Bonnaroo Day 2: Enter the Jagermeister

Did I mention Manchester, TN reminded me of Iraq?  You really have to keep up on drinking water there…it’s a terrible place.  I saw a few people on the verge of one heat-related injury or another…and that’s how my second day started.  After throwing up all I could, I was completely emptied of water in the morning and had the entire day of sun ahead of me.  I was literally shaking when I stood up in the morning and felt like a crippled old man walking up a mountain.  My mission was to drink all the water I could during the day and not stop until I peed clear.

The first show of the day was Portugal The Man’s acoustic set.  Apparently they played the day before but we missed it…I’m not sure whether it was because we were in the car line or I was incapacitated in the tent, but I regret not seeing them because their acoustic set convinced me to get their CD when I got home.  It was a small show at Sonic Stage and just what I needed to get me back in the game.  It was the first show where I was mentally able to snap pictures of people in weird outfits which gave me something to do for the rest of our stay in Manchester.  I also finished an entire camelbak full of water but still didn’t have to pee because I was sweating so much.

After the show, I filled up my camelbak and we went to an airconditioned tent to learn how to scratch records.  When we walked in, it was as if the people working there had no idea what we were there for.  Let me give you a hint Statefarm (sponsors of the tent) – I was there to learn how to scratch records, get some bling and start my DJ career…not stand around like a jackass with you staring at me.  Within a few minutes, I found myself behind a set of two records, one for the instructor and one for the student…kind of like those student driver cars that have two wheels so the instructor can take over in case you fail terribly and make everybody leave the tent.  We played around for about 10 minutes and I was expecting to get my picture taken since the tent revolved around that sort of thing (they had laptops to upload your DJ picture to social networking sites)…but the guy just said “ok you’re done!” and that was that.  Then again, he did say we could go record our own mix at another station…but I was way too uncomfortable for that.  So sad that I prevented myself from boozing until nighttime.  Screw you, Statefarm…I don’t need your recording station OR your social media picture…I’ve got style – the likes of which would have brought that tent down.

We left to DJ tent and headed over to Gomez, standing around two sunbathing girls like vultures…very intimidated vultures.  Some guys walked up to the girls and asked for sunblock when I thought “damn! I should have asked for sunblock” and decided it was too late now because somebody already asked.  Fail.  Gomez was good though…and I ate my first real food there – chicken strips and fries.

We headed back to our tent for some reason…I really can’t remember.  Maybe it was to get some of the Jager we brought.  It must have been because that was the day that my friend put some Jager in a Powerade container to try to sneak it into Centeroo.  Sure, flasks would have done a better job at concealing, but when you’re planning to drink Jager all day, you have to pack in mass quantity.  We had bought the largest bottle of Jager possible and had to put it in an empty plastic gallon of water just to get it into the tent city because no glass is allowed.  Jager filled, we headed back through security.  As luck would have it, after waiting about 5 minutes, security just let the entire crowd in without checking anybody…just to get the line moving.  Jager successfully inside, we walked over to TV on the Radio at Which Tent.  Score.

The show was good, I was more than satiated and I had two camelbaks of water in me.  The only thing that could have been better would have been to see a girl on acid push her way into a mud pit, whip out a hula hoop and beckon the crowd to jump through the hoop into the mud.

Mud girl

She started to throw mud at her mud friends and everybody backed up and gave them a ton of room…which worked out for everybody since we now had a lot of breathing room instead of crammed shoulder to shoulder.  We had music and a mud show – Bonnaroo romance at its best.  It was time to bring out the Jager.

I had tried to meet up with a friend of mine’s roommate before TV on the Radio which didn’t work out because we were getting Jager while they were getting close to the stage.  We went to meet them after the show at a recycling center (Bonnaroo produced something like 65-70 tons of recyclables) but I had no idea what he looked like.  I decided to walk around in circles shouting “James!”  “James!” until he looked up from his phone and said hi.  We were going to see Beastie Boys after meeting up and were held back a little bit waiting for the rest of his crew to arrive.  They showed up, trumping our tiny amount of Jager with a full bottle of vodka…and I remember thinking that I finally belong in a Bonnaroo group.  Liquor friends.

