Dispatches from Bonnaroo Modern hippies are much like hippies of old, except without the social engagement or political action. Just ask Steve Earle, one of few artists we saw who actually tried to interject some ideology into his set. (DAMIAN MARLEY also spouted some anti-war rhetoric through the songs of his father Bob like “Get Up, Stand Up.”) Despite a couple of hearty anti-Bush cheers and enthusiastic support for the tongue-in-cheek come-on song “Condi, Condi,” Earle’s impassioned pleas fell flat. Speaking of Earle, he and ALISON MOORER were spotted backstage at BE YOUR OWN PET, nodding their heads to the punk rock. That JEMINA PEARL is both a wildcat and an independent motherfucker. • To the bikini-clad girls twirling to CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH (who sounded better than we’ve ever heard in front of a frenzied crowd): it’s indie rock, have some respect. • ANDREW BIRD might just have been the most talented man in Manchester. Using his violin and backed by only a drummer, Bird’s pre-recorded and on-the-spot loops, guitar, glockenspiel and masterful whistling skills made the most exquisite sound we heard all weekend. • For all the talk about her infamous stage fright, CHAN MARSHALL (a.k.a CAT POWER) could have been performing for thousands of her closest friends. Her vibrant set, backed by the MEMPHIS RHYTHM BAND, included some boxing-style dance moves along to opener “The Greatest,” and also drew a few notable onlookers including CONOR OBERST, BEN NICHOLS of LUCERO and GILLIAN WELCH. • Sprinting back and forth between SON VOLT (featuring JAY FARRAR’s molten, old-world voice) and STEPHEN MALKMUS was either the best or worst moment of our lives—next year let’s hope they design the schedule around our musical taste. Later, Malkmus fans got an added bonus when he joined SONIC YOUTH’s lovely noisefest—featuring Pavement’s MARK IBOLD on bass—for a song. RADIOHEAD! Enough said. Another highlight was the chance to catch some of TOM PETTY’s performance from a platform above the stage. The man is a hit factory—just when you thought he’d exhausted his catalog, out bounded another massive chart-topper. Watching over 60,000 people sing along to “American Girl” while STEVIE NICKS (who joined Petty for a few songs—we should have known when we saw the bejeweled mic stand) banged her guts out on the tambourine, caused us to pause and reflect on how few occasions we have in our culture for genuine community, and yet here it was. But seriously, how many chances are there in life to wait in line for a porta potty with two members of the KINGS OF LEON? PHIL LESH & FRIENDS played a couple of terrific sets, far surpassing any of the previous Bonnaroo appearances by The Dead. Lesh, now 66 years old and a liver transplant recipient, looked surprisingly spry. His band, featuring one of the most fearsome guitar duos we’ve witnessed (jazzer John Scofield and Dylan vet Larry Campbell), rocked like it was 1967 on Haight-Ashbury, a fitting end to Bonnaroo’s fifth anniversary. High school rock Remember back in high school when you shut the door to your room, put on your favorite album and rocked out in the mirror attached to your closet door? Apparently so do THE SPINTO BAND, because they rocked Mercy Lounge Thursday night the way six high school boys high on Red Bulls might spaz in the unfinished basement in their parents’ house. We haven’t seen such awkward, jumbled energy pumping through skinny white-boy veins since someone introduced moshing to our sophomore year homecoming dance. Spinto’s NICK KRILL inspired references to both David Byrne and Duckie from Pretty in Pink, while fellow singer THOMAS HUGHES worked his signature bulging-eyes-and-exaggerated-Beatle-head-nod move that would have made us laugh if we weren’t so busy bopping along to a nearly flawless set of old and new tunes. Easy listening The newly renamed NASHVILLE SYMPHONY SUMMER FESTIVAL began humbly last weekend at the War Memorial. With this year’s program consisting of MOZART’s works during the first portion of each concert, the BEETHOVEN selections might be expected to storm out of the gate during the second half, but this wasn’t the case last Friday. Mild surprises can keep the wine-bibbing crowd on their toes, though, and the somber wind and horn configuration for Mozart’s Serenade No. 12 led off the evening with a little more than just night music. Guest conductor IGNAT SOLZHENITSYN came on board for the more typical Mozart Concerto No. 27, which kept his left hand largely free to signal the somewhat scaled-down orchestra while he played the piano solos. In the second half, Beethoven’s Fourth upped the level of vital tension, but hardly tipped the scales, as its thematic explorations returned to a comfortable point of balance. Long songs cool again? Last Thursday night, California’s RESIDUAL ECHOES and MAMMATUS provided a bludgeoning mixture of long psych-jam sessions and heavy riffage for Grand Palace’s audience, attracting metal heads and jam-band enthusiasts alike. Anyone who didn’t take advantage of the free earplugs probably still has some leftover ringing—this was easily the loudest show GP has hosted to date. But Residual Echoes just didn’t do it for us—too long on the wank and a little light on the heavy. As loud as they were, they were still easy to ignore. Mammatus, on the other hand, was a completely different beast. While there was no lack of extended, stoner-metal noodling on their part, they more than made up for it with climax after climax of some the heaviest and slowest riffs ever to rumble our bowels. Every crescendo was predictable—and sometimes the wait was frustrating and exhausting—but the eventual payoff of speaker-pushed air was patience rewarded. At one point an audience member quipped, “Dude, you guys are heavier than Pantera.” The Mammatus set was recorded by the GP staff on reel-to-reel. Does this mean in the near future we just might see a Live at Grand Palace record? Norwegian butt rock Tuesday night, Oslo’s HURRA TORPEDO—a band of three men in blue tracksuits who play kitchen appliances—played their first Nashville show at Exit/In. They used ovens. They used stoves. They used washing machines, sledgehammers and a big metal wheel that must have come from some dismembered appliance. They stuck their tongues in an electric mixer, used a waffle iron as castanets and pulled their pants down to reveal pasty white Norwegian bums. Still, Nashville audiences are hard to crack, and the one-third geek, one-third hipster, one-third middle-aged crowd folded their arms and stared. “We heard Nashville was the square-dancing capital of the world!” shouted vocalist and appliance player ASLAG GUTTORMSGAARD to absolutely no reaction. “So we will play a country song for you and we want to see square dancing!” When 45 seconds of stove-top hoe-down tunes produced only awkward swaying, he staggered back and said, “That was amazing! When they said Nashville knew how to square dance, they weren’t kidding. You kids are crazy!” The band played the tune again. And again. The fourth rendition brought a few more square dancers, and that seemed to satisfy them, so they broke into a cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic.” Appliance player KRISTOPHER SCHAU led the crowd in a guttural grunting sing-a-long of “Ooh-aahs” while EGIL HEGERBERG sang the lyrics to what he called “A beautiful song about what can happen between a man and a woman, or something like a woman, and what happens when it becomes poison.” By the end of the night, everyone was dancing and laughing. Let’s dance This simple phrase was all we needed to know we’re gettin’ our groove on: “Come dance to the sound of the indie/dance/postpunk/electro/new wave underground.” LEFT CAN DANCE hosts its inaugural dance party Friday, June 23 at Ombi Bar on Elliston. It’s free, all ages and promises to “play good music that you probably won’t hear anywhere else in town.” The brainchild of WRVU DJs SAM PATTON and COURTNEY WILDER, the event ought to give Nashville its own cosmopolitan, bust-a-move sheen. Having longed for well-spun DJ dance parties many a night, we couldn’t be more supportive—just don’t play C+C Music Factory. (www.myspace.com/leftcandance).