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.