BY CHARLES GRAY AND MORGAN SWANK | The reigning champ of American music festivals happened this past weekend, leaving in its wake lengthy documentation of great performances, memorable moments, and a lingering afterglow (aftertaste? aftersmell?) somewhere between Burning Man and a late-’90s MTV Spring Break special.
This year marked the 12th iteration of the festival, so we thought why not go twice as hard and give you the 24 best moments of Bonnaroo 2013. Stupid sunglasses, Teletubby outfits, and an ignorance of 90% of the better acts not required.
24. Satirical cover king Weird Al conducted a fast-paced comedy assault late Saturday Night. His show was sewn together from splices of video bits from years past, which gave Al the chance for costume changes between “I’m Fat,” “Polka Face,” and “Yoda.” Not to be satisfied with one set, Weird Al had an active weekend…
23. Bluegrass can be a real hit or miss with me. I appreciate the twangy banjo solos, but it takes someone incredibly talented to be able to whip out a song in the bluegrass genre for me to appreciate it. Surprisingly, the comedians have this down to a science. First, it was Steve Martin, and now, The Hangover and The Office funnyman Ed Helms reigns supreme.
Bringing his banjo and The Lonesome Trio to Bonnaroo 2013, Helms laid down a set to remember on the That Stage with his Bluegrass Situation Superjam. Helms was particularly friendly with the crowd to talk about his Southern roots, saying he grew up “just down the road” in Atlanta, Georgia, while his mother is from Nashville, Tennessee “so this is right in the middle, and it feels like home.”
22. Hands-on beatmaker Araab Muzik played early in the weekend, sporting one of the better sets of Thursday. Showing that people who make hip hop instrumentals can do more than just slide a crossfader, Araabmuzik’s set was an intense barrage of midi mayhem, throwing new takes on notable radio bangers. Just a few weeks ago, this dude suffered a gunshot wound during a failed robbery, and this past weekend he was destroying his MPD with fervor.
21. Delta Rae is one of those bands that just keeps growing in talent and popularity. I decided to stop by their set after hearing rave reviews from the media moguls backstage, and I[Morgan] was not disappointed in the slightest. Even though it seemed like everyone had a McCartney hangover from Friday night, Delta Rae was the cure by crooning through a cover of “Oh Darling!” during their set. Every song was just as spectacular as the last, and it was definitely a highlight performance for the last day of the festival.
20. Saturday morning showcased an intimate setting with soft-spoken Patrick Watson. Watson’s composition is a solid structure built with equal helpings of post-rock emotionalism and compositional references to American music of centuries past. At one point, the band left their spots behind their amps and mics to surround one microphone center stage to create an intimate performance, including a crowd sing-a-long to “Man Like You.”
19. Solange is my favorite Knowles sister. There, I said it. With her mega-cool vibe and soulful indie R&B songs like staple “Losing You,” it’s hard compare her to anything else around today. And nobody can touch that flawless hair. It seems like we weren’t the only ones that can appreciate what Solange has to offer because she performed twice on Saturday—first appearing up to sing “Two Weeks” with her pals Grizzly Bear, then in the late night Superjam at midnight for “Killing Me Softly.”
18. Electronic artists at festies tend to run rampant off the notion that the only thing they might be able to do is a raved-out DJ set. Enter Fourtet. The man known for his intellectual angle on what people call “dance music” showed that he could do more than just “drop beats.” Fourtet’s set was a sound collage of steady builds, locked grooves, and delicate washes of melodic textures.
17. Anyone who was in the press tent on Saturday got a “surprise” minimalist set from the boys of Portugal. The Man, and honestly, it was one of the best performances of the festival. Before announcing the band, the head of Bonnaroo’s publicity team said, “This band is only beginning. They’re going to be huge this year.” Their main performance later in the evening helped explain why he was absolutely right. Generating a large crowd, the band drowned out any sound on the neighboring stages during their, set causing even more of a buzz throughout the farm. It didn’t hurt that the band was joined by Weird Al on accordion for a song, either.
