10 Jun
My camera and I have a date with several bands and a chunk of muddy farmland. If I can actually get online (last year I couldn’t, really), I’ll check in here and at The Memphis Blog. Of course I will be tweeting. I imagine you are nearly unable to contain your excitement so I will hush up and get going.
23 Jun
It’s a little long and it’s edited rather jankily but you get what you pay for here at T&G, sweet thang. You get what you pay for.
Bonnaroo 2009 from Lindsey Turner on Vimeo.
21 Jun
If you’ve been with me for more than a year, you might recognize that title from a previous post or two. So if I get another sunburn, I am going to have to come up with another way to talk about it. Yawn!
This particular sunburn’s not so bad, all things considered. Sure, my ears have peeled and my part’s flaking like your popular prom date, but I haven’t had to coax myself into a cold shower where the drops of rain feel like missiles sent by Satan himself to obliterate your nerve endings. I attribute this small comfort to the fact that I coated myself in waterproof SPF 70 lotion every day at Bonnaroo. Otherwise, I would probably have been parked in a bathtub of ice water for the past few days.
Completely unrelatedly, are there any attractive male youths out there with skin-peeling fetishes? Apply within.
21 Jun
So, despite my attempts to get actual rest on Friday night, I ended up accumulating perhaps three hours of real sleep, at which point the tent became uninhabitable, so I hunkered down and ate strawberries and blueberries in a tiny triangle of shade created by a nearby truck parked close to our tent. Once Amber got up and going, we headed into Centeroo to meet up with Maggi, who was craving a tofu scramble. I split from the group shortly afterward and headed back into the bustle to see what I could see. I’m a sucker for seeing, see.
I headed toward the media area to try once more to get onto a wifi network so I could file some shit, but once again I was rebuffed. So I hung around during a press conference and got to listen to Margaret Cho, Jimmy Buffett, Robert Kennedy Jr., and others just sort of shoot the breeze. So bizarre, this being-a-part-of-the-media thing.
Saturday is now somewhat a blur in my memory. I remember shooting Bon Iver and Of Montreal — clusterfucks, both, because the pit was so crowded — and then finding Amber on a blanket and passing out next to her in the sunshine. We met up with Maggi and the gang and I procured an enormous slice of pizza, and we sat on the grass and made fun of Elvis Costello (I know, I know, but we were delirious). Then there was nothing else to do but meander toward the main stage for The Boss, who played a three-hour set during which Amber rattled off untold numbers of factoids passed down to her from her boyfriend Craig, Bruce Springsteen’s No. 1 fan. No, really.
It was during Bruce Springsteen’s set that I saw the most bizarre and unsettling thing I saw all weekend. Directly behind us, some kid just randomly started having a bit of a freakout on the ground — writhing, kicking, thrashing freakout. It looked a little like a seizure, so naturally we stared for as long as we could to try to determine if the kid needed help. His friends were around him and they seemed unfazed, so we held tight. After one final explosive spaz attack, he collapsed into a heap and laid still for several minutes. He was breathing. And then he got up and started dancing with his pals. Yep. Apparently the kids love tripping balls to Americana rock (which must, as we surmised, be prefaced by a count: “One, two, three, four!”).
I don’t *get* Bruce Springsteen but a hell of a lot of people do, and he made a ton of people ecstatic that night. So good on him. Even if he did have trouble hoisting himself up onto the barricade. (The camera caught that!)
Then came the Yeasayer/MGMT bill, which I was looking SO forward to. I shot Yeasayer from the pit and it was beautiful and amazing (I luff them), even if their vocals were all over the damn place. Their show was still damn fine, and I’m not sure if any other act’s percussion section could have rivaled theirs.
