My Thoughts on the Bonnaroo Lineup

Another year come and gone, and here we are at the beginning of February discussing the Bonnaroo Music Festival, just as we did in years past…

Ever since I’ve been following this, even before I had started Live Music Blog, I got super excited about who they’d announce for this music festival. I remember reading that first year lineup and thinking, “wow, it’s like what Woodstock ’99 was meant to be…” and I’m sure there were others that had a similar sentiment.

This year was particularly exciting for me as it appears we had a small jump on posting the leaked lineup, which in turn led to the highest traffic day ever on Live Music Blog. I don’t want to give specifics, but we generally had three times our daily average show up just yesterday — even given that Monday had broken our previous traffic record as well. Quite exciting, indeed.

Overall, though — the past two years have brought changes to the festival that always seem to have everyone up in arms. Superfly, the festival promoters, have decided that they want their music festival to have a larger, broader national appeal. Nobody could argue this fact given the elephant headliners in the room for this year’s lineup – The Police, Tool, and Widespread Panic. To me, these are three bands that stand as pillars anchoring the festival to three distinct sets of concert-goers — the nostalgia crowd, the mainstream and/or younger crowd (depending on your definition), and the road-warrior jamband fan crowd.

But this is the problem most people have with the festival — they want it to be ONE crowd. They want it to be jambands only, as if that was the original intention of the festival from the beginning (which it most clearly was not). They worry that Tool fans are going to mix negatively with jamband fans. Goth vs. hippie. Etc. etc.

This has to be one of the most exciting music festival lineups I’ve ever seen and I commend Superfly for putting this together. Every year, they successfully question the status quo programmed into all of these distinct crowds that they hope to attract, and every year people discuss the merits and pitfalls associated with such a grand experiment.

And want to know what — every year it goes off without a hitch with critics and fans far and away praising the festival. I expect nothing but the same for this year…

local_support

Looking forward to the mosh pits.
Matt

Have to agree with Scott here. Tool fans “goths”? Come on you know better than that….don’t you?
Matt

Have to agree with Scott here. Tool fans “goths”? Come on you know better than that….don’t you?
CleRockCity

Have any of you actually seen Tool? They are more progressive and psychedelic than any jam band out there, and probably one of the best live bands playing. Heavy? Yes! Goth? Uhm, not quite. While many “jam fans” will draw poor, uneducated conclusions about Maynard, Tool deserve more than that. They will blow Bonnaroo’s Fucking MIND!!!

Bonnaroo is about live music! Five years ago live music was dominated by the jam bands, but even then Bonnaroo introduced artists like Norah Jones. The only thing that’s changes is that live music has a much broader fan base. I’m glad it’s diverse cause it’s boring as hell seeing sets by Widespread and SCI year in and year out.

Also, where’s the love for AC Entertainment? It’s an equal partnership between AC and Superfly.
CleRockCity

Have any of you actually seen Tool? They are more progressive and psychedelic than any jam band out there, and probably one of the best live bands playing. Heavy? Yes! Goth? Uhm, not quite. While many “jam fans” will draw poor, uneducated conclusions about Maynard, Tool deserve more than that. They will blow Bonnaroo’s Fucking MIND!!!

Bonnaroo is about live music! Five years ago live music was dominated by the jam bands, but even then Bonnaroo introduced artists like Norah Jones. The only thing that’s changes is that live music has a much broader fan base. I’m glad it’s diverse cause it’s boring as hell seeing sets by Widespread and SCI year in and year out.

Also, where’s the love for AC Entertainment? It’s an equal partnership between AC and Superfly.
http://whosdrivingthebus.blogspot.com/ danfun

Did anyone notice that there are no bands playing this year that played last year.
http://whosdrivingthebus.blogspot.com/ danfun

Did anyone notice that there are no bands playing this year that played last year.
stems

This is from an interview with Maynard James Keenan that ran on avclub.com:

AVC: Do you feel out of touch with your audience?

MJK: For the most part, I have no idea who those people are—especially when we’re traveling through Europe. And it’s not all our fault; it’s a whole series of events. [You play] heavy music, and your record company, which has never owned an album anything like what you’re doing, immediately markets you to the obvious stinky kid with the dreadlocks and the B.O. and the urine on his shoes because he’s been sleeping in his own filth in a festival in the middle of the rain. They basically market right to that guy. And then you realize the only people showing up to your shows are those primates—these weird, cretin people… Then, let’s say you’re at a coffee shop, and you’ve got a friend sitting next to you, and you’ve been reading some Noam Chomsky, or you’re reading The Onion, and you look over and see a bunch of kids [who] look like they could be made of cheese, because there are flies everywhere. And you go, “Hey, you want to go where they’re going?” and everybody goes, “Fuck no.” And they’re wearing Tool shirts. Why would you want to go there? Why would anybody other than those kids wanna go see Tool if that’s our representative in that area? So it ends up being a no-win situation. Of course, that’s a completely extreme example.
stems

This is from an interview with Maynard James Keenan that ran on avclub.com:

AVC: Do you feel out of touch with your audience?