16. The Dirty Projectors have the studied musicianship of performers twice their age. Not only is Dave Longstreth quick with his unique guitar twangs and complex finger picks, the triple harmonies provided by the lady projectors Amber Coffman, Haley Dekle, and Olga Bell are dead-on. Fan favorites like “Stillness is the Move” and “The Socialites” were executed with perfection, while left-field song choice “Fucked For Life” stole the show with a rearranged structure that now includes Coffman on selected choruses.
15. Everything about Kendrick Lamar’s set was fantastic. I [Morgan] started off backstage in a hammock as usual for my Bonnaroo experience, but upon hearing the crowd and Lamar going really hard on the stage in front of me, I had to go see what the noise was all about. I arrived at the side of the stage only to be surrounded by some well-known celebrities grinding and writhing to hits like “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe” and “Fuckin’ Problems,” so naturally I joined in for solidarity. My mind was blown and my hips didn’t survive the rest of the festival, but it was worth it. The sea of people in front of him pretty much took over for the finale of “Swimming Pools (Drank),” but Kendrick Lamar was the star of Sunday hands down.
(Full disclosure: I only chose the photo below because you can totally see me on the top tier of the side of the stage in a ridiculous hat.)
14. I’ve had friends talk about how great Alt-J is live, building a sense of “you’re definitely over-selling it” somewhere in the recesses of my mind. Luckily, I was overwhelmingly wrong. Alt-J‘s spot-on performance on Thursday night proved to be the weekend’s first major performance. An Awesome Wave was featured extensively, with “Intro” working as one hell of a harbinger to their sound and what Bonnaroo could offer after the sun went down.
13. Everyone’s favorite TV dad is still as vulgar and raunchy as ever, so don’t worry. Bob Saget came to Bonnaroo this year to perform in the Comedy Tent on Sunday afternoon. Though I didn’t get to see the show due to the need to thrash my body around to Kendrick Lamar (see #15), I[Morgan] did get the chance to catch up with Mr. Tanner himself for an intimate panel interview backstage before his performance. Upon being asked why he wanted to perform at Bonnaroo this year, Saget responded with “Well, my friend Lewis Black always told me I needed to perform here. I feel like for years I was portrayed as the nice dad character, which is complete bullshit. Coming here I can just say whatever the fuck I want, and people love it because they love that Bob Saget—the real Bob Saget. Also, I’m really happy to be at Bonnaroo because here the people literally urinate Ecstasy on you, I think. I’m happy about that prospect.”
I guess it’s important to mention that John Stamos was also in attendance, with Saget bringing up his Full House family later in the interview and during his show later in the day. I didn’t get to talk to Stamos myself, but I got to dance close to Uncle Jesse at a show later. Yeah, you read that right. My 6th grade self was pretty pleased too.
12. Shortly after the Death Grips set was over, I saw this 5-foot-tall girl walk out of the pit with blood smeared across her right cheek… and a smile from ear to ear. Death Grips was an incredibly demanding show that the audience ate up with fervor. Seriously, people got crazy buck to this kid bouncing around with the energy of a bear that had the energy of 10 bears. Even though Zach Hill wasn’t in tow, the crowd wasn’t phased and matched the passionate presence of MC Ride. “Get Got” was an easy stand out, but really, the whole show was crazy brutal and something you’ll want to catch next time it comes to a venue near you.
11. We love JEFF the Brotherhood so much that we caught both of their sets at Bonnaroo this year. As fellow Nashvillians, brothers Jake and Jamin did Tennessee justice with the usual energetic and crazy-as-shit set expected from the duo. The amazing thing about JEFF is that even in 100-degree heat in the middle of the day, they somehow managed to get the audience thrashing, moshing, and crowd surfing as soon as the first notes of a song were struck. Not only that, but guitarist and vocalist Jake Orrall sacrificed his own body to the sweat-drenched, heat-exhausted crowd more than once during both sets over the weekend like it was no big deal. On the second show in the much bigger This Tent on Sunday afternoon, the began their hit “Hey Friend” after wishing their father Bob a Happy Father’s Day. Even punks have a soft side at Bonnaroo. Thanks for shredding so hard and doing Nashville proud, boys.