Then came MGMT. I tried to make it into the pit but the security guys got pissed and overwhelmed and kicked all of us out, leaving only like nine photographers to shoot. FUCKING LAME. I retreated back to my standing spot with my pal David and we both quickly realized that something awful had happened that that their sound was tinny and tiny and bottled and quiet and disappointing. We suffered through four songs before we left. And it pains me to even admit that, since I am a HUGE MGMT fan. But it felt a little phoned in, I’ll be honest. And that’s a shame; the crowd was fucking enormous. Probably the biggest crowd they’ve ever played in front of. They could have packed the Which stage, in fact.
Feeling bitter, David and I took to the ferris wheel to forget our musical problems. I couldn’t get a decent picture to save my life. I blame fatigue and laziness, not utter lack of photographic ability in anything less than supernova-level light conditions. Grounded, we watched the silent disco for a bit, then met up with Amber, and went our merry ways.
Amber had instructed her mom to come pick her up at 5-something a.m. so she could go catch her early flight back to New York. We decided to pull an all-nighter, and spent the wee hours making sure she had all her stuff together, separate from mine. The sun rose, blotted out by thick fog, as we trekked to the outside world. Bleary-eyed and exhausted and existing in a mental fog that has still not yet lifted for me, we waited on the side of a gravel road and watched hipsters of all stripes come and go. At one point, this rednecky girl tried to get past security but didn’t get cleared, so she spun her truck tires passive-aggressively and lurched forward while cussin’ about not being able to get to work. Yeah, no idea. It was a little much to take in at 5 a.m. on no sleep.
I got a call from David, who had performed the minor miracle of finding our campsite based on my very horrible directions (“Camp Billy Zane, near a Grateful Dead flag and a state flag” — HOW VAGUE IS THAT). He was seeking permission to crash so he wouldn’t have to set up his tent at 6 a.m. Permission was granted and when I had hugged Amber and her mom goodbye (her mom and step-dad said they saw some random person rolling around ecstatically in someone’s yard on the way in) and returned to the tent, there lay David, conked out on the damn floor in what looked to be the most uncomfortable position ever. I left him that way, not out of meanness, but out of a sense of obligation to his ability to fall asleep in that position at all.
I got a couple of hours of broken sleep before the tent heated up and David was awake and raring to get out and see some shows. I said fuck it and didn’t even give myself a spongebath like I had the previous mornings. We broke down the campsite and shoved everything into my car (thank god for D; it would have been much much much more difficult doing so solo) and headed to Centeroo, my feet throbbing inside my cute-ass boots. (Even extremely comfortable footwear can kick your ass after a few days.) I was feeling completely unmotivated, so the only pit I pushed my way into was Ted Leo’s, and I got some boring shots and then went and sat down to enjoy the show.
Sunday’s a bit of a blur; I was sleep deprived and so very tired. I remember trying to get into the VIP viewing area for Snoop, which happened because David had a very special pass onto which I latched like a leech. Inside that VIP viewing area, I saw the biggest joint I have ever seen in my life. And I saw a lot of people flipping the bird simultaneously. Apparently Snoop Dogg doesn’t care for the po-lice.
It was time to bid adieu to Bonnaroo. I gingerly made my way back to my car and maneuvered my way off the farm, driving into the sunset and toward Nashville, where Kristin and Lonnie did me a solid and let me use their shower AND their spare bed. Needless to say, BEST SHOWER EVER.
Although I have to admit this here and now because I never would have believed it had I not lived it: Going for several days without bathing is surprisingly easy once you get used it.
DON’T EVER TELL ANYONE I SAID THAT BECAUSE I WILL DENY IT ‘TIL THE DAY I DIE.
17 Jun
The entirety of Friday was spent in anticipation of one show: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I have been obsessed with this band since 2004, when Amber put one of their songs on a mixed CD she made me for my summer in Birmingham. I love them so much and I love Karen O for being such a ridiculous badass, so the idea of getting to photograph them from the pit thrilled me to a degree that cannot be documented.
