The Bonnaroo Aftermath

Bonnaroo ’07 turned out to be a very big disappointment. I felt that the a lot of things had changed from good to horrible since Bonnaroo 2003. Commercial vendors lined most of the main walkways and the lights caused way too

much distraction, made it difficult to walk, and could not imagine trying to sleep near one for the smells and sounds of their equipment. The do-it-yourself vendors where forced to use less than adequate areas to sell their merchandise and some of those locations were next to the line up of portable restrooms. Due the drought that had been going on in the area the whole area was extremely dusty. Bonnaroo tried to water down some of the walkways and streets around campsites, but they did not do this inside the actual venue. During Tool I could barely breathe due to all the dust that was stirred up from everyone moving to and fro. This dust problem continued through out the entire weekend. It was so bad various cars seemed to have at least an inch of dust on them.

The music side of Bonnaroo was less the normal. It appeared to have a long list of artists but in most cases it all sounded the same. For some artist like Tool, Government Mule, Galatic, STS9, Mute Math, String Cheese Incident, Ziggy Marley, Ben Harper, Kings of Leon, The Roots, Dierks Bentley, and a few others created a great atmosphere for everyone to enjoy. Then there were artist like Sting and the Police that for a lack of a better word sucked. There was no stage presence and they appeared to be a bunch of strangers up on stage trying to play together. They were suppose to play from 9:00p.m. to 11:30p.m. The fans decided around 10:15 p.m. right about the time that Roxanne played that it was time to leave the Police and go sit for the next artist at the other stages. Now, this would not be bad if the other artist would start at a time shortly after 10:15, but the other artist did not start until midnight. If approximately 75% of your fan base leaves to go seat and wait on something else that will start an hour and forty-five minutes later, I think I would have tried to come up with something to get them to stay and watch my performance and there was nothing. The bottom line Sting and the Police were very poorly represented. The music stages were divided into one main stage, one medium stage, three somewhat small stages, and three bar size stages. The big artist got to play at the big stage and so on.

The lack of music and too many events at Bonnaroo made me feel like there was more stuff to do rather than to listen too. I am a music-a-holic. I enjoy listening to variety of music from a variety of different talented artist. I enjoy meandering through the stages from time to time to experience and hear something new. I usually start at a artist that I do not know yet listen for a about 30 minutes and then meander off to the next stage and so on until I have visited all the medium to small stages. If someone has truly caught my ear I will stay or head back that direction if they are still playing. If that does not satisfy my hunger I head over to the Lala music tent and purchase a compact disc to add to my never ending collection. This year I felt that Bonnaroo was more like the state fairgrounds with there setup. There were too many distracting activities to do and lack of really good music.

As I walked through the crowds people focused on any area that had shade, the internet tent were you could check your email or contact a friend, the mushroom water fountain, and the unique merchandise tents were places of interest. Showers for $10.00 and sulfur water to drink just did not float my boat and some just use these things because there was nothing else. The water was sulfur free from about Thursday morning to about late Friday afternoon. Then from the point on sulfur water was in all the water stations around the venue. If you had a slight hangover or was just basically struggling that day you could just imagine what the smell of sulfur water would do to you. The water stations unlike in the past (2003) were placed inside trailers that made it hard to get into with too many faucets and too little room to get you water bottle filled without embedding your shoulder in your neighbor who was at the faucet next to you. If you were trying to just douse your head in the water there was just no room. Another thing was that there was no warnings, suggestions, or statements telling the public at the venue to hydrate yourselves in the humid weather as a kind reminder. They did not even mention the death of a patron during the weekend and had no “Just Say NO” advertisements or suggestion to the public about the effects of alcohol, various drugs and dehydration have on the body in varied climates. Better yet there were not any tents concerning this matter.

It appeared that they were more focused on making money or trying to raise money for some specific cause but were not willing to help the patrons that have some issues right in front of their face. They did represent in great detail the eco-friendly clubs and events. One of the few good points was the emphasis that they put on trying to get everyone to be eco-friendly and to recycle. They have stations set up all around the venue to separate the dark glass, light glass, plastic, and cans into separate metal drums. They made artistic statues and decorations out of recycle products to demonstrate in a hands on approach.

In conclusion I would prefer to have way too much music than a lack of there of. I would rather keep my $184.50, $199.50, or $214.50 and go to the state fair and fight a smaller crowd to have more fun riding all the various rides. This way I could still go home and have a nice shower for near free and not have to pay $10.00 or suffer with drinking smelly sulfur water. I could even flip through the various compact discs or my XM radio to here more artist and songs for a better price that what was offered this year at the Bonnaroo.

Bentley Venture Tree Team