Beastie Boys was packed when we got there.  We showed up about 3 songs into their set.  James’ friends were leading us through the crowd to get as far up as possible and I was doing pretty well at being the middle man – not losing the leaders and being tall for the followers…but I inevitably lost them and they did not turn back to get us.  The three of us were stuck behind a group of people and decided to call it camp.  I remember the Jager really kicking in for this show…joking with people around us.  I had joked to my friend at every show that I would put him up on my shoulders so he could see, never really considering that as an option.  Turning around, we saw a guy holding another guy up on his shoulders and laughed at the coincidence.

NAS was the Beastie Boys’ special guest and I would have been excited had I known who he was.  I couldn’t even pretend I knew who he was because I had no idea how to say “NAS.”  Still a good show…and they played a few old songs like Sabotage.  At the time, I thought we weren’t able to get closer because we wasted time grouping up with friends (who (un)intentionally ditched us), but being wiser now…we would have had to camp out hours before the show to get up front.

We sat around for awhile after that…I really don’t remember what we were doing.  My twitter said “Sitting under a tree recuperating from beastie boys. Life is good!”  My goal was to basically stay awake until 2am to see Paul Oakenfold and it was only 11:30…and we were out of Jager.  We walked around…doing something…must have been waiting for Phish to come on.  I’m not really a fan of Phish but nothing else was going on and I’ve never seen/heard them before.  Apparently they were THE band of Bonnaroo.  Try anything once, right?  We sat down to wait for them to come on a waaaaaaaaaaaaaaays away from the stage.  So far away that adventurous people had lawn chairs and blankets.  The Jager was wearing off, we were getting tired and the last thing we needed in an effort to stay awake was a jam band.  When they came on, the ambience was really the best thing about the show.  The lighting was awesome and everybody was throwing up glow sticks…it seriously looked like a sea of glowing sticks above people in the front.  Lots of laser pointers hitting balloons…a guy was juggling fire to the side of us…pretty good chill session.  We were getting really tired, texted James to see what he was doing and we all went to the Silent Disco.  I still remember James’ text when he said they were “going to the Silent Disco – the best invention in the world.”

Dancing to Russian techno

He really wasn’t lying.  Before going, I had no idea what it was…and if you don’t know, it’s a tented area with a DJ where you get wireless Bose headphones that are synced up to everybody else’s…and you dance.  To people outside the tent watching, it looks like you’re dancing to nothing.  Feeling like I was losing the Jager buzz, I slammed two beers on the way (Irish handcuffs!) to keep maintained.  I had a blast there.  There were tons of girls and they were playing some kind of Russian dance music.  The only regret was not taking off my camelbak… I didn’t yet trust the Bonnaroo crowd and had developed a slight addiction to water.  Had I not been dancing with an obnoxious sack of water on my back, with straps flopping up and down like an idiot, I might have gotten lucky.

Finally, it was time to go to the tent where Oakenfold will play…nice and early in an effort to get close to the stage.  When it started, it was awesome.  Paul Oakenfold and Ben Harper were the two shows I went to Bonnaroo for and I was blown away.  He rarely plays shows in the United States so seeing him in addition to everything else was awesome…it played to my natural tendency to be efficient.  Like a shopping spree of great music.  The tent turned into a rave with glow sticks flying everywhere so I picked a few off the ground and started to do some elementary-at-best moves with them when I realized that one was actually broken.  My eye started to get irritated from the glowing goo and I noticed my shirt was full of glowing specks.  I tossed the sticks on the ground and left the twirling to the professionals.  My friend was grooving and somehow a glow-ball landed in his fingers and impressed people around him…he gave the ball in classic father-son fashion to a guy in front of us who wanted the glow-ball like it was crack.  What a guy.

We drank too soon.  Raving started to feel like work and people started to become annoying.  Leaving Oakenfold was the hardest thing for me to do, but apparently he played until 4 or 5am…a time that we wouldn’t have been able to last until anyway.  At least we got to watch a few songs from Girl Talk on the way out which seemed like a far-superior show compared to Oakenfold.  People were all up on the stage and everybody I talked to prior to the two shows were saying Girl Talk was the one to go to.  I stuck to my guns and saw Oakenfold but Girl Talk would have been awesome.  Maybe next time.

That’s it for day 2.  We headed back to the tent after watching Girl Talk from afar and finally caught some sleep that wasn’t interrupted by puke.