When the first three songs were over (I’ll confess, I teared up as they came on stage and started the first song right in front of me) and we got kicked out into the crowd to go about our business, I procured a strawberry/banana/something-or-other smoothie and kicked it by a garbage bin, grooving in small bits all by myself (I find it impossible to find people you know in Bonnaroo-sized crowds, even if they tell you exactly where they are sitting). I kind of wish they’d gotten to play a late-night show; those always seem so much more energetic from a crowd standpoint, and I would have been much more likely to throw caution to the wind and dance like an idiot.
STILL. It was a great show and I think Karen O is a fucking rock star and Nick Zinner is a widdle baby who needs some country cooking and time in the sun and the drummer needs more attention.
I trucked it over to the main stage to photograph Al Green, who was clad in a sharp black suit (as opposed to his crisp white getup during BSMF) and who was as energetic as ever — he dropped to the floor for some quality writhing early on but bounced back up faster than I could have, and topped it off with a heartsick wail that echoed into the next Zip code. And then he tossed roses to the people in the front.
Amber managed to weasel her way past the security dude to come find me in the media area after the show (when you leave the pit at the main stage, you have to go back through that area and arrrrrooooounnnd the trees to get to the main stage audience area). We found a grassy clearing and laid out a blanket and listened to Al Green croon as the sun readied itself to set. Not too shabby.
This poor kid missed out on it:
But after seeing him lie there for a good hour or so, someone nudged him to make sure he was alive. He sat up, bewildered, and started freaking out about where his stuff and his friends were. He asked for a light from some girls seated close to us, and then ran over to a fence and pissed, then took off running down the path. He wasn’t gone for long, though; he returned to our neighbor girls and asked if he could call his friends. He put the phone to his ear and started flipping out.
“I CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING! I CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING!” he said, even though we were between shows and it wasn’t loud at all. One girl took the phone and very carefully spoke to the guy’s friends — “Hi, John, I’m here with your friend Calvin, and he’s having a little freakout” — while Calvin rubbed his face and announced, “I don’t know what I took but it is freaking me out.”
Eventually Calvin went on his way and I like to think he found his friends and they had all his stuff hung from the tent ceiling to really fuck with him. But, well, I’m mean. Don’t do hard drugs around me.
We didn’t budge for the Beastie Boys. We just laid back and listened while partaking in some of the finest people-watching I have ever had a privilege of being a part of. There were people dressed as bananas, people painted green, people clad as Teletubbies, people with insane plastic blinking and glowing parts, and on and on.
Time rolled around for Amber to meet up with her friend Maggi for Phish, and I wanted to see the Protomen, so we split, with plans to reunite for Girl Talk. My phone was dying and so was I, and soon into the Protomen set, I found myself trudging back to camp so I could charge my phone and, I don’t know, maybe catch a little shut-eye before 2:30?
Yeah.
My sleep-deprived brain jumped through hoops to make sure that didn’t happen. I plugged my phone into my car charger and realized it wasn’t getting a charge while the car was turned off. So I turned the battery on, then went about trying to find my keys so I could go lie down in the tent. I searched and searched and emptied bag after bag after bag, cussing the whole time. (Those of you paying attention probably realize that they keys are in the godforsaken ignition.) Thinking I’d lost them, I decided to just chill until Girl Talk, at which point I’d message Amber to make sure she had her set of backup keys, then I’d lock the car and we’d meet up for the show and everything would be fine and we could search for my set in the daylight later.
Except that I conked out and roused at 2:15, and I was just not feeling going back out and making the trek back to Centeroo (did I mention it was roughly a 20- or 30-minute walk?). So I called it a night and tried to rest. Our neighbors got my attention and told me that I’d left a light on in my car. That’s when my brain caught on to its own shenanigans and realized that the keys had been in the ignition. Miraculously, my idiocy didn’t kill my car battery. I can’t say the same for the remaining bits of my brain.
