| Let
me tell you a little story about a man named Tadd, who went
to Tennessee, and about the time he had. He drove his wife
and his friend through the night like a foo’ and eight
hours later found himself at Bonnaroo!
 Now, for those of you who don’t know, Bonnaroo is a
three day music and arts festival about an hour south of Nashville
in Manchester, Tennessee. With music ranging from the Allman
Brothers Band to The Mars Volta and with art ranging from
making a bong out of an apple to making a bong out of... well,
anything actually. It was held on a 700 acre farm with plenty
of space for tent-pitching and some relegated areas for RV’s.
My wife, my friend Judas Tito, and I were participating in
the former. This was the fourth year for Bonnaroo and as such
there was lots of info to be had from past concert goers.
Our biggest concern was traffic. Everything we read was that
it was the worst with some people claiming moving only ten
miles in 15 hours. So we left the night before the campground
opened. We drove from central Ohio to Tennessee straight through
and stopped in traffic right at the exit we needed to take
to get off the highway. From there we drove almost exactly
four miles in two hours to where we would eventually pitch
our aforementioned tent. We hit a minor snag at the main gate
when they told us they needed to search our cooler for glass
containers. We promptly lost Judas’s bottles of vodka,
Seagram’s Seven, gin, and a bottle of rum. Thanks to
the quick thinking of my wife we were able to salvage a gallon
of beer from one of our favorite drinking holes back home.
Mad props, honey.
We finally get our camp set up at around 6:00am on Thursday
morning. We thought ourselves pretty damn smart for leaving
early until we realized there wasn’t jack shit to do
until the next day. We couldn’t even sleep after driving
all night because as soon as the sun came over the trees it
was approximately 110 degrees in our tent, and it was a two
person tent at that. (I had assured them it would be fine.
What they didn’t take into account however is that I
am an asshole.) We wondered around getting our bearings most
of the day. It was about a 20-30 minute walk to the venue
aptly dubbed Centeroo. That evening I saw a girl with no shirt
on and glow sticks dangling from her pierced nipples. Holla’.
It was a steady stream of campers coming in until Friday evening.
After it was all said and done, there were approximately 80,000
incredibly intoxicated crazy bastards fenced into a 700 acre
pen for the next three days. Yeah. Sweet mother of Christ
is right. And there were plenty of things to get intoxicated
on. Every fifteen yards someone was standing around saying,
“Headies, Mollys, Rolls.” Either they were drug
dealers or pimps. Judging from the antics of one college quarterback
from Florida after the Dave Matthews Band show, I’d
say the first one. It was like Escape From New York, only
without Kurt Russel, Ernest Borgnine, and Tony Papenfuss.
Look it up. Didn’t you watch Newhart?
 Once you got adjusted to the fact that there were going to
be no showers for three days, you were eating a 10-dollar
burrito, and some guy you don’t know gave you something
that made you feel like there were thousand of tiny spiders
crawling all over your head, you could relax and watch some
kick ass bands. We saw the Allman Brothers, The Black Crowes,
Kings of Leon, Joss Stone, Josh Ritter, The Drive-By Truckers,
Old Crow Medicine Show, O.A.R. and those are just the ones
I can remember. The music was so good, I almost didn’t
notice the virtual steady down pour that started Friday evening
and didn’t stop for the rest of the weekend. With enough
decent music, mushrooms, and glow stick garnished mammaries
you really don’t mind walking a mile or so mud six inches
deep. All in all it was a rewarding experience. We all had
a great time. We saw three days worth of awesome bands, our
tent stayed fairly dry, and I only woke up once with Judas
Tito’s finger in my butt. |
