Worland Warriors Bus Croozes to Bonnaroo

Posted: 12:00 AM, Wed, Jun 20 2007

BY DUSTIN HUTH

Bonnaroo from above

If human activity is being monitored
from above by any sort of gods or aliens,
then surely the monitoring machinery of
those celestial beings must flip complete
shit every year in the middle of June
when 80 thousand people from all over
the world converge on a single,
previously deserted point of land in the
middle of nowhere to see 150 concerts
on 11 stages in 3.5 days. Alien
seismograph needles convulse feverishly
in epileptic fits, and divine ticker tape
spews furiously onto the floors at The
Heavenly College of Intelligent Design
as the vast line of cars, buses and RVs
wraps through the tiny Earthtown
of Manchester, Tennessee, honking past the
front yards of waving locals, and
watermelon stands and ticket scalpers,
before finally dumping itself out into a
field which was once a 700 acre farm,
but is now a city of tents and campers
and dust roads with giant brightly
colored electric balloons tied to them,
trying to lift this place further skyward.
And at the center of it all, there is an
enormous orange arch with green letters
attached to it, spelling out a word which
holds no meaning in any human tongue.
The word is, “Bonnaroo.” Welcome.

Night of the lesser knowns

The anticipation is tangible. The influx
of human energy is tangible as a dented
and mangled 1975 MCI 8 bus-turned-mobile-living-room
from Colorado
makes its way through the gates and into
the campground after 27 nonstop hours
on the road. The Black Angels will be
playing in a matter of minutes, and after
their two lifealtering
performances at
the Larimer Lounge over the course of
the last year, this band is one of the
reasons that the Colorado crew has come
to this place. The bus is parked hastily
and tents are pitched in a frantic rush.
The Black Angels are like The Doors,
people say, and that’s true, but The
Black Angels are actually more like The
Black Angels than they are like any of
their influences. They have a
completely new approach to songwriting
that is very straightforward. Their lyrics
are not really poetic. Just true and plain
and political. Songs about war. Songs
about Vietnam and Iraq, and the music
shoots black holes through the darkness.
The reverb is so wet you could drown in
it, and in the humid warm southern
evening, The Black Angels bring dark
music out of solution leaving a dense
mist on the skin of all those in
attendance.

Later, it’s Rodrigo Y Gabriella at
“THAT TENT.” These two flamenco
musicians used to be in some sort of
thrash metal band. Now they sit on
stools and play intricately rhythmic
melodies that speak eloquently with
Spanish accents. They take turns
playing solo parts, then come together
for duets at all the right moments. They
play with so much intensity that the
enormous crowd is almost silent. Their
presence and concentration is
magnetizing. A video is projected onto a
screen behind the stage. It shows their
guitar work from various strange angles,
and it is shot in such a way that maybe
one out of every three frames is dropped,
creating a choppy effect that makes the
already insanely fast guitar work look
even insanely faster. A kid in the back
shakes his head in disbelief, as the solo
climaxes, and he claps vigorously,
shouting, “This is it!!!! THIS is IT!!!!”