Knowing my brain is barely functional doesn’t make it any easier to accept that I completely missed Girl Talk, though. I’m still pretty sore about that. The next morning I saw a kid stumbling home wearing a shirt that said, “Make sure this motherfucker gets to Girl Talk,” scrawled in black Sharpie ink. I really could have used that shirt just hours before.
17 Jun
Some tales are so absurd that they can’t really be told. “You had to be there” is not just a cliché; it’s a truth. Expand it to “you had to be there … inside my head” and maybe you’d be able to understand why I am at a loss to try to explain the events of Thursday night in a way that conveys their very ridiculousness and surreality.
So I biff off toward Nashville Thursday morning, thinking Amber’s flight is going to land at 3:30. I’m near Dickson or so when she calls and tells me that her flight’s delayed and they’re not going to get in ’til after 7. No problem, I think. I’ve still got a couple of errands to iron out before we can head to the campsite, so I knock those out. I drive out to Manchester to pick up my media credentials. I drive back to Nashville and park my ass at baggage claim to wait.
Amber’s dad meets us at the airport and we put the tent he’s lending us into the car, right after a quick verbal demonstration of how the tent goes together. (He also relayed this information to me while we waited on Amber to come down the escalator.) We pretended that we had any clue what he was talking about, bid him adieu, and headed toward Murfreesboro to pick up the rest of the camping supplies her mom was to lend us. A quick visit and we were on the road toward Manchester. Not sure of what the traffic would entail, I detoured through Manchester proper and hopped across the interstate toward the farm. Our wait to get inside was about an hour, which was WAY WAY WAY better than the eight hours some people had endured earlier in the day.
We cranked up The Knife and MGMT and clucked like hens while we waited. Some random girl tapped on the car window and asked for our bracelet clippings. I examined my bracelet and decided that I wanted to keep it intact because that’s how it was designed to look (honestly!), so she got all offended and called me square. So we rolled up the window and made fun of her mercilessly, because, really? Getting pissed at people because they won’t give you bracelet clippings so your friend can get in for free and compete for the space that everyone else paid $250 for access to? Really?
Once we were told where to turn and given a choice — left or right — of campground, we chose right (on my gut instinct) and parked the car and hopped out and proceeded to try to make camp in the dark with nothing but our headlights to guide us.
And we were so completely overwhelmed with the newness of it all that it felt like we were watching everyone around us set up camp in extreme time-lapse speed. Like, this tiny tent city just popped up everywhere around us while we stared stupidly at the box containing what was meant to be our shelter. I felt especially useless because I have never ever pitched a tent before. Never really been camping (we “camped” in our back yard a couple of times when I was a kid). So just seeing a pile of metal rods lying beside a pile of plastic or vinyl or whatever kind of made my head hurt a little. We didn’t even really know how to start. So we asked our neighbors, whose tent had materialized out of nothing in what seemed like mere seconds.
One dude took a look at our tent and made a sound like he was an anthropologist who’d just unearthed an amusing but useless relic from his childhood. He tried to make sense of the color-coded metal bits and we spent something like half an hour assembling things the way he thought they should go (I’ll just quietly point out that he ignored me when I told him the poles with the handcuff-looking bits were for the middle), until some girl from his group kept coming over and tentblocking Amber and me by making the dude and his other dudely companion feel incompetent. (“THIS TENT IS A SHITSHOW!” she proclaimed. “A SHITSHOW!” She was smiling but she was drunk so she was sniping hardcore. I bit a hole in my tongue only because I felt too sheepish in my own ineptitude to argue with her.) We finally assured the dudes — who concluded that we didn’t have the correct metal bits to assemble the tent — that they could go on to Centeroo and see some shows and we’d take care of the tent. I kept saying, as a means of pacifying everyone involved, that we could sleep in the car, but I realize now that such a proclamation only sounded like repeated surrender. And Amber — a fucking trooper if ever there was one — was determined to get that goddamned tent up come hell or high water.
