but I don't really care - I've seen them up close and personal before and that's enough for me. This was one of those rare concerts this year where I could say that it was more of a "happening" than a couple hundred frenzied fans and a couple more thousand curious wanderers who heard them passing by - no - everyone in the tent was a frenzied fan, everyone was singing along with every song on the album and when they didn't know the song they were dancing their ass off. It's where the hipsters and the hippies compromise; MGMT is still obscure enough to be a fairly unknown in the mainstream while feigning the self indulgent jam band attitude, while the hippy crowd enjoy the psychedelic guitar lines, melodies borrowed from 1968, and flashy Henxrix-esque headbands. Just as their fan base has grown exponentially from last year so has their performance - they were spot on with the tunes and seem to have learned how to jam. They played pretty much their entire album and sprinkled some new stuff in there... A nice suprise was the inclusion of fellow Brooklyn based Chairlift vocalist Caroline Polachek for a song or two. Anyways, it was a fun show and I made it until about 3AM when we walked back to the tent.