Monday, June 15, 2009
Bonnaroo / The Spin Tripping Balls at Bonnaroo
Posted by The Spin on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 3:05 PM
Despite all of the big-ticket artists playing Bonnaroo, the true headliner of the festival is hallucinogenic drugs. Judging by the number of human statues we saw in the crowd, and the people passed out in random spots after forgetting that when you take ecstasy all day and forget to drink water your body will fail you, we're pretty sure that more people saw LSD trails this weekend than any specific musical act.
Over the course of our adventure we stumbled upon the glorified party band Phish who were shooting fish in a barrel with their nonsensical jamming. Watching the band felt like watching some inside joke that everyone was in on except for us. We've now seen Phish while tripping and can say, unequivocally, that we don't get it. That being said, we laughed our asses off when guitar solos started coming out of nowhere. We watched the band play the 2001 theme for what felt like an eternity before deciding that we had to bounce before not hearing a complete song except for a cover of AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" made our heads explode. We tried. Really.
After that, we found ourselves over at the silent disco--which is perhaps the most considerate innovation in the history of bad dance music--where we had the "lose our shit moment" of the night when we put on the headphones to realize everyone was rave dancing to Michael Jackson's "Remember the Time." We could only take it for about 6 seconds before we collapsed and started hyperventilating from laughter. We fled the silent disco to regain some semblance of reality, but reality was futile at this point, which is just as well considering that the only way to tolerate the barrage of lights and dance music is to be on drugs. By 6 a.m. we were back in our tent, thinking about, you know, life and what it all means 'n' stuff while trying in vain to pass out to the sounds of Paul Oakenfold who was still playing off in the distance.
Comments (21)
Showing 1-21 of 21
Yeah, I've seen Phish on 'shrooms and I. still. did. not. get it. At all. I think this is at least partly because they. are. fucking. terrible. The only good part was a massive glow-stick war. And making fun of all the passed out wookies. The drugs merely made the whole thing tolerable.
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We drug test here at the Scene too. Except here, a clean piss test is grounds for dismissal.
Heh, that was a really really short 2001. People were complaining.
The effort is appreciated even though Phish didn't click for you.
I miss tripping, but alas at 41 I'm past my tripping prime. Sure had fun at the Dead shows in 1989.
There's a book of Rolling Stone interviews with and articles about Jerry Garcia. In one of them, he talks about why he stopped tripping... apparently, he decided he'd had enough when he experienced turning into a wheat field.
Just read this interesting review...
Phish were at their fine form and an added bonus was, they didn’t take a set break. Instead played for solid 3hrs all thru..
http://www.ranker.com/list/home.htm#mainlistid=54918&start=1
Phish is not terrible. They're far from my favorite, but you SCENEsters seem to have trouble comprehending songs that involve more than rudimentary musical phrases.
I've seen them on and off the stuff. I stopped years ago because I had a conversation with a meatball sandwhich at Tabouli's and as I ate it, its voice became higher and higher, and then it continued to chat me up from my stomach, a bit muffled but otherwise still audible.
Best band to see on the stuff: Praxis.
Please, please, please somebody dose Tobin and send him to see 84001 springwater. Then send Kristal from YouTellConcerts to go interview him. It would be soooo meta...
lol @ burrito's comment.
who cares if something is complex or rudimentary? personally, all i care about is feeling and heart. it's just boring to me to listen to a bunch of musicians hot-dogging on their instruments. they're good at what they do and all, but it sounds stale to me.
if others like them, great--glad they bring joy to someone, but to insinuate that those who don't enjoy their music cannot appreciate fully formed, complex music, is just silly.
besides, they can't write lyrics to save their lives.
ps--silent discos are HILARIOUS.
I'm not sure why you would take acid in order to enjoy something you dislike normally. So you walked *tripping* into an crowd 60,000 large to see a band you've never seen before and felt like you were excluded from an inside joke? You seem surprised? Sounds like you would have had a better time going back to the Raphael Saadiq show to pray for a the other two members of Tony Toni Tone Tone to show up...
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