Bonnaroo Day 3: Free smokes and Ben Harper

Free smokes from Manchester's finest!

Day 3 started out by tweeting “Day 3 of #bonnaroo, 85 and humid. We need some rain.. Faaaack! Going to see triumph the insult dog.”  Walking over to Centeroo, a cop on a horse had busted people trying to sell cigarettes without permission.  Walking past, I heard “free cigarettes!” and pulled a quick about-face to get my free smokes from the mounted officer.  She was tossing them to people from a knapsack like she was throwing bread to villagers.  Speaking of cigarettes, one of my tweets around that time was “I haven’t had to #2 in three days. My body is awesome and knows how to survive #bonnaroo.”  It’s true.  Even with all the Jager and cigarettes, I never really felt the need to drop off the kids.  I’m pretty proud of that.

More walking around and I’m taken back by all the people walking around with blatant “Buying bud”, “Will trade for bud”, “Got bud?” signs hanging around their necks.  It was as if I was in vacation in a different country.  A very awesome country where wearing that sign will make a cop throw free packs of smokes at you.

Triumph the Insult Dog was a bit of a let down.  The jokes about Bonnaroo were very expected.  We know most of us smell bad, we know most of us have drugs on us.  I laughed a few times but only when actual comedians came out, like John Oliver from The Daily Show.  During the last act, half of the audience was leaving.  Then when I got home and started pouring over Bonnaroo news, they said Triumph knocked it out of the park.  Who are these zombie reporters?

Next up was Of Montreal, another group I’ve never heard of or seen.  They started the show by shouting something like “Are you ready for the most psychedelic show in the world?!?!” – had I been tripping and in the front row, I probably would not have been ready.  The music was pretty good…good enough for me to pirate at least.  The costumes were the trippy part, I assume.  They were frolicking and dancing around in weird spandex costumes with gas masks…some pig costumes…a costume with huge arms/hands…all sorts of things.  My stepmom helps backstage with costumes at concerts – she would have had the night of her life.  I would have liked to stay longer, but we wanted to get a good position to see Mars Volta who overlapped Of Montreal.

Of Montreal

At this point, Of Montreal made me fill up the 2gb card in my camera so I was sitting by a graffiti wall deleting dumb videos which made me lose track of my friend who I thought was in the porta-potty.  You can lose people right in front of your face around there.  I saw a guy peeing behind the porta-potties and wanted to take a picture of the ridiculousness…if it weren’t for Of Montreal filling up my card.

Mars Volta was insane.  We snatched up our usual spot by the soundstage which gave us a great view and nobody could stand in front of us.  We could even set our bags down inside the soundstage and relax a bit.  I met a guy who claimed his aunt was a photographer for Bonnaroo who was never able to meet up with him to get him backstage at shows.  I don’t know about you, but if I had an aunt like that, I’d plan months in advance to get backstage to my favorite shows.  Even if it was a short notice thing, I’d do most anything…all he was doing was standing there with his Alabama accent, talking about her.  He also mentioned that his aunt once dated Ben Harper when she lived above his apartment.  Even if he was lying, I still wouldn’t dismiss the lead.  I told him that if he was able to get backstage at Ben Harper, to give me a text and try to get me back there…under-the-table payment if necessary.  This is the first random person I gave my phone number out to.

He texted me later on to say he didn’t forget about me and he isn’t able to get a hold of his aunt…the reporter…who probably lives on her phone.

Back to Mars, the show was great.  Cedric, the vocalist, told a few funny jokes and was the most animated person I saw at Bonnaroo.  He’d be singing, stop, then run around doing handstands and jumping off stage equipment.  I tried for awhile to get a picture of him doing a handstand…I decided to take in the show instead.  Great times.

It would suck to be the keyboardist and see you're cut out of a photo

We hit up the Decemberists after Mars Volta ended.  I didn’t know them well enough (again) to know what song was playing…and it was the end of their set so I couldn’t even tell if I enjoyed their music.  Bummer.

Oh, important detail.  The previous day, we were able to sneak in about a ¼ of a Powerade bottle full of Jager.  We had an entire gallon back at the Jeep, so we weren’t making very much progress.  This day, we filled the Powerade bottle to the very top, wrapped it around my raincoat and strapped the raincoat to my camelbak.  We weren’t as lucky as the previous day when security let the crowd go in without search, and I stepped up to get searched.  The guy got around to searching my camelbak, unclipped the strap holding my raincoat and felt around the coat for a long time.  He looked at me and said “ok go ahead.”, I held in a sigh of relief and walked inside.  Full bottle of Jager for the day…woo!  By the end of Mars Volta, we were buzzing and half the Jager was gone.  We had to stay up until 2am so we had to ration the Jager out a bit more.

We hit up Bruce Springsteen, basically because you have to…I figured he’d do his new album, that one from The Wrestler.  He did a few of those songs, some old ones, but we weren’t really paying attention as we were hitting on these two girls.  You know what though?  I remember the conversation going really well and then we just left for some reason.  I’ll have to figure out why…

We got two beers each and headed for the Silent Disco.

Saw a stage with a girl spinning fire on the way.

Silent Disco is closed…and we have to wait around for an hour.  I remember that we were so perfectly drunk though, that we dominated the crowd and were talking to everybody around us.  A group of girls was laughing with us and joking around.  Some guy overheard I was in the Marines and started to ask me questions about it.  I gave my number to this girl who wanted to see Ben Harper together but was going to the bathroom (duh, should have went to the bathroom with her).  Ben Harper was starting in a half hour and the Silent Disco was just opening…I had to leave the crowd I had effortlessly won over.  My friend stayed behind because he was going to a different show at a later time and had a really good shot at the Silent Disco line girls.  I left for Ben Harper alone and drunk.

Quick note, after I left, my poor friend focused on one line girl who mentioned, right before they got inside, that her boyfriend was here (or was she married…or something…) and “you’re going to come dance with us, right?!” – boooooooo.  Unless she had friends that she was trying to hook up, she should die.

Ben Harper was the main reason I went to Bonnaroo.  It was an awesome show.  A few times, when there was a break in vocals in the song, the crowd would start shouting, screaming, wooing and wouldn’t let him sing again…you could tell it caught him off-guard a few times and the rest of the band was laughing and having a good time.  It was his new group (new to me at least) so I didn’t really know any of their songs.  As luck would have it, when they finished their last song…the crowd cheered them back out for an encore for about 10 minutes.  They played two old songs that everybody knew.  Great flipping time.

Singing 'Another Lonely Day'

I forget what show my friend was at while I was at Ben Harper, but after the shows we both went back to the tent.  I walked around for a little bit to get some food and take in the ambience of a few shows while I ate my pizza.  I remember wishing I had the energy to stay up for a few more hours so I can see more.  Just to sit down under a tree can be entertaining.

Also, let me tell you – walking from Centeroo to where our tent was sucked.  It was about 2 miles one way.  That night, I walked it alone.  I was incredibly buzzed though and I kept stopped at peoples’ tents who were performing their own shows.  They were doing country at one, I stopped at a guy singing reggae…the walk took almost an hour with all the stops I made.  What a good f’n day.