Bonnaroo, Day 3: Saturday

Sorry for the delay in Bonnaroo updates; I've still been getting used to being back in the real world--and, admittedly, I've been addicted to Lego Indiana Jones on XBox 360.

We awoke early Saturday morning to a relatively lightened sky, and continued pitter-patter of rain on our tent. We took advantage of the early awakening and a brief lull in the rain to hit the $7 showers near our campsite before the lines got too long. My shower was great, but Joker complained of too little water pressure when he went a little while after I did. Still, soap and hot water were glorious things after two days of sweat, sunscreen, and bug repellent. Luckily for us, the rain cooled everything down for the moment, and we got to feel clean for a few hours; had it been a day earlier or a day later, we'd probably have felt gross and sticky within minutes of getting back to camp.

Joker headed into Centeroo at about 10am to check on the arrival of Pearl Jam's collectible posters; the band issues a unique show poster design for every concert, and this one was sure to be a quick seller (every time we asked the merchandise people when the PJ posters might arrive, they exasperatedly told us they wished they had a dime for every person who'd asked). I joined him in the line shortly thereafter, laughing along the way at the long queues for the Gillette Shave Shop and the Garnier Fructis Salon in Centeroo...apparently we weren't the only people valuing freshness that morning.

The posters went on sale earlier than expected, and we were armed with our copies (and free Pearl Jam tote bags!) quickly. Someone noticed that a wallet was left on the table fans were using to roll their posters into tubes, and Joker realized it was a kid he'd been talking to in line all morning. Rather than rush the wallet to Lost and Found (which it might take the kid a while to track down), Joker opted to stand near the poster line for a few minutes, waiting for the kid to return. He did, after a few minutes, and Joker earned us some good karma points.

We took the posters back to the car, chilled at camp a little longer, and headed back to Centeroo closer to 1:00, to see Donavon Frankenreiter. The rain had completely cleared at this point, and the lines to enter were massive, so we missed quite a bit of Frankenreiter's set. What we did hear was solid white-boy funk, and a guest appearance by ukelele prodigy Jake Shimabukuro was incredibly impressive.

We debated our strategy for the day, and decided it would be best to head to the What Stage area, to see what the early Pearl Jam squatter crowd looked like. When we realized that we could get a good spot behind the cordoned-off "pit" area up front, we opted to set up shop there for the remainder of the day. It was, at this point, 2:40 pm. Pearl Jam wasn't due to the stage until 10:15.

The day's first band was the multi-culti Ozomatli, who turned in a high-energy, very danceable set. The pit area was empty enough that Joker and I were able to take turns going up into it to get some close-view photos. The highlight of the Ozomatli set, however, had to be a performance of the Pharcyde classic "Passin' Me By," since the current incarnation of the band features a former Pharcyder as MC.

B.B. King was next, and after his band played a couple of opening instrumental numbers, the mayor of Manchester was introduced to present B.B. with a key to the city. Hilariously, the mayor of Coffee County (in which Manchester is located) got an inferiority complex and shoehorned himself into the proceedings. King was humble, gracious, and funny in his acceptance speech, and then he eased into his customary chair for an hour-plus set of amazing guitar, stellar vocals, and hilarious storytelling. Did I mention it was eighty degrees outside, and the man is eighty-two years old? He had a crowd of easily more than 40,000 for this show, and they were eating out of the palm of his hand. That, my friends, is a showman.

Once B.B. was offstage, there was a renewed surge for field position for the rest of the night. We closed in toward the pit barricade, tight enough that everyone in our area was standing for the entire ninety minutes before Jack Johnson's set. Johnson came to the stage alone, then was joined after a song or two by his backing band; the set design included video screens that alternated abstract imagery with black-and-white footage of the band (clearly a component of Johnson's regular tour setup). The Bonnaroo jumbotrons had technical difficulties throughout, and were even cut off completely at times, but luckily, the glitches were worked out before Pearl Jam. Highlights of Johnson's set included guest appearances by Eddie Vedder (which fired up the PJ-friendly crowd) and Money Mark. I'll leave room for Joker to elaborate, as he's more familiar with Jack Johnson's repertoire, and more of a fan.

By the time Johnson's set ended, the sky was fully dark, and anticipation for Pearl Jam ramped up yet again. I'm going to save discussion of Pearl Jam's performance for a separate post, as it was such a huge deal on its own, but the short version is this: They rocked our socks off for nearly three hours, including performances of songs neither Joker nor I had ever seen in concert (and a few that were rarities even for the diehards), and it can easily be labeled the best concert I've ever attended. More later, I promise.

When we left the What Stage at about 1:10am, we headed back into the rest of Centeroo concerned mainly with resting our feet while staying awake for the 2:45 Kanye West show. I grabbed a caffeinated soda, Joker a lemonade, and we rested our dogs for a few minutes outside That Tent, where Sigur Ros was playing their "Icelandic Fairy Music" for a massive throng. I got to hear a favorite track, "#4" from the "parentheses" album, and one new track that featured (bizarrely) a mariachi band and horn section, before we headed off to see something a little less dreamy and sleep-inducing: the end of the Lupe Fiasco set at The Other Tent.

