In 2013, Bonnaroo surpassed Coachella as the largest music festival in the United States—or at least so claimed Seattle-based rapper Macklemore during his Sunday, June 16th set. The Manchester, Tennesee four-day festival laid humble roots in 2001 as a conference of folk and jam bands (the inaugural 'Roo boasted Phil Lesh and Trey Anastasio as top-bill acts), a festival not unlike those that spring up all summer long in the midwest—loads of acts influenced by improvisational rock forefathers The Grateful Dead, or at least their more contemporary descendants, Phish.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
In 2013, Bonnaroo Music Festival presented once-in-a-lifetime classic rock headliners (Paul McCartney and Tom Petty, among others) supported by internet-hyped bands spanning genres, from folk rock to heavy metal to dance-electronica. And hip-hop, lots of hip-hop. In 2013 improvisational rock music (aside from the ever-present Gov't Mule) was in scarce supply.
The changeover, roughly, occurred the last time I attended Bonnaroo: in 2008, when the headliners were Metallica, Pearl Jam, Jack Johnson and… Kanye West? West's infamous set delay that year is already the stuff of legend. When I left that year, people anticipated that Bonnaroo's more radio-and-internet-friendly would be short lived. Those people were wrong.
This year, Bonnaroo had more hip-hop artists per weekend than Coachella did, with less irritating celebrities present—and along with those advantages came an identity crisis. How much of Bonnaroo's original DNA remains in its 2013 mutation? Besides camping, mud, and twenty-somethings ingesting hallucinogens, I mean.
Sure, with his outspoken reformist bent, Macklemore is cut from some of the same cloth as the Dead, but those fibers are scant and few. And as for the rigid dance rock acts present, like Django Django and The XX, they seemed otherworldly and hypnotic—but completely unlike The String Cheese Incident or Umphrey's McGee in aesthetic and artistic intent.
As a folk rock icon none of you might have heard of before once said: the times they are a-changing.
But, in the interest of giving the new guard its fair break, here is a gradecard for Bonnaroo 2013: the bad, the worst, the good, and the best.
The Bad
°Extreme cancellations
No event the size of Bonnaroo ever goes as planned, but still—nobody likes it when a headliner cancels. Best New Artist Grammy Award recipients Mumford and Sons cancelled their Saturday headlining show after bassist Ted Dwane underwent emergency surgery for a blood clot on the surface of his brain. Disappointment reigned, even if health concerns earn a technical pass. I was looking forward to Mumford's show in particular, as a person with no real positive or negative take on their music, especially having heard from many parties that the west London folk-rockers put on an intense live show.
It was harder to forgive the last-minute cancellation by California rap maverick Earl Sweatshirt. Earl, the younger brother of controversial emcee Tyler, The Creator, is a prominent member of red-hot hip-hop collective Odd Future. His performance was a jewel in 2013's hip-hop-heavy crown, and his absence put a major dent in Saturday's lineup.
°Rivers of shit
Like most major music festivals, Bonnaroo is an exclusively chemical toilet affair. pods of portable chemical toilets were kept as clean as reasonably possible for the duration of the weekend. The ground around them, however was another story. The Centeroo grounds, where the concerts are held, are loosely divided into two large fields, one holding the food, external activities and smaller stages, and another holding just the main stage. The two fields are connected by one tight pathway with a restroom area at the midway point. After a burst of Sunday rain, a river of foul-smelling mud cleaved right through the passageway, beneath the chemical johns. Bonnaroo staff laid down planks of wood for the crowd to trek over, which sank into the sludge in minutes. After that, attendees took metal fence panels and used them to cross. Even after such measures, I felt like a red blood cell in a clogged artery, and found myself baking in hot sun, covered in blood-sucking flies, fjording a river of shit—one had to wonder: Is this Bonnaroo, or one of Dante's circles of hell? Braver concertgoers than I tried to run-and-leap across the stygian flow, and more than a few face-planted in the foul crud. At no point in time should a concert present the risk of face-planting into fecal mud. Ever.
The Worst:
°The crowd
for twelve years, Bonnaroo has been held in Great Stage Park, a 650-acre space which Bonnaroo now owns, despite steadily climbing attendance. The festival has expanded its campgrounds to accommodate more visitors, but that brings its own problems: the walk from the main stage to one of my friends' campsites took upwards of an hour. At my own campsite, my neighbors' tents overlapped with my own—we felt cramped in the great outdoors. In Centeroo, even small bands drew crowds so huge that zones of good sound mixing in full view of performers came at a premium. For example, a week prior, I saw Death Grips at Orion Music & More in Detroit, and had no issue finding an excellent spot, but at Bonnaroo I had to squeeze, elbow, and eventually crowd-surf my way to a decent spot. More popular shows, like Japandroids, proved impenetrable. Nevermind a good spot for Paul McCartney—I would have needed to camp out in front of the main stage since mid-afternoon. Bonnaroo is now too well-attended for its infrastructure to accommodate an easy listening experience. I should not have to mosh pit in order to see someone sing “Blackbird.”
The Good
°Bjork
The Icelandic goddess of art-pop took the stage with almost no instruments: just a drummer, a DJ, and a full-fledged choir. Fittingly, for a woman whose purpose in art seems to be elevating the human voice to the status of totemic rite, she recited a career-spanning set list with a gang of talented vocalists acting as her backing tracks. As she serenaded the crowd, the video projection screen behind her cycled through a series of almost documentary films around ocean-floor scavengers, tectonic plates, and the phases of the moon. Part pop odyssey, part dance party, part science lesson, Bjork put on a performance unlike anything I have encountered before.
°The food court
One does not typically go to a show expecting culinary delights, but Bonnaroo delivered. While none of the food was expressly gourmet, it presented a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, and catered to almost every dietary restriction possible. Elephant ears? Check. Vegan indian curried vegetables? Got that too. Hell, a mango-black-bean-salsa-quesadilla with superberry-energy-shake? Absolutely.
The Best
°The Wu-Tang Clan
Somehow, a clandestine group of hard-edged New York emcees with a penchant for kung-fu movies have become something like the Beatles of hip-hop: each with their own distinctive songs, personalities, penchants and eccentricities. When they come together they create intangible electric feeling—one experiences The Clan and thinks “I am watching something legendary.” The Clan (sans Raekwon, sadly) take a stage by force and occupy it. spitting proverbial fire through a set that, somehow, spans most of their career while still focusing on their classic debut, Enter the 36 Chambers, and still making time for every present member to have one song from their solo careers. Hell, The Clan even busted out “Shimmy Shimmy Ya,” by now-deceased founding member, ODB. Much of the set paid tribute to their sadly-departed brother in arms, and rightly so: you have not lived until you've heard thousands of erstwhile civilized people scream “Old Dirty Bastard” in unison. Method Man played point-man, and led the massive crowd with aplomb. But The Clan's MVP that day had to be Cappadonna. Frequently overlooked because he didn't play a large part on the first Wu-Tang album, Cappadonna can nearly match Method Man and GZA in the tongue twister department. Clad in a baseball cap studded with gold spikes, the always-chic emcee ripped through “Ice Cream,” and several deep Wu-Tang cuts.
