I'm alive!
I somehow managed to get through both Bonnaroo and my work conference on a handful of hours of sleep and copious amounts of coffee. And here I am, back in the virtual arms of DivMo and the literal arms of my bed ready to recap the weekend in all its glory for you. "The literal arms of my bed"?! I told you I haven't been sleeping, right?
To kick off this 'Roo Recap 2008, I'm going to start with the big glow-in-the-dark elephant in the room.
No, I'm not talking about "The Elephant Man" that my friends saw wandering around the festival. (Thanks, Bruce!)
Because he was beyond awesome. Just look at his... commitment to art! (Oh, p.s. NSFW, so scroll quickly)
No, the elephant I'm talking about is Kanye West.
Just do
a quick Google news search of all the stories cropping up about Kanye & Bonnaroo and you'll see titles like:
Delayed Kanye West Set Angers Bonnaroo Crowd,
Bonnaroo: Kanye West is a "Expletive Deleted",
Kanye Booed at Bonnaroo... and there's over 1,000 search results where that came from.
So what happened?
Well it all started when Kanye's set was moved from an 8:15 p.m. show on the smaller of the 2 stages to a 2:45 a.m. show on the larger stage so that he could more fully put on his
well-reviewed Glow in the Dark show.
Sounds good right? I mean, 2:45 a.m. is really late, but it's Bonnaroo after all and it didn't really make sense given his popularity to have him on the smaller stage competing with other shows. And I heard the Glow in the Dark Tour was this cool high-concept take on his albums and has been receiving
rave reviews, so an opportunity for him to put on a more elaborate show sounded good to me, as sleep depriving as it may be.
"Sleep depriving" turned out to be an understatement. Sleep wasn't just deprived,
it was duct taped and thrown into the back of a car and beaten to within an inch of its life with a shovel. In a string of events that are obviously not completely Kanye's fault--as quick as some are to blame him entirely for the debacle--Pearl Jam's set ran over and Kanye's own elaborate staging hit some roadblocks in set-up.
When we walked up to the show, the stage looked like this:
Yay! Kanye West is up next! Woo! Then the signs were changed to "Kanye West is up at 3:15." There was some light booing and grumbling, but hey, it's only 1/2 hour; we can deal. Then at 3:16 it was updated to 3:30. More boos in earnest then. One of my favorite lines of the night had to be a girl passing me who said "Kanye? More like Kan-boo!"
At five minutes after 3:30, the sign switched back to the ominous:
With no promise of a start time, the boos and chanting began in earnest. I fell in love with the guys standing in front of me when they started to incite the hippie crowd with cries of:
"Kanye kills puppies!"
"Kanye doesn't erase his environmental footprint!"
"Kanye doesn't buy locally-grown produce!"
"Kanye wears a Dalmatian fur coat!"
"Pass it on guys!"
Hilarious.
So yeah, were people annoyed? Definitely. Were they very serious about it? Nah, not really. I can't speak for everyone, but at least the crowd around me was annoyed but still game to see the show--and laughing at those fools who spent $10 at the merch tent for those fucking ridiculous venetian blinds-looking white sunglasses who were walking out on Kanye before he even started. I imagined little tears falling out of the slits of those glasses as another fanboy's hero-worship dreams were crushed. The really pissed people left, the rest of us sat on the muddy ground smoking and playing phone games to keep ourselves entertained until the set was fixed.
Around 3:30 the crew finished fixing the screen and the stage went dark. Everyone surged to their feet only to wait another hour before Kanye appeared on stage.
Here are my thoughts on waiting. Yeah, people don't like to do it, especially when it's that late. But this is Bonnaroo and it's a hardy group. In 2005 I stood for 6 hours to get in the front row to see The Mars Volta. In 2006 I waited around the main stage for another 6 hours and stood body to body with half-naked hippies just to get a decent view of Radiohead. I know hardship in the name of a good show. A 2-hour wait sucks--
especially when you're missing other great shows like The Coup, Talib Kweli, and Ghostland Observatory: all shows I'd love to see if I hadn't heard such good things about Kanye's show. But it's not the end of the world.
