Best. Bonnaroo. Ever.

Not only have we been hearing that a lot this year, the lineup is deep enough so that, if you wanted, you could get through the 'Roo without ever seeing a band that doesn't hit your sweet spot just right, and without ever getting sweaty with a crowd that freaks you out (or freaking out a crowd that sweats your style). With that in mind, we've compiled this unscientific and somewhat reductive guide to self-identifying yourself through the grassy heat of Bonnaroo 2009.

Look at This, Fucking Hipster
If you don't get to Manchester Thursday, it's cool, because Friday is your big day.

Start with the Dirty Projectors, even though that gives you a scant 15 minutes—assuming things are running on time—to get from That Tent to Which Stage for Animal Collective, where you can tell yourself you're not watching a jam band. If you're more of a back-in-the-day (2006) hipster, stick around for Yeah Yeah Yeahs. If you're more of a 2009, blue-blood-loving hipster, get over to This Tent for Grizzly Bear. (Stimulants are recommended unless you're the coolest of the cool, in which case this band is apparently interesting.) TV on the Radio, then Beastie Boys get you to 10 p.m., when it'll be time to grab some Whole Foods, pick your "Top 5 Bands I Saw at Bonnaroo Today" on Facebook and update your blog. Here's how your entry will start: "Kinda bummed I missed St. Vincent, but A.C. was totes epic." The rest of your night is at That Tent: Phoenix, Crystal Castles, Girl Talk. Boom, boom, ironic boom.

Sleep in Saturday, because that's what you do, and because there ain't shit until 3:30 (p.m.) when Bon Iver goes on. (You saw Chairlift on Thursday, or in Brooklyn once.) Of Montreal and The Decemberists take you to 8:30, when you can break for food while reloading on drugs and being happy all the old people and their fucking Crocs are watching Bruce Springsteen. Upload some camera phone vids ("sorry for the shitty quality"), catch up on Twitter and take a little disco nap before rinsing your pits and heading off for Yeasayer and MGMT.

Whoa, did you try crack last night? Hilarious! It's cool, though. Sunday's kind of laid-back, so maybe you catch AA Bondy and Ted Leo, maybe you go on a vision quest while looking for a latte. Andrew Bird plays Which Stage at 4:15, so practice your best meaningfulcore dance moves (i.e. standing there trying to seem smart) before checking him out. Soon after, you'll be faced with your first really tough choice of the weekend—Band of Horses or Neko Case? If you have trouble making up your mind, just complete this sentence: "I guess it would be kinda awesome in a way if I somehow ended up in a sex tape with _______ that got posted on Paper Thin Walls and then the link was re-tweeted by all my friends."

And remember: There's a full-length mirror waiting for you at home!

The Heritage Connection
With no fewer than four Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees slated to take center stage at Bonnaroo 2009, it's safe to say that in its eighth year, the festival has managed to make it all the way out of the jam-band pigeonhole and establish itself as the nation's premier music event. While this is by no means the first year to feature rock royalty—Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and The Police, among others, have graced the Bonnaroo stages—it is the year in which legacy acts dominate. With appearances by veteran rockers—and rollers—the likes of David Byrne (who's curating his own stage), Al Green, Merle Haggard, Elvis Costello and the biggest headliner the festival has had to date, Bruce Springsteen, this is your daddy's Bonnaroo.

The next generation of twilight rockers aren't far behind though, as the festival will boast performances from The Beastie Boys, themselves only two years away from Hall of Fame eligibility, and Nine Inch Nails who—with 2009 marking the 20th anniversary of their seminal debut Pretty Hate Machine's release—have witnessed their audience go from teen angst to midlife crisis. Throw in Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3—whose members' other band, R.E.M., would be a great fit to headline the festival next year—and you've got yourself quite an impressive onslaught of pop music history to experience in the oppressive Tennessee heat.

Given that most twentysomethings get priced out of going to see acts like Springsteen or Costello, playing Bonnaroo will provide these artists with a massive audience who have never seen them before—a prospect that E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt says he looks forward to: "I love the fact that we're playing to, I don't know, probably half of the audience who maybe never even heard of us; some have certainly never heard us. And that's nothing but fun and nothing but exciting."

He's not the only one who's excited, as at this point it's almost universally accepted that anyone—regardless of age—who considers themselves a devotee of rock music should witness the spectacle of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band playing "Born to Run" live at least once in their lifetime. But to see it as prelude to Trent Reznor wanting to "fuck you like an animal"? Now that's unique.