10. Well into the promotion of their 4th studio album Shields, Grizzly Bear is a well-oiled machine well-versed in accuracy of performance and artistic intention anytime they grace the stage—and Bonnaroo was no different. “On a Neck, On a Spit,” “Gun-Shy,” and “Cheerleader” were all played with overt skill, but the afternoon’s standout was when they dropped “Two Weeks,” backed by fellow Bonnarooian Solange.
9. You know when you hear a collaboration between two artists, and you just have to stop and say, “Yes, that’s it! That’s what the world has been missing!” ? Well, forget all you thought you knew and just replace whatever you were thinking with David Byrne and St. Vincent. It’s like this duo was born to perform together from the inner-workings of David Lynch’s dream world. Everything from the beautiful melodies and harmonies of David Byrne and Annie Clark to the haunting green and red light shows, down to the robotic dance moves, left the audience both unnerved and overly excited.
At one point, my friend Allison leaned in next to me and said, “If you were to do LSD right now, you probably wouldn’t survive this performance.” In fact, the performance itself was like one giant LSD trip played out on stage with music. The highlights were the raucous performances of Talking Heads hit “Burning Down the House” and the band’s exit from the stage with a choreographed New-Orleans-style-Mardi-Gras-parade-like jazz tune that continued to fade into the distance as the band kept playing backstage. It was truly a performance from beginning to end, and if you haven’t had the chance to catch the duo live, do it immediately.
8. Okay, let me just go ahead and get this out of the way: I [Morgan] threw my hip out at R Kelly’s Bonnaroo set. It was somewhere between opening with “Ignition (Remix)” and the point at which he began to freestlye slow jam about having a lady wipe his sweaty face. That’s literally all he sang about for about five minutes, and it’s just as weird and sexual as you can imagine. R. Kelly opened his set by descending from the rafters while a gospel choir sang heavenly backup hymns from the stage. Followed by a moment of silence and confusion, the show began full swing in sexy slow jams and Kanye covers.
Now, I’ve had a lot of surprising experiences in my life, but literally nothing comes close to being in the middle of a crowd of 20,000+ predominantly white kids when “Bump n Grind” starts being played live. The things I saw cannot be unseen, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. There’s probably going to be another crowd of Bonnaroo-goers in the world in about 9 months. Thanks for that, R. Kelly. Not to leave on a joking note, Kelly said goodbye to the audience through a soliloquy of heartfelt sentiments concerning music bringing people together, just before he let loose with “I Believe I Can Fly” and most likely caused several thousand attendees to cry like little children going to see the theatrical premiere of Space Jam.
7. If you thought Reggie Watts couldn’t be any cooler than he already is, you were dead wrong. While filming Episode 4 of his new JASH webisode “Social Music Experiment: Can Music Get You High?” Watts and assistant Asif took part in sending an “Ultimate Ears” UE Boom Speaker into space via giant balloon while wearing astronaut attire. Being there first-hand to witness it was pretty awesome, and I was able to catch up with Reggie and Asif after the launch to learn more about the experiment and overall Bonnaroo experience. Not only did the scientific duo do the near-impossible by sending music into space, but they spoke about their previous episodes, including “Can Music Get You Laid?” which concluded in indecisive results according to Watts. They also had plans to destroy Bonnaroo’s famed Silent Disco by starting an actual disco right outside of it with Asif adding, “Wu-Tang Clan probably lost their invitations.” When being asked about playing for the 10th Anniversary of the Comedy Tent, Watts vaguely stated, “I just want to accomplish everything in life I haven’t yet. That’s the goal. I guess.”
6. Something that separates the momma and the poppa acts from the several dozen other performers that get lost in the wash is the way they handle the stage. The xx were one of the best examples of crowd controllers, building striking imagery of strict silhouettes against smokey bright white lights. Romy Madley Croft sang better than their recorded work gives her credit for, and Jamie xx was murdering on the pads, making performances of “Sunset” and “Fiction” easy candidates for Bonnaroo standouts.
