Greetings from Manchester, WPRB peeps! As many of you already know, I’ve made the journey down here to the great state of Tennessee for four days of music, mayhem, and mud at the Bonnaroo Music Festival! While there weren’t too many tunes last night, I think we kicked off the weekend with a good start.
The drive was a trek-and-a-half, spanning a thousand miles over the course of 18 hours. For the most part, the sailing was smooth, except for a few hours stretch in Virgina when we started to see the police pulling over what appeared to be any and every van with camping gear on the roof and tri-state tags.
We arrived around 8 AM Central Time, set up camp by 10, and had a solid seven hours to steep in the agonizing excitement of the festival to be, most of which was spent barbecuing, exploring, and getting to know a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of like-minded individuals that we were to spend that next few days practically on top of. One of our neighbors gave me a pretty rockin’ haircut. That’s the second time I’ve gotten a trim at a festival, and I think I may have to make a habit out of it.
The music started around 6PM, and went just up to the wee hours of the next morning. Getting around Centeroo, the non-camp hub for all the music, food, fun and festivities, was not easy, as the alternative stages are aptly named, “This Stage,” “That Stage,” and “The Other Stage.” I may have spent more time confused on the phone than I did actually getting down and the music. While I was initially very disappointed to hear that the Delta Spirit was playing a shortened set due to scheduling problems I was pleasantly surprised by the moody experimentalism of the White Rabbits in their place two stages over.
Murs killed it, and by the time The Knux had wrapped up their West Coast hip-hop, the whole Roo was ready to dance all night, which is exactly what we did during my personal favorite performance of the evening, Boston-disco-rock-awesomeness, Passion Pit. And how are you supposed to cap off a night of toe-tapping and hip shaking such as this? By giving Delta Spirit another minutes to rock out just before we all crashed and burned and walked a mile and a half barefoot in the pouring rain back to sleep in the back seat of our cars.It was a great night.
Keep checking this space for uploads of all kinds of cool pics when I can get my hands on some serious wi-fi.