The last show of the first night is The
Whigs, belting out their own brand of 3-and-a-half-minute
popstyle
songs with a
force of being that can only exist in a
band who is coming into their own right
in front of your eyes. A band that knows
that Bonnaroo is magical and that bands
like The Whigs can either be born or die
there, and they want so badly to be born
that they spit spit at you over their
microphones as they yell, and they bleed
blood at you onto their frets as they
thrash the strings of their guitars, and
they scream their songs like this is their
one and only chance to prove
themselves. To prove that they are the
real deal rock stars, worthy of the
adoration of millions of fans. Worthy of
large venue international tours, and that
the only reason that they’re not there
already is that this night had to happen
first. This is one of most moving things
about Bonnaroo: witnessing that moment
when a little known band hits their stride
in front of a large crowd that they could
never have assembled outside of a
festival setting, and the transfer of
energy oscillates from stage to crowd at
its natural frequency, and it builds and
builds until that single instant when it
simply can’t be contained anymore and
the entire audience erupts all at once.
Passersby hear the roaring and are
sucked in and become part of it. There
is a unanimous consensus that The
Whigs are ready. Ready to go through
the process of being that hip now sound
that all the scene kids talk about until the
mainstream finally catches on; then
maybe a spot on the Letterman show or
Conan; then headlining Red Rocks;
releasing a followup
album; being on
the cover of Rolling Stone; touring
extensively; and then releasing another
followup
album that somehow doesn’t
hit as hard; then eventually taking some
time to work on some side projects;
being accused of selling out for some
reason or another; seriously having to
decide whether Neil Young was right
about it being better to burn out than to
fade away, and depending on which
conclusion they reach, answering the
obligatory followup
question: “so what
now?” And eventually they resign
themselves to the fact that they have
been completely digested and shit out by
the insatiable cycle of the music
industry. Not that this is specifically the
fate of The Whigs, but it happens.
Different versions of that story, all the
time. It’s cruel and cold, but we all
participate. We can’t help but
participate. It’s not like it’s just the evil
music industry that churns through
musicians looking for the next thing that
will make them a buck. It plays out in
the minds of individual fans as well. A
microcosm for what we tend to blame on
the record execs or whomever. The
human mind can only stay interested in a
sound for so long. Eventually, even with
music that we love, it becomes more
about triggering the memory of the
moment when we were in love with it
than about actually being in love with it
right now. And Bonnaroo is a showcase
of different bands at different phases of
that cycle. Some bands last, though.
Some bands definitely do survive it.
Those that are able to constantly reinvent
themselves, not for the sake of
reinventing themselves, but because they
are intensely present in the current
moment as they write each new song.
And the fact that the current moment is
different from the last one, means that it
is impossible for them to regurgitate
their former sound, and the only things
that are similar from one album to next
is the musical manifestation of
something unchanging and inherent in
the artists themselves. The White
Stripes. Please, God, don’t let the cycle
take The White Stripes away. They are
playing on Sunday. Their new album,
Icky Thump, is to be released the
following day. In a short time, we will
know where within this cruel cycle The
White Stripes lie.

The Drugs

According to the official Bonnaroo
guide book, the festival holds a very
forward-thinking,
“free drugs,” policy.
…Wait, hold on…scratch that…. That’s
not what it says at all. It says, “drug
free.” The festival holds a drug free
policy …but that can’t be right. This
place is intentionally architected to be
the perfect playground for the tripping
off of one’s face. Giant bobble-headed
sculptures and glow in the dark insects
on top of 20 foot poles. Yarn labyrinths,
silent disco, an enormous fountain
pouring water and light out through
dizzyingly checkerboard patterned
columns. Parades of people in robot
suits and riding stilts. Glow sticks, glow
glasses, and glow puppets spotting the
horizonless sea of people like scattered
glowy things in a horizonless sea of
people.

And the music. Music, it has been said,
is the opiate of the masses. And since,
opiates are also the opiate of the masses,
it is fitting that drugs and music are often
confused with one another and
consumed in the same places at the same
times. Drugs and music have always
gone hand in hand, and a festival like
this would surely be too much to handle
without their help. What kind of
organism could stay tuned in for 4 nights
of music under these conditions of heat,
humidity and dust breathing without
artificially renewing its enthusiasm
through the use of mind-altering
substances? Not that everyone should be
on drugs at Bonnaroo, just some. There
is something amazing that happens when
this many people are gathered in one
place at one time for one reason. All the
individuals begin to come together and
behave as a single entity. There is an
unmistakable feeling of connectedness at
Bonnaroo that is significantly less
noticeable in day to day life. There truly
seems to be a sort of collective mindset
or consciousness, to the point where, if
at any given moment, 20% of the people
are allowing their minds to hatch out of
their eggshell heads and explore a deeper
understanding of the universe with the
help of hallucinogenic drugs, the
remaining 80% directly benefit from the
insight, and somehow their mind, too,
become slightly more open.
In the city of tents and campers, drugs
are not hard to come by. They’re not
hard to avoid either. A man with a long
dark beard stands in the middle of one of
the dirt road intersections, casually
announcing his query to the shuffling
crowd, “Who’s got what?” he asks with
outstretched arms. Two girls walk by in
bikini tops. On their bellies in
permanent marker they have written the
words, “I need LSD.” Those in the have
are slightly more discrete, but not much.
The thing about Bonnaroo is that despite
what the guide book says, it’s a free
society. The people are free. There is
no judgment passed on people for the
things they choose to do or choose not to
do to themselves, or how they decide to
explore their minds

