Bonnaroo 2007 Review

[AndySlash]

Originally Posted by wHATcOLOR

how amazing could lasers possibly be

They were quite amazing. This is the best I could find in the 30 seconds I looked.



Because of the dust and shit, they could be seen for a long distance. When you have that many lasers going to the rhythms of the song, it's an incredible visual feast.

[Dogfighter28]

Originally Posted by wHATcOLOR

how amazing could lasers possibly be

so amazing that not one person looked at the members of Tool for about thirty minutes

[KrazeeStacee]

Originally Posted by AndySlash

I just looked- it was Mark's cell I called. He must've texted me last because I just hit send on that message every time I tried to call after that.

My fault- I should have thought to try both, and actually have had left a message. I just figured I'd try later, then never did after the third or fourth.

Ah yeah it's cool, I don't even think we had our phones on us after that whole trying to see Lewis Black thing. There was no point in having them except to tell time!

[KrazeeStacee]

Originally Posted by AndySlash

They were quite amazing. This is the best I could find in the 30 seconds I looked.



Because of the dust and shit, they could be seen for a long distance. When you have that many lasers going to the rhythms of the song, it's an incredible visual feast.

There's not enough videos up of everything yet! I'm anxious to see better footage of the Tool show...the lasers were great, especially since I'm so short and couldn't see a lot of the stage. I just watched them beam up into space

[wHATcOLOR]

are you guys kidding me? it's a bunch of lines. big whoop.

i bet you scoundrels were chewing drugs! ive heard about your kind

[Dogfighter28]

dude, the video does not show the lasers. at least, they look nothing like that in person. i agree, that video makes it look not impressive at all. if you were there, it literally looked like god was painting the sky green, and then the lasers started rotating and it looked like a window to outer space was opening. i was 100% sober for all of bonnaroo btw.

[KrazeeStacee]

Okay okay so we saw Tool, then we crawled through the fucking miles of trash and passed out bodies over to see Aesop Rock. I love that he played No Regrets a little faster, and Daylight was an amazing encore/closer. But best of all, I was so surprised how clear his words were...on the cds it sounds almost like it was harder to understand than it was hearing him live. I just love his style.

We sat El-P out because I was pretty fucked up at that point and needed a break, so we chilled out in the grass for his set. Can't say I felt like I missed anything. I just never got into him and then the music was just in your face and chaotic...I just don't like it. I believe I've heard some of Dibbs' just plain DJ stuff and liked it, but I didn't really like most of what he did live. Most of the time I spent staring out at the fire show.

We got up as close as we could for DJ Shadow, which was pretty damn close. The whole screen problem or whatever it was sucked ass, does anyone know what time he actually ended his set? I feel like I remember it being longer because he started later - but I could be making that up. And I really liked the whole Break It Down thing - Mark informed me today that he just fucked up the scratch he was going to do after it? I had no idea, I thought they were just playing with the crowd, trying to get hyped. So even his fuckups sound good. Definitely a perfect pick for the late night show.

So Saturday we got out to see Ziggy Marley and that was a nice time. It was the only show we weren't within rock tossing distance of the stage (well, and the Lips)...but we just got our blanket out and layed in the grass, smoking pot and sipping lemonade.

Then Ween, like I said earlier I never saw them live and they impressed the hell out of me. Those guys are so much fun.

We went back to the campsite for a while to eat and relax, we took a short nap during The Police - which we could actually hear well enough to make out the songs and hum along. It's really great how loud they turn up the headliners - made me realize just how fucking loud Tool was.

Then we headed over to The Flaming Lips - we were late getting over there and trying to walk around was horrible, but we ended up making out way closer and closer to the stage - and the better and better the show got. They're pretty much a live band that entertains you more if you're up close in the middle of it all. When we were close enough to be able to play with the big orange balloon things, I was impressed. Plus the laser pointer thing was genius!







And the space ship thing was definitely cool - I like how he thanked the audience for making it worth "dragging all this crap out here and setting it all up".



That's about all we saw, we sat in for a few songs while wandering around here and there. We went to see the tribal bellydancers on Sunday and good for them for going out there and dancing in that heat and whatnot, but they weren't all that entertaining - it was like a step routine instead of belly dancing. And the music was horrid. =\ Oh well, it was too hot anyway - we just shopped after that and then left around 5 or 6.