Rock 'n' Roll Could Never Ever Hip-Hop Like This
Even though Bonnaroo is generally associated with noodle dancers and aging rockers, there are more than enough dope beats at the festival to keep even the most discerning beat junkie's head nodding for four straight days. It can be a tad odd taking in urban music in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere (see last year's performance by Kanye West) but sunshine and the sounds of soul and hip-hop make a great combo.

Things kick into high gear on Thursday with seven straight hours of underground beats at The Other Tent. Atlanta's Queen of Robots and Blues, Jonelle Monae, starts the whole thing off. Sort of a shame, as we'd love to see her Rogers-and-Hammerstein-by-way-of-Robert-Heinlein space cadet soul when we are good and toasted, but maybe we'll just push our blast off a little further up. MURS, The Knux and The People Under The Stairs will keep the backpackers' butts parked at The Other Tent, and the progressive dub of Midnight will keep you irie until it's time to hit the hay.

Friday lights it up with underrated, roots-reggae vocalists The Itals at The What stage, Santigold with her new live band at That Tent and King Sunny Adé—African music legend and possibly the world's greatest guitar player—performing at The Other Tent. The problem with that is that King Sunny's set overlaps with Al Green's, and no matter how many funny things we ingest, we can't be in two places at once. The rest of the night is easy like Sunday morning, though, with the Beastie Boys, Femi Kuti and Public Enemy in quick succession before we calm down with trip-hop funk architect Pretty Lights.

Saturday is a tad more low-key for the beat-freaks, but the day starts strong with The Wailing Souls. New Orleans R&B legend Allen Toussaint and R&B legend-in-the-making Raphael Saadiq both bang it out at That Tent and then our schedule is free until Sunday afternoon when Erykah Badu brings her neo-psychedelic funk to the What Stage. After that we have to debate whether to catch Snoop Dogg or head home in time for music trivia at Mercy Lounge. Either way it'll be a boomin' weekend.

Jam Out the Kicks!
Hippies, jam band fans, lend me your oversaturated ears: As you well know, Bonnaroo began seven years ago as a primarily jam-band festival, and directing you toward amoeba-waltz standard-bearers like Phish, Galactic, Moe., Gov't Mule and Ben Harper would be like telling a compass needle to point north, so we won't waste our breath. But there are plenty of other worthwhile acts that might massage some of the less-worn neural pathways in your fortified noggins.

First off, there's a gold mine of twirl-friendly international music. On Friday, check out two Nigerian legends, the mighty King Sunny Adé and Femi Kuti (son of Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti), as well as a trio of Malian acts: blind folk-pop duo Amadou & Mariam; Toumani Diabaté, a master of the kora (a 21-stringed cross between a harp and lute), performing with Nashville's own Béla Fleck; and guitarist/singer Vieux Farka Touré, son of the legendary Ali Farka Touré. Saturday features Dublin-based Mexican guitar phenoms Rodrigo y Gabriela and Jamaican reggae stalwarts The Wailing Souls.

Roots-country and bluegrass have long been staples of the jam-band crowd, and there's plenty to love at this year's Bonnaroo: The SteelDrivers, Tony Rice Unit, Del McCoury Band and David Grisman Quintet, all on Saturday, followed on Sunday by country outlaw legend Merle Haggard, who hopefully can convince the many still-clueless hippies that it was he—not the Grateful Dead—who wrote "Mama Tried."

And there are a slew of lysergic-friendly indie-rock acts that should appeal to the chicken dancer in all of us: soundscape sculptors Animal Collective (Friday), the often hypnotic TV on the Radio (Friday), psychedelic popsters Of Montreal (Saturday) and prog-rockers The Mars Volta (Saturday) might all provide the perfect opportunity to bust open your doors of perception while simultaneously serving notice to the Pitchfork lemmings that this is your music too. (Nothing pisses off hipsters like seeing their favorite band getting popular with the jam-band crowd, so enjoy their grimaces and kill them with kindness. Suggestion: Go up to the most disaffected American Apparel-clad douchebag you can find, hold him in a long embrace and exclaim, "Damn, brah, your inner light is radiating like a frickin' Laser Floyd show!")

Just because dainty, herd-mentality scenesters have now deemed Bonnaroo officially cool in an almost-sorta non-ironic kind of way—let's see how those Kill City skinny jeans feel in 95-degree heat—that's no reason to forget that this is still your damn festival, as it has been since its inception. So slather on the patchouli, stock up on the kind bud, get out your devil sticks and pwn this bitch!

Email music@nashvillescene.com.