I know the focus of the Kanye criticism is that Kanye was late and therefore pissed off his audience. But for all the booing people might have done when the times kept getting pushed back, when he finally stepped on stage a huge cheer went up. These people wanted to see him. Were still excited to see him.
And as for Kanye? Who the hell knows what was going on in his head. His whole performance might as well have been a taped recording for all the interaction he had with the audience. No "hello, Bonnaroo!" No "sorry for the wait!" Honestly, I don't think an apology was even mandatory, though it would have been nice. Any deviation from his little script would have been a welcome validation for all those who waited so long for him.
And as for the show? Well I guess I forgot to take my koolaid because the "high concept" was flat out dumb. Kanye is in a spaceship. It crashes into an unknown planet. His ship's robot's name is Jane. I'm not sure who talked more like a robot: Jane the robot or Kanye reading his lines. Not that there was much substance there: most of their interaction consisted of Kanye saying things like "Jane! Where are we?" "Unknown." "How do we get back?" "Unknown." "I wonder what's going to happen..." And then the song "I Wonder" starts. And you're supposed to be like "oooh snap! Kanye is so clever! He wondered where he was and then the song "I Wonder" came on! omfg! brilliant."
This is about as glow-in-the-dark as things got, which was pretty, but also pretty underwhelming when given how hyped this show was:
And then there was the gut-wrenchingly awkward transition into Golddigger when Kanye loudly proclaims to his robot Jane that he's been on the planet too long and "needs pussy" and she turns into a gold-painted video girl on the screen, which he then proceeds to feel up. Yeah, he was rubbing the boobs on a video screen like an immature 12-year-old boy. No joke. People around me were both cringing and laughing in turn to this ridiculousness.
This was the best shot I could get of "Jane" who had by that point split into two video girls who proceeded to rub each other. (Which was probably a better idea than letting Kanye do it since he was so awkward about his need for pussy that it sounded like he'd never seen one, let alone known what to do with it if he got it.)
Not quite the full crowd participation "Throw your diamonds in the air!" usually elicits.
And people started flicking him off when he rapped the line in "Stronger": "You should be honored by my lateness/That I would even show up for this fake shit."
Yeah, the line's about the hip-hop scene and not a specific attack on the Bonnaroo crowd, but it's not easy to hear and not immediate think: "Go fuck yourself, Kanye. ... I mean Kan
boo!"
At 5:30 a.m., an hour into the scheduled 1 and 1/2 hour set, my bleary-eyed friends and I agreed to head back to the tent--the sun was rising by now and by 8:30 is is too hot to sleep in a tent so the rest of Sunday was looking mighty rough at that point. Kanye played "Stronger," the last song we were hoping to hear before we left, and then a curious thing happened: with a 1/2 hour left to go, Kanye finished his song, climbed into his little escape hatch hidey-hole and disappeared. The 'go away' house music came on and it was over.
It's hard for me to get up in arms about the missing 1/2 hour since we were all deliriously tired by then and planning to leave anyway, but that's still a pretty shitty move.
And how did the fans respond the next day? With "Kanye sucks" chants during other shows, tent-made t-shirts, and some lovely graffiti:
And my personal favorite:
"Kanye West does ^not care about 'Roo people."
Alright, now that we've gotten KanyeRoo-gate 2008 out of the way, we can look forward to some more happy 'Roo recapping including my reviews (and pictures) of the Chromeo set and
M.I.A's last set ever, which I was lucky enough to catch (and survive!) And the hilarious story of how all my clothes got stolen (and later returned... sorta...)
So stay tuned.
In the meantime, you can tide yourself over with the piece I wrote for Bostonist about
Celtics fans at Bonnaroo.
If you're in Boston tomorrow (Saturday, June 28th), you have no choice but to form a team (or come solo and we'll hook you up) and participate in the 1st Annual Boston Scavenger Hunt (Banditos-style!).