[I'm Hardcore]

i cant believe Ween are still around

[KrazeeStacee]

Originally Posted by wHATcOLOR

are you guys kidding me? it's a bunch of lines. big whoop.

i bet you scoundrels were chewing drugs! ive heard about your kind

A bunch of lines pointing to outter space, man!

It was actually a really cool affect with all the smoke and dust though, for all that to be outdoors, it was pretty sweet.

[stellawasadiver]

People who have not seen Tool's light show can hate on it.

I saw it in an indoor setting and it was the coolest fucking thing ever, and I bet it's just as amazing outside

[KrazeeStacee]

Here's some of my pictures:



"Turn right at the eyeballs!"



Gee can you see all the dust on the glass case?



mmmmdust







The belly dancers.



FUCKING DORKS! Who goes to Bonnaroo to play xbox 360?! My boyfriend, that's who. I told him we'd break up if he spent our entire vacation in that tent.



And here's me because I'm vain and my big floppy hat is pimp. And so was our rental PT Cruiser. Ready to head off to see Ziggy, no less than 3 bottles of water in my back pack.



I'm sad I didn't take my camera to the shows - I was afraid that it would get fucked up being so squished together with people but I think I could've handled it at every show we saw I'll remember that for next year.

[Ol' Couch Ass]

I pity anyone who went to this festival and didn't get to see Ween. Such an amazing live band.

[redbull]

did Deaner start smoking during Mister Could You Help My Pony?

[KrazeeStacee]

Originally Posted by Ol' Couch Ass

I pity anyone who went to this festival and didn't get to see Ween. Such an amazing live band.

That was a real tough call with Ben Harper...I was very saddened by it, but I must say getting to see Ween for the first time live was worth the sacrifice.

[davin]

Originally Posted by KrazeeStacee

Hey I'm getting to Ween! I only got as far as Tool! I hadn't ever seen Ween live and WHAT a great time that was. I was so happy everyone got to sing Bananas and Blow - and Buckingham Green sounded soo sweet live. I really liked that they jammed everything up, I didn't expect them to do that.

hehe.....i have more to say about Ween as well. To be honest I was expecting a set similar to what I heard at Lollapalooza last year, which was very similar to the Live in Chicago 2004 cd, so I was completely floored to hear a completely different setlist. And every song sounded fucking spectacular....and it was awesome to hear a mid-day band get cheer'd back on for a 3 song fucking encore.

Exactly Where Im At
Golden Eel
Baby Bitch
Spinal Meningitis
Bananas & Blow
Take Me Away
Transdermal Celebration
Even If You Dont
Voodoo Lady
The Party
Buckingham Green
Happy Colored Marbles
Pork Roll Egg & Cheese
Waving My Dick In The Wind
Touch My Tooter
Fiesta
Zoloft
Ocean Man
Johnny On The Spot
Frank
Mollusk
E:
Mr Richard Smoker
Booze Me Up & Get Me High
Fat Lenny
God damn Fat Lenny was super duper tight. and Booze Me Up & Get Me High was a kickass version.

Originally Posted by KrazeeStacee

I don't know where that is but that sounds far - you do mean on foot, right? You people on foot, although very environmental, are fucking nutty. I'm not in that kind of shape...not yet at least.

hehe, no....no walking. I was talking about 7 hours to drive from the south side of chicago to the town just north of the festival. we made it from canal street near chinatown on the south-side, all the way to the town 30mi away from bonnaroo in 7 hours. Mapquest said 8h20m.

[davin]

not my link, but here's half of Booze Me Up and all of Fat Lenny from the roo.

hxxp://www.sendspace.com/file/r1a7ld

[davin]

Originally Posted by Dogfighter28

Bonnaroo this year was a very mixed bag in terms of the overall experience - on the bad side, an intense drought caused lung-collapsing dust storms (i inhaled so much of it as to miss The Police when I passed out in my tent unexpectedly), the festival food was pretty bad yet pricey, and yeah, there were a lot of hippies. On the bright side, I saw some fantastic performances that will linger in my mind for a while.

dust was annoying but to be honest i preferred that to the alternative of rain and mud.