5. RZA, GZA, Method Man, and the rest of the Wu-tang Clan provided one hell of a show in the first half of Bonnaroo. Past a certain Knighted ex-beatle, Wu-Tang had arguably the largest impact on the audience, who lovingly screamed “Cash Rules Everything Around Me” and “Bring Da Ruckus!” along with the killa bees with a sense of tenacity of which most shows were completely absent. Later in the evening, members of Wu-Tang showed up to the Bonnaroo super jam showing off some rhymes as Method Man and special guest Redman (maybe jokingly?) announced the production of How High 2.
4. It seems to come with great ease that Animal Collective proves they can be more heady and obscure than you and still have hundreds in the audience singing along. Busting out their full mouth and teeth stage setup from the Centipede Hz tour, AnCo played a lengthy set of textured pop tunes, including a guitar version of “I Think I Can” and a special take of “Purple Bottle” that paid homage to Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” Oh, and Police Academy’s Michael Winslow introduced the fourtet with his famous vocal sound effects colored with psuedo samples of Pink Floyd and broken car alarms, providing arguable the best intro of the weekend.
3. There’s really not much to say about a Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers show that hasn’t been said in the past. The man has still got it, and everybody knows it. Though Tom and his Heartbreakers closed out the festival in pouring rain and distant lighting bolts, the crowd didn’t care. Hearing “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” live in the flesh was more of a life highlight than a Bonnaroo highlight, and judging by all the Mary Jane dancing in the air with the first plucked guitar string, I’m assuming everyone else felt the same way. Not even the rain can stop a bunch of middle-aged hippies from enjoying the sounds of one of the greatest songwriters of all time. Definitely a good choice to close out a weekend of throwbacks and reunions from the past decades. A+ for Tom Petty.
2. “Let’s get weird” is a chant heard around festival grounds as days get long in the tooth and the more adventurous acts take the stage. For those who were serious, none provided a better vehicle for an otherworldly headspace than Icelandic goddess Bjork, who was put in full context when she arrived on stage in a pseudo-pinhead mask and alien skin dress. With a laundry list of pop hits juxtaposed against harsh, almost dissonant bangers like “Declare Independence” and “Nattura,” Bjork showcased her amazing ability to push an audience to the brink, yet still give them enough to hold onto. She held the stage with grace, commanding the audience’s attention with ease through “Hunter,” “Hidden Place,” and a minimalist version of “One Day” that only featured her vocals and percussion work on a hang drum. Accompanying Bjork was a 14-member female choir, a sound manipulator behind a computer and a few synths, and a percussionist triggering midi hits, creating an entirely live show.
One of the most stand-out aspects of Bjork’s show was the sound. Since America’s sudden realization that dance music makes good shows, sub-frequencies have become an integral aspect of a live electronic show. Not to be outdone by straightforward dance acts, Bjork had one of the best low-end games I’ve ever seen. Through intriguing visuals, amazing sound, and an undeniable performance, Bjork pumped her fists in the air with ferocity as she belted out ballads, all the while holding the audience safely in the palm of her hand.
1. If you followed our tweets for the weekend or any music publication covering the festival, it’s probably safe to say that Sir Paul McCartneyy would be number one on our list for Bonnaroo highlights. Again, I should preface this by saying that by the 5th or 6th song, in I [Morgan] was in tears out of shear amazement by the Macca on stage. Bonnaroo 2013 was the “Year of the Tears,” apparently. I digress. I’ve seen Paul live four times now, and I’ve openly wept each time in his presence. Covering hits from his Beatles days to the Wings era to the present, McCartney awed the Bonnaroo crowd of over 80,000 people for nearly three hours. Paying special tribute to the late, great John Lennon with a moving rendition of “Here Today” and an equally special tribute to George Harrison with a ukulele cover of “Something,” I’m sure I wasn’t the only one in attendance with tears streaming down my face. Even in his early seventies, McCartney still has the tenacity and energy of his much younger self and doesn’t mind showing that off. Amidst the stories he told of Jimi Hendrix and his time “Back in the U.S.S.R,” it was a night that took me back in time that I’ll never forget.
We already can’t wait for next year.
