Notes from Bonnaroo: Day 1, Thursday

So we made it to Bonnaroo after a 16 hour drive from New Jersey. "We" being my friend Omar and me after three stops for gas guzzling almost $120 for a tank and a half and a pretty rotten experience with a Virginia Waffle House (My body rejected it after ten minutes) we rolled into the campgrounds at 1AM on Thursday morning.

After sleeping haphazardly for 2-3 hours the festivities began.

The first act we saw was Newton Faulkner all the way from England and he played one of the most memorable pair of covers Teardrops and Bohemian Rhapsody. I'm not really familiar with his original stuff but overall I was pretty damn impressed. (8/10)

We stayed at That tent for The Backdoor Slam, a blues rock trio of kids who are barely able to legally drink. That said, they were a one man show and pretty one dimensional. Davy Knowles, the singer/songwriter/guitarist pretty much made the show all about him. The bassist and drummer seemed to hate him, at least, judging by their resentful stares. Overall I got bad vibes from them all, and Knowles wanks that guitar too much milking the pentatonic. (4/10)

Next we headed to This tent and caught most of MGMT and I'm not too familiar with thme although "Time to Pretend" kicks some major ass, especially live. Most of the set was spent trying to get up to the front for Battles. (6/10)

Battles was by far the best act of Thursday. The electronica-post-math-defying-all-genres rock act totally kicked ass. O said they were "life changing" and I would have to agree, they were amazing. Nothing more can be said, all I can say is that if you get the chance to see them, I would recommend it. (10/10)

Completely exhausted after dancing through the two prior sets, we set our sights on Lez Zeppelin, a Zep cover band played by four lesbian chicks from NY. Being a Zep freak and a guy that covers Zep on a regular basis, they were horrible. We left after two songs and headed over to The Other Tent. (1/10)

Dark Star Orchestra was much better. The Dead Heads were out in droves and everyone was getting high. During Shakedown Street a super friendly hippie chick on ecstacy started dancing with me and we hit it off pretty quick. The band was pretty tight and a lot of fun. (7/10)

After that we walked around with the hippie chicks and made out on a ferris wheel and tried to get into Somethin' Else but they made us pay money. Other than that we just hung out and chatted for a while until it was about 4 in the morning and Omar and I made it back to camp.