Originally Posted by Dogfighter28

2. Tool
No surprise here - Tool were wonderful. Their light show surpassed all my expectations, and their sound was incredibly immense - the guitar rattled my ribcage, and the bass drum sounded like a gunshot straight to my heart. I was almost in the pit, in front of the soundstage on the right, so I could see Maynard's shadowy figure dancing to creepily. It was a really surreal thing to see. Maynard was very funny with his stage banter - "So, uh... I guess you're all high on the marijuana, huh?" *crowd cheers* "Or maybe, the LSD, huh?" *more cheers* "You're all under arrest!" *laughter*

TOOL was my favorite performance by far. We stayed at the Main Stage (What Stage) all day waiting for them, and were therefore in the front. I was literally resting my arms on the front railing, I shit you not. Of course the sectioned-off (VIP?) area was in front of us, but I was at the front-most part of the normal area.

Anyway, it was easy to wait for them because Kings of Leon rocked hard and The Roots were fucking fantastic as usual! so waiting for Tool...with bathrooms, food, water, and beer near by was easy. not to mention all the other goodies in my bag.

DogFighter's description is accurate. This TOOL performance was probably the loudest concert i have heard in my life...and that is saying a lot. Not only my ribcage and heart, but I swear I fucking felt that shit deep into my soul it was so loud. It was awesome! My buddy and I were just discussing Maynard's funny comments about Hippies at Coachella....and we fucking died laughing when his first words on stage were "I smell patchouli..."

When Tom Morello joined it was very cool and made the performance a little more special. I was a little ticked that they did not play for the whole 2.5 hours they were schedule to play (they played like 2 hours and 5 min) but it wasn't surprising since it was basically the same set i saw last year, just a little more intense and little more refined. As a matter of fact, I see them again in 10 days in the burbs of Chicago, and I hope its the same set...just so a totally different group of my friends can witness it.

But speaking of the loud sound I would say this was pretty much across the board for every stage/tent at Bonnaroo. The fucking length of the setlists and the sound, imo, totally trumped Lollapalooza.

Originally Posted by Dogfighter28

3. Tortoise
I had dabbled with this band previously, but their live set blew me away. It was very special, because the band said almost nothing the whole time besides a thank you at the end. Some songs had two drummers, and they actually made excellent use of this instead of it becoming a gimmick. This was the first set I saw that made me thankful for having come to Bonnaroo. Their krautrock-esque post rock was dancable and epic at the same time. The crowd gave rapturous applause throughout their set, and even called them out for an encore, which is pretty mind boggling considering it was in a tent in a busy time slot at a festival.

definitely. just like ween, i was surprised by the encore Tortoise played as well. I have to say those Tents sound kickass. I mean, like i said above, all the stages/tents sounded great up-close....but the tents really projected their sound outward, in some cases, better than the stages. So we had a blast enjoying Tortoise and Rodrigo Y Gabriella from a distance. I mean, the tents themselves were basically acting like megaphones, in terms of the sound projection....so it was fucking awesome.

Now the stages, they were more flat and waspy as you got farther away. The Main Stage was ok because it had a secondary row of speakers/monitors...but the 2nd Stage (which stage) didn't have the extra set of speakers, so you really had to get close to enjoy bands like Wolfmother, White Stripes, etc.

Originally Posted by Dogfighter28

5. Wilco

Wilco was alright. I have seen them do much better. I agree with whomever said the new album is like "your dad's record". a little too adult contemporary for me, compared to some of their older stuff.

Originally Posted by Dogfighter28

Other full sets I saw:
The National - They put on a pretty good show, though a lot of their songs were extremely similiar to one another.
The Roots - They were pretty great, just missing my top 5. They did a great cover of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War". This is a great group to see live.

totally! the roots are always good. sorta like radiohead, when you are loaded with excellent musicians on every instrument, great things happen. and yea, national are very passionate when they play.

