More Bonnaroo (maybe I'll finish it today)

I think this is the part where we go to the mushroom fountain. I mean, we'd been there several times before but I didn't really have any reason to mention it. It's basically a big, mushroom-shaped fountain, painted in a black and white checkerboard pattern. Here's a picture, though it isn't one I took. (Credit to Stef.)
So yeah, big mushroom. The water gets progressively dirtier as the weekend goes on, but it doesn't really stop anyone from ducking into the fountain to cool down. This time is different, though. There's a slow realization that some fat drunken man is masturbating in the fountain. Naturally, the fountain quickly empties. We aren't planning on staying long anyway, since Ziggy Marley is starting momentarily, but the creepy dude really clinches it.

Over at the What stage, we lay down our blanket and relax, bathing in the sun and the reggae. Well, Teal and I do. Kelsey goes into a trance, enthralled by Ziggy. Meanwhile, Teal lends out her pipe again, and gets her first trinket added on: a piece of red string. It's not much, but it's a start. Unsurprisingly, Ziggy plays a Bob Marley cover; it's Jammin'. Good times. We stay for all of Ziggy's set then head over to This Tent to catch the end of Fountains of Wayne. As always, they manage to rock a little more than one would think they're capable of. Somehow, we manage to hear pretty much all of their classic songs despite missing half of their set. We get even luckier as we follow their show up with the end of Damien Rice at the Which stage. We're uncertain whether we're at the right place when we first arrive as the band is playing an upbeat acoustic jam, but the next song is his finale, The Blower's Daughter, which is pretty much the only reason anyone even knows who Damien Rice is. The song seems a bit incongruous blasting out over the massive field; its intimacy somewhat disrupted by the sheer magnitude of the crowd. Damien Rice should never be allowed out of tiny night clubs. Sucks, but that's the price you should pay for playing that sort of music.

The nonstop concert bombardment continues back at the What Stage where Ben Harper is playing. The constant migration back and forth is turning the air into a permanent dust cloud. I suspect I'm coming down with some variant of the black lung. Ben Harper is good, but I'm just exhausted at this point, and I fall asleep to the sounds of his slide guitar. I wake up just in time for John Paul Jones to make a guest appearance; the band breaks into a solid rendition of Dazed and Confused. Jones is Saturday's unofficial guest of honor, it seems, after his superjam the night before.

Confident that, seeing as I am not that familiar with Ben Harper, nothing in the set will top the Zep cover, we return to the Which Stage to catch Franz Ferdinand. To be honest, I find them a bit sloppy, and the mixing is a little weak. That said, the music is great, but we are too tired to dance. We listen to about half the set before giving up and going to the tent. It has been an exhausting day, and we haven't even gotten to the Police's set.

We eat much-needed food (and alcohol... it's still Bonnaroo!) and we hear the opening riff to Message in a Bottle. It takes us a little longer than I'd like, but we go back to the What stage for the third time. The Police play a killer set, about which plenty has already been written in the blogosphere. I don't feel like I need to say much, or am qualified to (since I'm not particularly knowledgeable about the Police), but I definitely enjoy myself. A slight problem: the backup vocals are mixed far too low, which takes a lot of the oomph out of the Roxanne chorus. It doesn't really matter, though, because they still tear it up. I tease Teal and Stef relentlessly when they leave early to go take a nap before the final show of the night.


The final show is, of course, The Flaming Lips, who have been given a tremendous block of the schedule, from 12:00 to 2:30. Teal and Stef say they'll catch up with Kelsey and me (along with Teal's friend Steve), as they're still asleepish. We arrive early and people are tossing laser pointers into the audience. The people who get them set about aiming them all at the stage's logo, creating a very cool effect. I suspect it is some sort of promotional tool, but Wayne Coyne appears on stage and informs us that the laser pointers will be part of the Lips' show, and though he doesn't mind having them shined in his face (apparently that who destroying your sight thing is a myth) he'd appreciate it if we didn't shine them in other people's faces and if we saved the batteries for when we were actually supposed to use them. This deters approximately nobody from shining the laser pointers at the stage.

At midnight the lighting rig decends from the roof of the stage, revealing its true form. It's actually a UFO and the band comes out of a door in the front one by one. Finally, only Wayne is left. He emerges from the top of the spacecraft inside a giant bubble as if he's some strange future-hippie version of Glinda the Good Witch. The Lips' set is fantastic, and the lasers come in handy when Coyne brandishes some sort of weird hoola hoop that reflects them in a crazy way. The interesting thing is that the Lips have always been good at creating a spectacular live show, but the live music has always been trouble for them. Most of their stuff is so heavily produced that they can't accurately perform it live without the aid of a lot of recordings. The new album, on the other hand, is less dense and thus works much better in a live setting. In fact, I'd say it works better as a live performance than it does as a recorded album. Maybe.

The only problem with the Flaming Lips is that they have the misfortune of playing at the end of a LONG day and despite my status as a huge fan, I can't hold out. Kelsey and Steve have long since gone to bed and after about an hour, I too give up trying to stay awake and trudge back to the tent. On my way, I pass by Gov't Mule's show. They've got John Paul Jones out on the stage playing Living Loving Maid. I wonder whether the bands all have to get together and draw straws to see who gets which Zeppelin song. Then I pass out in the tent.