So she called her dad and had him walk us through — step by step — how to get that damn tent up. It involved a lot of assembling, disassembling, and reassembling metal poles. We got to the part where we realized we needed more people (the tent was quite large for two people to handle), and we went and solicited more neighborly help. We still couldn’t get it to stand, at which point we realized we hadn’t staked down two of the four sides.
WE’RE NOT PROFESSIONAL CAMPERS, JEEZ.
So those neighborly helpers sauntered away while I watched Amber hammer stakes into the damp ground, our spirits in frazzled but hopeful shambles. We were so close. Sooooo close. All staked, the second set of neighborly helpers happened to come back to check on us and, lo and behold, with enough hands, that damn tent stood on its own. Then the sky ruptured and dumped out buckets and buckets of rain and Amber and I sat in the car and let the shower wash away our anxiety. Our beautiful tent — a labor of love and confusion and temporary embarrassment — stood through the wind gusts. When the rain ended (at 2 a.m. or so), we inspected the damage. Apart from a couple of puddles inside, which we mopped up with towels, it was all clear. We loaded our stuff into the tent and decided it was time to find the nearest bathroom options.
I’m not even sure how I can adequately express how much mindfuckery is involved when you try to make your first trek on the farm in the dark with absolutely no idea where you are or where you should be going. It’s not like they have people greet you at your campsite and tell you where you are in relation to everything else. No. They may have people saunter through and offer to sell you any kind of weed or psychotropic drug you can imagine, but they certainly don’t have a welcoming committee telling you were you can go take a piss.
So we just started walking. A Grateful Dead flag flying proudly over a nearby campsite became our frame of reference, secondary only to the giant blinking tower that made its home in our area. We trudged along the damn earth around corners and past tents and RVs and stumbling festival-goers until we found a bank of port-a-johns. I had to pee but I decided to just let it sweat out rather than try to navigate a plastic toilet in the dark.
Miraculously, we found our way back to our tent, and set about trying to go to sleep for the night. Didn’t happen for me, and I lied awake all night and listened to people shuffle back to the campsite after shows, most of them drunk and excited about the weekend. It was a little like Christmas; I was too excited (and maybe too uncomfortable since we couldn’t get my air mattress to inflate) to sleep. There would be random contagious bursts of yelling — “Bonnarrrrrrooooooo!” — that would ignite and spread over the area. And of course there was the everpresent sound of acoustic guitars and fleshy drumbeats. Yes, apparently no silence is allowed at a music festival.
So the sun rose Friday morning and this is what I saw come into view:
Turns out our “shitshow” tent actually puts off some soothing light and colors in the breezy morning. SUCK IT, TENTBLOCK GIRL.
Friday would prove to be worth the lack of sleep.
11 Jun
No time for art. Just packing. That container has since been filled to the brim and now I’m trying to see what I’ve left out. One thing I’ve got to pick up is boxed wine. Oh yeah, and food.
Tomorrow morning (ugh, well, later today) I leave out for Nashville, where I’ll pick Amber up at the airport and we’ll truck it to Murfreesboro to pick up our tent and other camping goodies from her parents. I’ll do my best to put my press pass to good use and check in over at The Memphis Blog and, time and laptop battery power permitting, maybe even here. And I’m sure I’ll be tweeting every other silly thought that rattles its way through my skull, so if you don’t care to hear any of that, you best unfollow and unfollow fast, because it’s gonna happen.
Oh, here’s the weather forecast.
Not great, but, well, whatever happens happens. We’ll make the best of it or else we’ll end up spending the weekend at a Ramada Inn, drinking champagne out of hotel cups still clad in their little plastic packaging. Either way, it will be an adventure. I’m excited.
4 Jun
Can you please help me pinpoint Memphis-based acts at Bonnaroo this year? I know about Al Green, MGMT, and Booker T. But I’m sure I’m missing big hugely obvious ones, too.
Think of this as a scavenger hunt. A scavenger hunt with no apparent prize.
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