Originally Posted by DogFighter28

The Flaming Lips - I was really dissapointed with the Flaming Lips. It saddens me to say that, because they are one of my favorite bands. Their show was good and all, but they played under-tempo, Wayne babbled about politics about half the set time (they only played like ten songs in two hours), and the crowd was absolutely dead (this was at midnight on the third day). The best part was their impromptu 10:30 pm soundcheck of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" - it was awesome. I think it was just unfortunate that everyone was burnt out. I'd go see these guys at a show in a smaller venue and it would probably be the best show ever.
Wolfmother - I was SO FUCKING HOT. I just sat and listened. Pretty average Led Zeppelin ripoff band, nothing too offensive though.

if you were closer for wolfmother they would have rocked your ass off. they love what they do and are good at it.

i somewhat agree about Flaming Lips, but was happy with the setlist. I feel like I have seen the same setlist the last 3 times I have seen them....so it was great to see them mix it up a little with 7 or 8 different songs they have not been playing live in 2006. And they are always fun, the UFO lighting was cool, they played a song they haven't played since the 90's.....but yea, he talked too much.

[davin]

Originally Posted by KrazeeStacee

Oh and we were camped at Austin Powers...the absolute furthest campsite from Centeroo. Took us about 30-45 minutes to walk there, which we did at least twice a day. But really, I can't complain because there was no noise, no herds of people walking by, no bright ass fucking lights shining all night and very little dust! It was kinda worth the walk.

we were in the Fast Times at Ridgemont High cap area. 20min walk straight up past the Family Camping area to Centeroo.

we were also lucky to be only 5 min from the bathrooms in our campsite and 20min in an alternate direction from the ice stand.

[davin]

Originally Posted by Dogfighter28

I saw two people with Zeitgeist patches, but i was almost dead from exhaustion. It was on Sunday at Wilco - one had a yellow shirt and black hair, and glasses, and the other had gray shirt i think, and maybe had a hat on.

i wore the red Europe 2007 Tour shirt I bought at the Paris show on Friday, and I had about 10 people in centeroo and a few perople in the campground comment on it.

also, i got the attention of a couple people when playing some zeitgeist tracks in my car at the campground...not to mention a group that literally stopped to join us for a toke while we listened to Gossamer acoustic from the secret Berlin show. By the time we disbanded our group, 2 more people (older guys from the UK) also came by to comment on the acoustic gossamer.

[davin]

Originally Posted by AndySlash

Brief recap of what I saw:

Thursday:
Black Angels- I love them. Awesome.
The National- Passionate
Rodrigo y Gabriela- Fucking amazing players.

i was at all the same shows above, and concur with your comments. We also saw clutch in between The National and Rodrigo y Garbiella....and they fucking rocked too!

So, i saw Black Angels, The National, Clutch and Rodrigo Y Gabriella on Thursday.

Tortoise, Kings of Leon, Roots, and Tool on Friday (we also saw a little of Hot Chip and Tom Morello while our spots were being held for Roots/Tool). Then it was Aesop Rock, a tiny bit of STS9 and then DJ Shadow later at night.

On Saturday we saw Dr. Dog, Ziggy Marley, Ween, The Police, Flaming Lips and finallky Sasha & Digweed. I think we saw the last couple Fountains of Waynes songs too.

On Sunday we saw Wolfmother, Decemberists, Wilco, White Stripes and part of Widespread before heading out. We decided to bail early when Widespread had barely started just to get out and to a motel for showers and real toilets, prior to making the drive back to Chicago on Monday.

great fuckign weekend and shows overall! and yes, the dust sucked hard on sunday....but it probably had a lot to do with my constant smoking and toking all weekend as well. thankfully, we had plenty of other goodies that gave our lungs a break from time to time.

[KrazeeStacee]

Originally Posted by davin

hehe, no....no walking. I was talking about 7 hours to drive from the south side of chicago to the town just north of the festival. we made it from canal street near chinatown on the south-side, all the way to the town 30mi away from bonnaroo in 7 hours. Mapquest said 8h20m.

Ohhhh okay sorry I thought you were talking about something else totally - sorry that was about at the 36 hour mark of no sleep.

Well that's cool - whenever we go down there we stop at Mark's parent's house in northern Kentucky, cuz they buy our food and stuff, so we kinda go a little out of our way. It's about 8 hours to Kentucky then another 5 or 6 to Manchester from there.

We left way early, like 5ish on Sunday and just went to Nashville and got a hotel there, went out for some ribs and steak. It was nice, I don't think I could've taken a 5 hour drive with no shower. I never felt so dirty in my life, and it was all cuz of that damn nasty dust.