MJK: For the most part, I have no idea who those people are—especially when we’re traveling through Europe. And it’s not all our fault; it’s a whole series of events. [You play] heavy music, and your record company, which has never owned an album anything like what you’re doing, immediately markets you to the obvious stinky kid with the dreadlocks and the B.O. and the urine on his shoes because he’s been sleeping in his own filth in a festival in the middle of the rain. They basically market right to that guy. And then you realize the only people showing up to your shows are those primates—these weird, cretin people… Then, let’s say you’re at a coffee shop, and you’ve got a friend sitting next to you, and you’ve been reading some Noam Chomsky, or you’re reading The Onion, and you look over and see a bunch of kids [who] look like they could be made of cheese, because there are flies everywhere. And you go, “Hey, you want to go where they’re going?” and everybody goes, “Fuck no.” And they’re wearing Tool shirts. Why would you want to go there? Why would anybody other than those kids wanna go see Tool if that’s our representative in that area? So it ends up being a no-win situation. Of course, that’s a completely extreme example.
http://www.myspace.com/southernsugar beth g

it’s good to see people who actually KNOW what they are talking about on here commenting about TOOL. as someone who has been in love with TOOL for over a decade and ALSO followed phish around, i am really, really disappointed to see this side coming out in a lot of my hippie buddies. it seems to be contradictory in every sense of the word. so you don’t have ten jambands sharing the spotlight this year. so??? bonnaroo has never been about catering to heads…it’s a MUSIC fest, an experience. if it’s not your thing as a whole, then i can’t dispute that because we are all different. however, to call out a whole group of fans and classify us all as violent, aggressive assholes is some of the most ignorant shit i’ve ever heard…and i grew up and still live in tennessee, so i know ignorant shit.

i’ve been on so many different sites reading the reactions over TOOL being a headliner, and 99% of the negativity and close-mindedness is coming from HIPPIES who are supposedly enlightened and embracing of all different people.

if you can’t deal with one band being there that you don’t care for, and it’s just a little too mainstream for you, don’t buy a ticket. we’ll still have a great time, i promise.
http://www.myspace.com/southernsugar beth g

it’s good to see people who actually KNOW what they are talking about on here commenting about TOOL. as someone who has been in love with TOOL for over a decade and ALSO followed phish around, i am really, really disappointed to see this side coming out in a lot of my hippie buddies. it seems to be contradictory in every sense of the word. so you don’t have ten jambands sharing the spotlight this year. so??? bonnaroo has never been about catering to heads…it’s a MUSIC fest, an experience. if it’s not your thing as a whole, then i can’t dispute that because we are all different. however, to call out a whole group of fans and classify us all as violent, aggressive assholes is some of the most ignorant shit i’ve ever heard…and i grew up and still live in tennessee, so i know ignorant shit.

i’ve been on so many different sites reading the reactions over TOOL being a headliner, and 99% of the negativity and close-mindedness is coming from HIPPIES who are supposedly enlightened and embracing of all different people.

if you can’t deal with one band being there that you don’t care for, and it’s just a little too mainstream for you, don’t buy a ticket. we’ll still have a great time, i promise.
kay

Looking forward to mosh pits? Ha! Thats goes to show you that certain bands/people dont belong at a hippie festival.
kay

Looking forward to mosh pits? Ha! Thats goes to show you that certain bands/people dont belong at a hippie festival.
http://whosdrivingthebus.blogspot.com/ danfun

What I find really weird about the linup is that there are a lot of bands that played Lollapalooza last year.
Ween
Wilco
Flaming Lips
Manu Chau
The Holdsteady
Wolfmother

All of which are good to great bands but none of them really put on great festival sets. I thought that I would definetly go to Roo this year beacause I felt like trying a different festival but my thinking now is just save your money and vaction days. That way I can travel to see bands I really like The Whitestripes/MMJ/Rayn in a few other city and once they announce their summer/fall tour plans. All of the show will be longer sets and in smaller venues.