whatido_formeforyou

this is my list of shows i attended over the last two weekends. truly special ones are bolded.

WAKARUSA 

got there around 2am on wednesday night/thursday morning, and waited in line until around 6am. unfolded our stuff and napped. we eventually moved our tent from general riverside camping, which was around 30 minutes from the stages including the free schoolbus shuttle up the mountain, to 25 feet from the river, which was around a 45 minute trip away. swimming first thing in the morning was AMAZING but the musical inconveniences kinda sucked. 

- thursday -

lyrics born, phutureprimitive, rubblebucket, lance herbstrong, govinda, pretty lights, martyparty, papadosio, nit grit, vibesquad. holy shit vibesquad. 5am to 7am never felt so good.

- friday -

rubblebucket, soulive, lettuce, soulive + lettuce (the royal family ball), the motet, wick-it the instigator, break science, a bit of edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros, balkan beat box, r/d, ghostland observatory, michal menert (5am to 6:30 feeling pretty damn good once again), clandestine

- saturday -

tinariwen, gramatik, virtual boy, umphrey’s mcgee for a bit, primus, quixotic, big gigantic, beats antique for a bit, and then i was walking over to opiuo/rjd2/maybe paper diamond/nobody beats the drum//nadis warriors, when a storm rolled in and they cancelled the rest of the night of music. was ready to rage it too…all those artists were performing within a span of 4ish hours. too bad. my friends went out a few times to check if anything was going on once the brief rain ended, but it was a no go. i passed out in a lawn chair under my friend’s canopy by main event camping, and eventually in a tent over there. 

- sunday -

toubab krewe, tinariwen, iration, the heavy pets, soja, slightly stoopid (way better than i was expecting), la riots, eoto, the floozies. a really good day with some new and old friends. the storm after the floozies fantastic closing set was INSANE. pretty much never seen anything like that before, and i grew up where hurricane season was relevant every year. slept in a van that was painted like a cow with around ten other people. 

top five of the weekend: vibesquad, michal menert, soulive + lettuce, toubab krewe (always a lock in my list of favorites), and……the floozies. tough call over eoto, primus, virtual boy, and tinariwen, but i gave them the nod because i was entirely unfamiliar with them beforehand. didn’t think anything was about to top eoto. they threw down.

BONNAROO

we got there around noon on thursday and there was NO LINE, to my amazement. we were around a 15 minute walk from the event but there was usually long lines to actually get in, which was usually pretty annoying. packed drinks for the wait and made a few friends in the process. successfully navigated the weekend’s obnoxious TSA-style patdowns. they were confiscating GLOWSTICKS from people. wut?

- thursday -

rubblebucket, the casey driessen singularity, mariachi el bronx, waited in line for a longass time to watch the heat/celtics game 6 in the cinema tent, finally watched it in the cinema tent (lebron went for 45/15/5…wtf??), phantogram, big gigantic for a bit (sound was way worse than waka and i couldn’t bear it), mimosa

- friday -

tune-yards, two door cinema club,a bit of sharon jones & the dap-kings, afrocubism, fitz and the tantrums, feist, a bit of ludacris, a bit of oberhofer, a bit of st. vincent, rodrigo y gabriela ft. c.u.b.a., RADIOHEAD, the word (john medeski, robert randolph, and the north mississippi all-stars), black star, flying lotus, a bit of dumpstaphunk, umphrey’s mcgee, big gigantic’s surprise 4am set break during umphreys, and then another hour or two of umphrey’s

- saturday -

battles, sbtrkt, gary clark jr. (small stage), heat/celtics game 7, the roots during the 2nd quarter, the rest of heat/celtics game 7 (FUCK YEAH), a bit of red hot chili peppers, a nap with rhcp playing in the distance, spectrum road, ?uestlove’s superjam featuring surprise guest d’angelo (i was probably one of the 5% of people there who was pretty sure it was him on stage….it was his first american performance in TWELVE YEARS), gza performing liquid swords featuring grupo fantasma. oh my god that was amazing, i wish i could relive that. randomly met a new friend, a girl from tallahassee, during spectrum road, and we watched the rest of the night’s music together. that was a nice touch.

- sunday - 

gary clark jr. (main stage…WHOA), here we go magic, the beach boys, war on drugs, here we go magic (encore on a smaller stage), ben folds five, and bon iver, the shins, and phish all from a distance. hearing recognizable singles from bon iver and the shins simultaneously from afar was really fascinating. kinda lost some momentum towards the end because we left bonnaroo at 10pm, during phish.

top five of the weekend: radiohead, gza ft. grupo fantasma, gary clark jr., black star, and battles. the superjam, flylo, and here we go magic barely missed the cut.

so that was that. pictures and videos to follow soon, i promise.