Bonnaroo: music, heat, friendly people
By: Jill Chittum - Wichita Eagle
June 6th 2004 2:01am
If Woodstock happened before you were born, or you were there and don't remember it, now's your chance to get dirty, smelly, hungry and tired, all for the sake of the music.
And it's much closer to home.
Summer is the season for music festivals, and the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tenn., is probably the nearest match to the granddaddy of them all, Woodstock.
It's a 13-hour drive from here. The festival is June 11-13. Tickets are $164.50 and can be ordered online at www.bonnaroo.com.
This year's Bonnaroo will feature Dave Matthews and Friends, Trey Anastasio of Phish, the Dead and Bob Dylan, along with more than 70 regional acts playing day and night on six stages.
If you think you'd like to try it, but can't make up your mind, here's a quick checklist of things to consider:
You'll need a sense of humor and a lot of patience.
It'll be hot.
Traffic getting in and out will be brutal.
You won't get close enough to the stage.
You'll be tired from attending shows into the wee hours of the morning.
You'll run out of beer.
You'll have to use the same Port-A-Potties as thousands of other people.
But listening to legends like the Dead, Neil Young and James Brown, jam bands like moe. and Widespread Panic and guitar great Ben Harper will make all those headaches worthwhile.
Headlining acts play on the main stage, but five other stages feature small-market acts day and night.
After last year's festival, my husband and I returned to Wichita thinking we needed a vacation from our Bonnaroo vacation, but in the end decided it was worth the price of admission.
Six hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic greeted us as we tried to enter the festival site from the highway into Manchester. No horns honked, no fists raised, no middle fingers flashed -- just a great vibe. You're surrounded by 100,000 strangers, but they all act like good friends.
The festival features a well-trained corps of volunteers who direct traffic into the campsites.
Pay attention to them and to the people and activities around you. You'll learn the easiest ways to get from point A to point B, and most important, when the portable toilets get cleaned.
Trust me, you'll want to know.
You'll also want to take your own toilet paper.
We entered the festival grounds and were directed to our piece of real estate for the week, where we began to set up camp.
The super-loud, crazy electronica music that our neighbors played while setting up their camp would be the most annoying thing we encountered all week. They made us feel as if we were on some crazy reality show where the winners were the ones who set up camp the fastest. It got our hearts pumping.
Once festivalgoers get their tents up, the 700-acre farm 60 minutes southeast of Nashville becomes a tent metropolis. Flying a flag high above your campsite is a useful locator, but don't depend on it in the dark. Plan on spending a lot of walking time the first night or two getting lost.
Campsites all look the same, especially when there are thousands of them. Paths are marked with street signs, so pay attention to the names while walking.
Centeroo is the heart of it all. In addition to encompassing all of the stages, this year it will feature a cinema tent where movies will be screened 24 hours a day; jugglers, town criers and fire-breathers will roam the grounds; and there will again be a massive fountain, where we spent most afternoons cooling off.
You'll find tents selling licensed Bonnaroo mementos and a Bonnaroo-sanctioned food court.
But no self-respecting hippie festival would be without its share of bootleg material, whether it's $10 Bonnaroo T-shirts, 50-cent cans of beer or a hot breakfast for $2. In fact, I bought a scrunchie from a young woman after mine got blown out of my hair during the six-hour traffic jam!
Centeroo also has the Bonnaroo general store, so if you forgot something like toothpaste, sunscreen or ibuprofen, you're not out of luck.
There are water stations all over the campgrounds, and every morning you'll find much teeth-brushing, face-washing and even hair-washing by the most industrious and vain of the crowd.
Most people picture barefoot hippies in flowing dresses, but shoes are a good idea. Beer means beer bottles, and beer bottles mean broken glass on the gravel pathways and in the grass.
The music is great, the people are fun and the sun mostly shines. If you can stand being a dirty, stinky hippie for just a few days, you just might find you'll enjoy yourself.
Twenty years from now, friends of your children will think you're the "cool" parents when they hear a Bonnaroo story.
After all, you can take a long, hot shower as soon as you return to the real world.
Far out, man.
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 Copyright ©2004 Wichita Eagle. All Rights Reserved.
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