The musicians can sense the freedom as
well. “You just do as you please,” said
Dr. Dog’s Scott McMicken during one
of the press conferences. “I don’t think
anybody really minds what you’re
doing.” He then continued to explain
that the people in authority have to set
up all these “fences,” but soon enough,
you can figure out where the holes are
and walk right through. Of course, this
is as true in reality as it is at Bonnaroo.
But the holes here are definitely much
larger, and far more plentiful. This has a
lot to do with the fact that only certain
types of people would bother coming to
an event like this.

The People

There is a certain breed of people that
come to Bonnaroo. They are not the
tame suburbanites who are content to
simply while away their lives chasing
after that imaginary sense of security
that comes with accumulating wealth
and maintaining ownership over things.
The wealth of a Bonnaroonian is more
likely measured in experience and
adventure and in the exchange of ideas
and love than in the square footage of
homes, or in the shininess of cars and
jewelry. Except, of course, for the
people who just came to see The Police.
The Police fans seemed pretty average.
Some of them even went to the trouble
of making signs that said things like,
“Hippy love is stinky.” But never mind
them. They were ignorant, and should
therefore be ignored. Most
Bonnaroonians, though, are seekers by
nature. They are artists and dreamers
and mystics and lovers. They have more
in common with the bands that perform
on the stages than they do with the rest
of the world. Wayne Coyne of The
Flaming Lips confirmed this notion in a
press conference when he said,
“Everybody here could almost be on
stage, with whatever their art is, and
when you’re around those types of
people, it’s just easy…If I wasn’t
playing at these festivals, I’d be at them
anyway.”

Blurred though the line between artist
and audience may be at Bonnaroo, there
is still something that makes the
musicians seem bigger than everyone
else. Something about having to bear
that incredible weight of not letting
anybody down all the time. Something
that stems from absorbing the adoration
of a crowd and blasting it back at them
in the form of song. There is a
perceivable product of all the persistence
and hard work and failures that have
been shrugged away on the way to the
top that is present in the way the
musicians carry themselves as they walk
among the crowds at Bonnaroo and
attend the shows of their contemporaries.
A tall, beautiful, dark-haired
woman in
an elegant red dress and wearing full
makeup waits with her camera near the
gate between the venue and the artists’
campgrounds as Eugene Hutz of Gogol
Bordello slinks along like a sixfoot
spider snake toward his trailer. She
approaches him for a picture and you
can see it in her eyes that she wants to
marry or at least sleep with somebody
famous. You can see it in the color of
her dress that she probably has her heart
set on Jack White. Hutz slides his arm
around her waste and walks with her for
a few steps as she holds her camera out
with one hand and snaps a quick shot.
She kisses him on the cheek and he
continues along his way. Despite
Coyne’s fan flattery, there is a reason
that only a select few people actually do
end up on stage performing their art at
Bonnaroo. They are huge souls, and
they have earned their status and they
deserve all the perks that come along
with it.

Back at the camp a wiry, rugged man of
twenty something with roving eyes and a
sense of unpolished worldliness about
him strikes up a conversation.
“I like your pendant,” he says to a girl
sitting in a camp chair. She brings her
hand to her chest and rubs the necklace
between her thumb and forefinger.
“Thank you,” she says. “It’s a Camphor
tree. If you wear it, it means that you
will have prophetic dreams.”
“It also means that we were meant to
know each other,” says the man.
“Oh really? How is that?”
“Because my name is, Tree, and you’ve
already got me close to your heart.”
“That is a beautiful thought, Tree.
Where are you from?”
“My mother, originally, but here.”
“You’re from Tennessee?”
“No. Earth,” he replies flatly.
“Well, yes, but where on Earth do you
reside? What state are you from?”
“I reside everywhere. Wherever the
world decides to take me.”
“Oh, I see. And what do you do for a
living, while the world is taking you
from place to place?”
“I live for a living. I spread love and
happiness and I live. Would you like
some acid?”