We only got to see three or four songs at the end of Lupe's set, but let this be known: The man can work a damn crowd. With a full band at his disposal, he was in full control of a packed tent, and I know I'd definitely put another live Lupe show on my schedule in a heartbeat.

It was also at this time that we started to get our first taste of the Rave Kydz, all ecstasy and glow-toys: a massive population of goofy white folks dancing obnoxiously while waving luminescent items of all kinds (glow sticks, glow necklaces, flashing-light balls on strings, long jumpropes of flickering glow). These people had been waiting all weekend for the danceable late-Saturday slate to kick in, and now they were dominating the visible crowd. This would be a theme for the next few hours.

After Lupe, and a little after 2am, we headed back to the What Stage area to await Kanye's "Glow in the Dark" show. We found a semi-clean spot on the lawn pretty far from the stage, and waited to see how late it would start, after Pearl Jam's schedule overrun. There was a two-and-a-half-hour set break built into the original schedule, but it started to be apparent that the crew would need nearly all of that time to remove Pearl Jam's rigs (which had been in place all day) and bring in Kanye's equipment. At about 3:05, the jumbotrons posted an announcement: "Kanye West now at 3:15." At 3:15, that became "Kanye West now at 3:30." At 3:30, it reverted simply to "Kanye West Up Next!" At 3:40, we headed to The Other Tent to see Chali 2na.

As everyone by now knows (see my previous post), Kanye's set didn't begin until nearly 4:30am, bleeding into sunrise and negating the "glow in the dark" light show aspects. The crowd of nearly 50,000 who went to the What Stage at 2:45 had thinned to about 30,000 by the time he came on, and most people we heard from on Sunday were disappointed in the show. He was booed, things were thrown at the stage during the wait...it was, put simply, the one truly ugly blemish on an otherwise fantastic Bonnaroo weekend (at least from where we stood).

Kanye has since posted a blog missive that glancingly blames Pearl Jam and directly blames the Bonnaroo promoters for numerous infractions, including the scheduling snafus and set construction issues. I still don't let Kanye off the hook for this--at the very least, breaking character to say "Thanks for stayin' up, y'all" or something would have alleviated the bad vibes--but there could very well be some truth to this. Firstly, the two-hour time slot given to Pearl Jam was unrealistically short; the band regularly plays two-and-a-half-hour shows, and this was a special occasion with a massive crowd. Logically, no one should have expected PJ to finish on time, so they should have figured set-changing issues into the time between the PJ and Kanye shows at less than the official 2.5 hours. (And this isn't the first issue they had with mis-timing a headliner. Last year, they reportedly printed a three-hour block in the schedule for the Police, who had a clockwork-tight two-hour show for every night of their tour, and when the band played so short of the three hours, fans were disappointed at a supposedly shortchanged show.)

Secondly, they had originally scheduled Kanye to play at 8pm (still daylight in Manchester) on the smaller Which Stage, and only moved his production to late-night at What earlier in the week; that had to wreak havoc on the planning. Pearl Jam left the stage fifty minutes later than the printed schedule; Kanye West came onstage a hundred minutes after he was scheduled to. Clearly, there were set-construction issues not figured into the schedule, and that was somebody's fault (likely not the roadies and local crew, who worked diligently the rest of the weekend). So we'll probably never know what really happened or who's to blame for the Kanye fiasco, but it's a real shame it went down the way it did; it likely hurt hip-hop's future at the festival, at the very least.

It's a real shame: nearly everything else at the festival that we saw--stage setups, portable toilet maintenance, trash collection--ran like clockwork (with the exception of security checks at the Centeroo gates during high-traffic periods). All the other trains ran on time, relatively, but this Kanye thing was out-of-hand late. Bad moment in an otherwise great weekend.

But back to the music! On our way out of the What Stage, we were briefly (and hilariously) accosted by a dancing guy waving a beer bottle and, oh yeah, wearing a fucking suit. A full-on suit and tie. In a night of surreality, this took the cake.

We headed to The Other Tent for what we could see of the Chali 2na performance, but the Jurassic 5 MC hadn't taken the stage yet. He was running mildly late, so we waited a few minutes for him to arrive. His backing band was funk-jam favorites Galactic, and Chali emerged with some good rhymes in his signature bass-heavy voice, including Jurassic 5's "Golden." After a few songs, though, the ecstasy people descended, the tent got a bit crowded, and we decided it was best, at 4:10 am, to head for the tent. We slogged through a little leftover mud on the way, and were too tired even to do anything about our shoes before flopping into the sleeping bags.

As we hit head to pillow, we heard loud thumping and the distant strains of "Gold Digger." A fitting end to a crazy night. But we were still on enough of a Pearl Jam high that even Kanye couldn't kill the mood.