by allison v
Today is Sunday, marking the last day of the festival. I’m overwhelmed with sadness that another Bonnaroo has come and is about to leave again, but I am very ready to get home, especially since I had absolutely no sleep last night, all thanks to Kanye West.
So Check this out. Kanye West was given a 8:15-9:45 time slot Saturday night, but being the utter pompous diva that he is he turned down this well chosen set-time and refused to play anywhere else but the main stage late night. So Bonnaroo gave him a new slot that had never been played before in the history of the festival. He was supposed to start playing this morning at 3:15-4:45am. Because of this first ever late night main stage show, all weekend we kept hearing more and more great stories about the Kanye show to come: “Daft Punk designed the lighting,” “Daft Punk’s making an appearance,” “No lights all glow sticks,” on and on.
The reality of the situation played out like this- he made everyone sit and wait in the cold dew of the morning until 4:45am at which point the audience started booing from waiting entirely too long for what was about to happen. I’m still not entirely clear what ensued before my eyes simply because of the sheer ridiculous-ness of it. Things I do know: there was a space ship involved, Kanye West talking dramatically to a robotic voice, a lot of very bad repetitive music, a space suit costume, and a very very unhappy audience. He made absolutely no apologies about starting late, in fact he made a couple comments about how his show is worth the wait and we were lucky (no words!) The concert quickly emptied out and within the first twenty minutes the audience had decreased by half.
At one point I looked behind me at a hill that in the beginning had been crowded by people, but instead of finding a cluster of people or even just a few stragglers, the only thing in sight was a blueberry of a man perched on top of a mountain just watching Kanye dance his little space suit off. For that moment in time it was just a blueberry and Kanye, together at last. (look at the picture of the guy at the top of this article.) I guess in the end, it was what it was, and there really isn’t that much to expect out of a Kanye concert to begin with.
Kanye’s huge bust of a show aside, yesterday was a cool and muddy day. Cool as in meant to be taken as a pun. We spent the majority of our morning walking around talking with Bonnarooinans. We met this couple, who were moseying about stark naked and painted. They were more than eager to have pictures taken of the marijuana leaves painted on their juicy star fruits of a butt-hole and the blue elephant that was painted on the man’s penile area. And, that’s just a glimpse of the oddities we encountered. Eventually we made it over to the Avett Brothers who strummed away to their hearts content, In fact, they strummed so hard that I saw four guitar strings get changed on the steel guitar and bass within the first thirty minutes of the concert. When the foot tapping and leg kicking finally died down, we headed over to the cinema to catch “Heavy Metal in Baghdad” a movie that Vice just released this year about the only heavy metal band in Iraq. It was really a well put together film worthy of being checked out.
As the night faded in it got progressively colder and colder, making it the coldest I have ever been at Bonnaroo. When we got to the “This tent” stage things started to warming up pretty quickly. Before Chromeo took the stage we were able to hang out with Dave Macklovitch who seemed more than happy to hear how excited we were about the show. Actually, he just seemed excessively pumped anyway. While they played a serious dance party of neon, ray-bans, and glow sticks ensued. We made our way up to the photo pit in the very front, and had our own private dance party, while Daniel got some great pictures, and I tossed all the balloons that the audience dropped in front of the gate back their way.
Upon our exit of the show, we caught the tail end of the nightly fire show by the burlesque act which was resembled something right out of a Tim Burton film. As fire twirlers with Mohawks or garter belts, men on stilts, a psychotic fireman, and a trio metal grinding beat making guys threw metal sparks out from the center with their saws and metal sheets. By the end of the show, I found myself strangely very attracted to most of the burlesque act, and if that’s wrong then I don’t think I wanna be right. The most intense part was when the man on stilts attempted to spit out fire but I guess had too much in his mouth and had to slap himself in the face repeatedly before he became the human torch.
From there I wish I could say the night continued be amazing, but then Kanye happened. But, we already know how much of a mess that turned out to be. On the way back to the tent though we did catch a glimpse of some pretty sever late night weirdoes. We saw the most cracked out girl EVER sitting and starring wide eyed ahead with a look of pure intensity. Then we ran into one of our neighbors from the campsite who we are now convinced is a drug addled born-again Christian who wanted us to make him pancakes and told us the next decent concert we could catch was at the Huddle House. Basically, we didn’t know what the hell he was jibber-jabbering about.
The festival finishes up today with performances by Orchestra Baobab, Aimee Mann, Robert Plant and Allison Krauss, and Broken Social Scene. Then I’ll be headed for home for as much sleep and air conditioning my body can take in.