The Strategy

Bonnaroo is one of those events that
cannot be contained in any concrete
series of start and stop times. You have
to accept it for what it is: a
phantasmagoria of sights and sounds,
none of which needs to begin at a
beginning or end at an ending place.
You are the curator of the gallery of your
mind, and the more fragmented the
exhibit, the better.
Everyone goes into it with their
guidebooks all highlighted to hell with
the bands they want to see, but it never
happens like that. True, bands will be
playing at specific places at specific
times. Bands that you really really want
to see. But, at the same time there are
those giant bobbleheads that seem like
they would be a lot of fun to climb on,
and there are bluegrass noises coming
from a handbuilt
solar-powered
stage,
and a cabaret performance that comes
completely out of nowhere. You don’t
want to stick to a schedule at Bonnaroo.
You just want to play, and be wherever
you happen to be whenever you happen
to end up there. Partially, this is because
somewhere along the way you ran into
some mushrooms. And as soon as they
hit, all those timelines fall to shit and
even the simplest of tasks becomes
difficult to the point of embafflement.
It’s not that the drug makes you stupid.
It’s just that it’s tough to be hanging out
in the spirit world while simultaneously
trying to control the actions of your body
below. Lighting a cigarette for someone
usually takes place without a conscious
thought, but now you have to ask for
help. “Does anyone recall how to work
these fascinating contraptions.” “Yes,”
comes a reply, “The trick is not to over
think it.” Sound advice, and damned if it
doesn’t work.

Soon the thought occurs that perhaps
you are thirsty. You take your water
bottle out of your pants pocket and after
examining it for far too long, you
determine that it is definitely empty.
Wait…is it? No. It’s actually about a
third full. You take a drink. There, now
the little beggar’s empty. You announce
to your friends that you are going to get
some more water, and you ask if any of
them have empty bottles that they would
like you to fill. The bottles come forth
and you make a mental note of which
bottle came from which friend, even
though you already know that trying to
hold onto that type of information will
immediately prove futile. Anyway, step
one is complete. The thought has been
communicated successfully and no one
laughed at you or looked at you blankly.
You celebrate the small victory silently
as you walk away without letting on that
it was a struggle. As you clear the last
row of fans gathered underneath the tent,
you breathe a sigh of relief. Alone at
last. A moment to regroup and get a
hold on the situation. But all too soon,
you arrive at the water station, which of
course, is nothing at all like you
remembered it. There is a line—a line
full of weirdly outfitted humans. Golf
carts and trucks are honking at you.
Chaos in all directions. The station itself
is located inside of one of those giant
boxes from the back of a semi, and you
can’t really see into it to get a feel for
how the system works. Lots of bottles to
fill. Lots of people in line. You need to
have a system. What the hell have you
gotten yourself into? But you’ve come
far too far to go back empty handed at
this point. Explaining your failure
would be more difficult than actually
getting the water, and you would most
likely pass out trying to justify your
actions and then you would find yourself
staring up at the ceiling of the first aid
tent with a whole new set of
explanations looming over your head.
No, you’ve definitely got to go through
with it now. The trick is not to over
think it.

