It has been 36 years since the first Woodstock festival drew thousands of people together to celebrate good music, good times, and good friends – especially the friends one could meet at the festival. Needless to say, Bob Dylan was right when he told us back then that the times were a changin’. The past two Woodstock festivals were nothing like the original because of the aforementioned change that took place. For the most part, music today does not have the ideals that the music of the ‘60s had: love, peace, always questioning the government, and so on. Today music is either MTV rap that wants us to get some bitches and ho’s (though I will say there is a lot of good rap out there too: Outkast, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and such), whiny thin white boys crying out for their ex-girlfriends and saying how they want to drown in their blood, heavy metal bands who have lost all the fun of Ozzy Osbourne, or tons of other crap. The good times music has been lost on this generation of young Americans.
Well, maybe not all young Americans. For the past two summers in Manchester, Tennessee, a group of musicians and fans alike trek to one of the last music festivals to capture that spirit that the first Woodstock held so dearly. The festival? Bonnaroo, now in its third year.
“The first Bonnaroo was like no concert I’d ever experienced before,” Associate Editor of Generation Jake Drum had to say. “It gave me some hope that people could still come together and bond musically. There was nonstop music from ten in the morning until 5 a.m. the next day. Then it all started over again.”
Bonnaroo is a three-day music festival that has numerous bands performing all day and night. This year, some of the bands are Jack Johnson, Joss Stone, Modest Mouse, Widespread Panic, Trey Anastasio, O.A.R., Jurassic 5, My Morning Jacket, and quite a few others.
The south in the States isn’t always known for good music. It seems that all we usually get out of the area is bad country, banjo tunes, and old Elvis recordings. Bonnaroo offers something different though: a place for people from all over the country to meet up in an area that isn’t far from the center of America. “The variety of styles combine with a lusty carnival atmosphere to make the best party to hit the middle South since Bleeding Kansas,” Drum said. “There was a definite sense that you were alive, and something was happening with other people that you couldn’t really put into words, but it was the best thing to happen to music in quite some time.”
But don’t think that everything at Bonnaroo is like it was in the ‘60s: this is still the new century and things are expensive. We all remember hearing about the outrageous prices at the last two Woodstocks, and Bonnaroo is not entirely different. However, Drum shared the upside that it isn’t hard to find anything you need: “You don’t need to leave your tent for anything, you could sit on your ass, eating the peanut butter and cheese you brought from home, and wait for the vendors to pass your car hawking everything from dollar beers to nitrous balloons. Everything you could ever need was ‘1 for 3, 2 for 5.’ Meaning one item for $3, two for $5, a standard of those kind of shows.”
The first Bonnaroo wasn’t all sunshine and good tunes though. “The last day the poor planning of the show’s promoters caught up with us,” Drum said. “My friends and I waited for 11 hours in three digit temperatures to get our car out of the farm where they held it. With no food or water, and the event-provided water wells turned off because the promoters got cheap, we almost lost it. But it was worth it, it was all worth it, because we had the chance to be there the first time. We drove 23 hours, gave up showering and indoor plumbing, sweated more than we drank, spent more than we had—all for the chance to get a small taste of being pioneers in the new channel that music had cut for us.”
Bonnaroo offers new musicians each year, but Drum is skeptical about this year’s line-up. Be advised: “The scene won’t be as cool. Dave Matthews is headlining, and that means noisy drunks, posers bitching about how hot it is, and moms and dads. If you’ve never gone before, I would cautiously recommend it, because the atmosphere is pretty magical. The DMB fans will ruin the vibe, though, I’m sure.”
“Iron & Wine is going this year, though,” he continued. “Sam Beam is lyrically brilliant. His music fits the venue, and he has a sincerity that gives you some impression that he actually cares about what he’s doing.”
Tickets for Bonnaroo can be found on www.bonnaroo.com and are at a base price of $146.50 and rise without warning. The show is from June 10 – 12 this year in Manchester, TN.