[KrazeeStacee]

Originally Posted by davin

TOOL was my favorite performance by far. We stayed at the Main Stage (What Stage) all day waiting for them, and were therefore in the front. I was literally resting my arms on the front railing, I shit you not. Of course the sectioned-off (VIP?) area was in front of us, but I was at the front-most part of the normal area.

Actually that area wasn't VIP - you could've gone in there so long as you had no bag or anything with you.

Basically we were there for The Roots and ended up getting in that front part about 5 rows back. Then we thought hell yeah we'll be here for Tool - we get up to the FRONT RAIL and we look at each other like "No way...this is too good to be true..." then of course the security goes "We're not letting anyone back in till it's cleared out!". So we're like ok let's see if we can sneak back in real quick - we get out and there's a fucking huge line =\ Then after waiting in line forever we find out that they aren't letting ANY bags in at all. No exceptions. We carried around a little bookbag all weekend with our important shit in it and water and all that - so we couldn't go in, we just stood about 20 people back from the second rail (the back of the sectioned off area). But it was still close as hell. I can't even imagine how many people were there, it's pretty insane.

[KrazeeStacee]

Originally Posted by davin

we were in the Fast Times at Ridgemont High cap area. 20min walk straight up past the Family Camping area to Centeroo.

we were also lucky to be only 5 min from the bathrooms in our campsite and 20min in an alternate direction from the ice stand.

Yeah we were really close to the bathrooms and ice, we had two options for bathrooms that were close by and one ice truck that was there during the day time...I'm also thankful for those bathrooms because since they were the furthest ones out, they were also the cleanest. Some of those ones close to the stages, man...and when it was like 500 degrees in those things during the day? That is some nasty stuff. *shudder*

[KrazeeStacee]

Originally Posted by davin

great fuckign weekend and shows overall! and yes, the dust sucked hard on sunday....but it probably had a lot to do with my constant smoking and toking all weekend as well. thankfully, we had plenty of other goodies that gave our lungs a break from time to time.

It was so bad on Sunday cuz people started leaving, so there was a lot more vehicle traffic and that was what made the fucking dust clouds hovering over the whole damn place. Plus I think a lot of people didn't realize the back entrance was open to leave through and ended up driving through the whole festival to get to the front entrance. We left through the back and luckily we had a pathway all the way and got on the expressway in about 10 minutes.

[davin]

Originally Posted by Dogfighter28

i was 100% sober for all of bonnaroo btw.

[AndySlash]

Originally Posted by Ol' Couch Ass

I pity anyone who went to this festival and didn't get to see Ween. Such an amazing live band.

They are, and it sucked that I had to make a decision there, but I'd seen them a few times in the last couple years at Roo and Lolla, so I took a pass to see Harper since I hadn't seen them before. Had they been playing a night show, this may have been different, though.

[KrazeeStacee]

Originally Posted by AndySlash

They are, and it sucked that I had to make a decision there, but I'd seen them a few times in the last couple years at Roo and Lolla, so I took a pass to see Harper since I hadn't seen them before. Had they been playing a night show, this may have been different, though.

That's the exact opposite situation I was in. I'd seen Ben a few times before but never saw Ween - Mark saw both and we decided it'd be best to see Ween for the first time esp. since Ben's gonna be at Lolla so we may actually go this year.

Hard decision. I heard Burn One Down was pretty nice (never was in a position to hear that song where you could smoke pot freely)

[AndySlash]

Yeah, that was pretty good. He commented that that was the biggest smoke cloud he'd ever seen in an outdoor venue. And, frankly, I'd have to agree. I'm sure some of it was dust, but looking down into the pit area (I was behind the second set of speakers)... yeah... it was something else.

[davin]

the same thoughts crossed my mind as did AndySlash's, but when I realized how much fun Ween had been all the last times I saw them, it helped make the decision for me. Plus i generally like their music better than Ben Harper's.

But yea, i was totally expecting the same setlist as Lolla...so imagine my surprise when they changed it up. just fucking awesome.

anyway -- their bonnaroo set is here if you care to check it out: http://www.archive.org/details/ween2007-06-16.flac

[KrazeeStacee]

I MISS BONNAROO SO MUCH! I'm still going through withdrawls.

Thanks for the link, Davin, I'll have to download that when I get home. Or rather, have my boyfriend do it