Coming back, things seem simpler, but
there are plenty more distractions. It’s
easy to forget where you are headed.
There is a beautiful couple kissing nicely
in the grass, the girl of whom is wearing
no shirt, only flowers painted over the
perfect nipples of her perfect breasts.
And it’s not necessarily a sexual or
pornographic thing at all, it’s just a
beautiful thing. Love her well, friend.
Love her kindly. And then, suddenly
you are lost in the crowd, cursing
yourself for not having had the foresight
too bring a role of that fluorescent pink
hiking ribbon to tie to the arms of the
people you passed on the way out.
Negotiating the crowd on the way to see
The Black Keys, more strange people
are passed, most of whom are you and
one of whom has an expression on his
face like he is carrying a precious vase
precariously balanced on a tray inside of
his head, and he is slightly worried that
it might fall and shatter at any time, but
at the same time, he seems self-satisfied
at having successfully made it as far as
he has. And right at the most chaotic
moment in his head, The Keys transition
into a song he knows, and as he lets the
music in, he is brought back home,
because that is what music has the
ability to be: a home with a nice table
upon which we can set our precious
vases for a moment or a while before we
have to go back out and continue our
journeys.

The Boognish Prophesy

Outside of the THIS TENT, a crowd of
Ween fans is gathering. One of the
wilier looking ones takes notice and
approaches a man who appears to be
waiting for someone else.
“I don’t know what kind of a trip you’re
on, man, but do you mind if I go deep
for a minute?” asks the jolty-eyed
lead singer of a Ween cover band, who is
rocking a Boognish tattoo on his back,
and pacing in place with excitement .
“No, man, go for it, bro. Whatchya got
on your mind.”
“Well, I was reading in Revelations,
right? Either that or it was Notredamus
(he pronounces this word as a cross
between the name of the French
Astrologer and that of the famous
cathedral), but anyways, it says that
when humanity achieves the ability to
communicate instantly on a global scale,
the first of the 12 horseman will ride,
and judgment day will be soon to
follow.”
“No shit?” humors the man.
“Yeah,” he says, and his facial
expression grows more frantic, “So,
what we all gotta do is get ourselves a
shotgun and plenty of shells and then
hike up into the woods, where we’ll cut
down a bunch of trees and build a sturdy
fortress, cause that’s our right as
Americans, to defend ourselves and our
families because soon the whole world is
going to be living in complete chaos just
like this, but on a mass scale.”
As he says this, he points out to the
chaotic sea of 80 thousand some-odd
drugged-out men, women, and children
with absolutely no rules controlling their
behavior or keeping them from crossing
that evertempting
line into cannibalism
and human sacrifice. Strangely, though,
their uncontrolled behavior consists
largely of dancing, a little hugging and
hand holding,
some singing and smiling
here and there, and quite a bit of lying
down on blankets in the grass. Save for
the extremely rare, feral-eyed
doomsday
prophet full of passionate intensity,
babbling his pessimism at passersby, it is
an all around pleasant scene. A feeling
of brother and sisterhood
pervades. God
help us if this type of behavior were to
spread to the outside world.

The Lips

The Flaming Lips are known far and
wide for putting on some of the most
deliciously experimental shows in the
history of rock concerts.
“We really take the Evil Knievel
approach,” said lips front man, Wayne
Coyne, “We try something, and if it
works, it’s the greatest thing ever, and if
it crashes…it’s still the greatest thing
ever.”

For example, Coyne usually likes to
make his entrance by crowd surfing
inside of a giant inflatable hamster ball.
“It’s not a hamster ball,” clarifies Coyne,
matteroffactly,
“it’s a space bubble.
The Flaming Lips come from outer
space.”
Very well, it’s a space bubble. And as
the moment draws near for these alien
beings to descend upon the WHICH
STAGE it seems like the vast majority
of Bonnaroo is preparing a warm Earth
welcome. The entire camp area is
glowing with various types of light
emitting devices designed to be waved
about, danced with and tossed into the
air when the music explodes. Costumes
are dawned. There are chicken suits and
pink gorilla suits and robot suits and
naked people. There are Mexican
wrestlers in Mexican wrestling masks
and giant cats and Scooby Doo. The
people who didn’t get the memo
compensate by painting their faces with
magic markers, or drawing tattoos on
their chests and bellies and backs. Drugs
are taken and beers are drunk until it’s
time to go.

