Good morning from the steam bath that is Bonnaroo. I’m moving rather slowly today since I was up till 4:00 am or so. As is often the case here I made new friends and saw some tremendous shows.
Since my last blog I first took in The National. I appreciated lead singer Matt Berninger’s intense stage persona. He reminded me of a favorite Professor singing his lecture to his audience. After a while I found the bands’ songs started to sound all the same. The crowd seemed to be lulled asleep as well until the band kicked into the song ‘Fake Empire’ and suddenly thousands of voices joined Matt’s lush deep vocal line. This burst of energy during the peak heat of the afternoon picked up the band and they finished the set on an upswing. Then it was back to camp for a quick shower and dinner. I had to get my strength up to see Michael Franti & Spearhead!
If you plan on seeing Michael & Co. at Waterfront Park on July 4th I advise you to bring your dancing shoes. As I made my way through the massive crowd at the start of their set I had to be careful not to get knocked out by people joyfully dancing and jumping up and down. I’m lucky enough to get special access to the front of the stage and was busy taking pictures when a dancing lady next to me screamed my name and gave me a huge hug. She’s a regular WFPK listener and she was completely groovin’! I wish I had gotten her photo, but I was a bit stunned at that moment.
I missed Kings Of Leon (alas) in order to hang out with some good friends in their air conditioned trailer. How did humans survive summer before air conditioning?
I then experienced the highlight of the night: The Flaming Lips. Their 1st set consisted of some of the band’s classics including the hit ‘The W.A.N.D.’ which totally rocked! A Flaming Lips show would not be complete without a killer light show and lots of big balloons. We all had a good time batting the balloons up in the air and occasionally off the heads of people sitting in front of us. One lighting effect was kind of weird however: Wayne Coyne had a fish eye lens camera mounted (I guess) on his microphone. I’ll call this his nostril cam. Fortunately they turned the nostril cam off for the 2nd set which was The Lips covering Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. I hadn’t heard The Lip’s version but I had read a few complaints about it from purists, so I didn’t know what to expect. I loved it! Not everything worked but it still captured the essence of the original while being an unmistakably Flaming Lips take on the classic.
I still had enough energy to take in part of Galactic’s show. The band was fire pouring fantastic energy into songs off their latest CD Ya-Ka-May. As deeply funky as Galactic sounds on record, it can’t compare to them throwing down live. Their light show was killer, too. I’m afraid my poor cell phone camera couldn’t really capture the awesomeness of it.
The evening ended for me with a bit of LCD Soundsystem before the need for sleep stole me away from their show. What a night! Now I get to do it all over again today, except with different bands and 4 hours of sleep. Bonnaroo, Baby!