At the gate, the security staff is
confiscating glow sticks. Apparently
someone got hurt by one the previous
night. Certainly this can’t be the first
time someone has caught a descending
glow stick in the eye. The only
explanation is that somebody threatened
to sue. Must have been a Police fan. A
girl takes off her glow goggles and stuffs
them down her shirt, but it’s no use. The
security officer points at them and
demands that she throw them in the trash
can.
“But it’s part of my bra!” she explains,
massaging her breasts, and lifting her
cleavage closer to his examining eyes.
A brilliant strategy, but it doesn’t work.
The man is made of stone, and soon the
glasses are in the garbage with all the
rest of the glowy things. You may have
won the battle, Police fans, but you will
not win the war.

The stage looks like a giant UFO, and
when The Lips begin to play, it is as
though they are beamed down from it.
Enormous balloons are released into the
crowd. Smoke rings boom out of a
cannon and fireworks ignite the sky. It
is visual overload and the music plays
through it beautifully. A few songs
through, though, Coyne stop the
momentum he has gained and begins to
lecture everyone about how we should
all vote. At first the crowd is into it.
Yes, we should all vote. Wooohooo!
Yes, we should bring our soldiers home
from Iraq and back to the music festivals
where they belong. Wooohoooo! But
then he plays a couple more songs and
begins to talk again, which prevents
anyone from becoming totally immersed
in the music. This is doubly
disappointing, because in that earlier
press conference, Coyne specifically
stated that politics and music should stay
separate.
“I don’t necessarily like that we mix
politics and music sometimes,” said
Coyne, “Bonnaroo is about, ‘take some
acid and have a good time.’ Whereas
politics are serious. They’re not
something you want to handle on 10 hits
of acid.”

Acid or no, politics are not something
you can handle when they are
continually interrupting the flow of a
show. And as the lecture drones on, a
feeling of disappointment begins to set
in. All the waving balloons and stage
lights. The UFO and all of the crazy
dancing Santas. They’re all diversions.
None of this is real. None of it is an
organic extension of the music. It’s all
an intricate web of distractionary tactics
that serve to keep the audience from
noticing that the performance itself is
really not all that great. The music is
beautiful, but the stage presence of the
individuals who make it is lacking. It
was the same way at Red Rocks when
they opened for Ween, and everyone
thought it must be a fluke. If The Lips
were headlining, people mused, it would
have been different. They just didn’t
want to show Ween up. But there is no
one to be polite to tonight. The illusion
is exposed. The jig is up. We have seen
the man behind the curtain.
All that having been said, the fact
remains that The Flaming Lips are
probably the most brilliant composers of
concept albums since Pink Floyd.
Yoshimi is a true heroine who actually
does teach real life robots how to love.
And The Soft Bulletin makes you want to
check your chest to see whether or not
you’ve been shot by soft bullets. But the
shows need strip down and be about the
music again. And Wayne Coyne needs
to understand that his songs convey all
of his political philosophies in their
beauty, even if they don’t speak them
directly, so to speak them directly when
people are trying to enjoy the music is
redundant to the point of annoyance.

The Stripes.

For White Stripes fans, the slow-drip
moments since the Get Behind Me Satan
tour have been hand-wringing
ones.

Rumors, though readily dismissed, of the
band’s breakup
during Jack White’s
side sessions as co-front
man of the
Raconteurs; Jack’s marriage to someone
other than his big sister, Meg; a Coke
commercial; and the release of only one
track from the new album, Icky Thump,
prior to the Bonnaroo show, when at
least two concurrent points of origin
would be required accurately determine
the direction in which The White Stripes
have been sailing since their last
transmission: the cumulative effect of all
of these events is an unshakeable sense
of worried uncertainty. Are The White
Stripes really still with us? Will they
still be able to reconstruct the blues from
its raw bone roots and blast it down the
throats of our ears in the form of
enlightened voodoo, eye of newt,
newborn witchcraft, or are they just
going to go through the motions and ride
the momentum of a dying moment for
one last and awkward goodbye.
The Stripes take the stage in a back draft
explosion of frenzied guitar that burns
down the dust and sends the setting sun
reeling backwards on its heels. The
torrent gradually works itself into
something familiar and Jack’s high-strung
voice tears through the distortion,
as he sings, “Dead leaves and the dirty
ground, when I know you’re not
around…” and in an instant every last
doubt of the doubtful disintegrates until
nothing is left but a conduit of sound
drawn tightly between stage and
audience. And anyone who dismisses
Meg’s icky thump drumming due to its
technical simplicity is missing the point
entirely. The White Stripes are
elemental. Guitar, drums, voice. Red,
white, black. Bare bones De Stijl. A
particle accelerator of soul to sound to
crowd, Soul to Sound to Crowd, SOUL
to SOUND to CROWD and so on and so
forth ever growing ad infinitum. The
White Stripes have the gift of giving
birth to new sound in each new moment
and in this new moment, they prove that
they are more than survivors of the
unforgiving Cycle of the music industry.
They operate entirely outside of it,
oblivious and immune to its influence,
and as a result, they can pet the beasty
on the nose without being devoured.

The Headliners

At an event as massive as Bonnaroo,
there is one test that can be administered
to determine the quality of the
headlining acts. Is the band able to
capture the attention of those at the very
back of the venue, and keep them tuned
in? For Tool, the answer was, yes, most
of the time. For The Police, no. For
Widespread Panic, also, no, not really.
But it was the last night and everyone
was exhausted, so Widespread had their
work cut out for them.

In comparison with last year, each of
these bands had their counterpart. For
Tool it was Radiohead. Both bands have
a dark element to their music that works
well with the darkness and the eeriness
of having so many people in one place.
But Tool lacks the balance that
Radiohead has, and is content to simply
bludgeon its fans with darkness all night
long. One of the impressive things about
Radiohead in 2006 was their ability to
lead you through a range of emotions
while always maintaining that core
Radiohead sound. The Police flat out
failed to fill the shoes of Tom Petty, and
no further comparison is necessary. “De
do do do, De da da da, is all I want to
say to you.” As for Widespread vs. Phil
and Friends. They were both fun.
Widespread can stay.

This is the End Back at the bus, there is a satisfied
feeling of accomplishment among all of
the Colorado crew. The troops are
drained but content as they sip away at
their drinks. The hacking kennel cough
affectionately called Bonnafloo becomes
more noticeable, as the disease begins to
take hold. It is the result of breathing in
pound after pound of dust and sharing
port-o-lets
with half the known universe.
Tree is there as he has been off and on
throughout the weekend, still spreading
his love and happiness, and we notice
that he is not coughing. Conversation
turns to philosophy and evolution as we
imagine what the world would be like if
The Boognish prophecy of the Pale
Horseman were to come true. We
imagine a race of people just like Tree
who come and go with the wind,
slouching towards Bonnaroo to be born.
We call them Treeroosapiens and give
them super powers. They have built-in
dust filters and the power to negotiate
crowds at a full sprint, stepping nimbly
next to heads of passed out hippies in the
grass, as well as the power to use drugs
as tools to more deeply understand their
minds and hearts and those of others in
the same way that primitive humans
used primitive tools to master their
physical surroundings.

In the morning the bus is packed and
loaded and we take it for a single lap
around the entire camp area to say
goodbye, and to hold onto this moment
for as long as possible before returning
to reality. As we head towards the exit,
Tree realizes that the time has come for
him to decide whether or not he is going
to come home with us. He decides he
wants to stay in Tennessee for a while
longer and we say goodbye, assuring one
another that our paths will cross again
soon. For Tree, there is no transition
back to reality, and as Bonnaroo begins
to slip into the past, we realize that there
doesn’t necessarily have to be a
transition for any of the rest of us either.
It seems like so many people want to be
free, but so few are actually are. It
should be so easy, but for many of us, it
is so complicated. All we have to do is
to carry this experience, this mindset,
and this sense of connectedness along
with us to our jobs and our homes, and
our families and friends and soon we
will all find ourselves simply living for a
living and spreading happiness and love
everywhere we go.