Saturday afternoon in the wonderful world of TV movies

Maria Conchita Alonso's character:

"You screwed up our marriage with your booze, and pills... and those sleazy hookers."

Michael McKean's character:

"Well your skirts weren't exactly pristine, honey!"

And so it goes.

Living on Tennessee Time

We'd set up camp on Thursday - a tent for Sherin and J.P., and one for Jason and me; loads o' camp food and a badass stove to cook it with; giganto-cooler full of beer and ice; the shade canopy we'd picked up in Nashville - key to our comfort, as it happened. This canopy did not, however, allow us to sleep in remarkably well. The Tennessee heat cranked up pretty early in the day, and S & JP particularly caught the sun's rays in the morning. But we were able to ease into the mornings with coffee filtered mug by mug, port-a-johns that started the day downright cleanly, baby wipe 'baths' followed by ye olde gold bond on the crotch (trust me, it's a good thing) and a few get-things-going beers at camp and on the dusty walk to Centeroo.

Made some 'Children of Men' and 'Grapes of Wrath' jokes on said walk - you could look at those thousands of tents as an artistic collective or a refugee camp, depending on your point of view. Either way, it is a good population to be a part of.
Paid a real quick visit to Bonna Rouge, the cabaret tent, to hear a couple numbers from the Firecracker Jazz Band, who swung us nicely into the day. Didn't stay long though, because we wanted to get a good spot for Richard Thompson, rock hero and guitar god extraordinaire, perennially underrecognized by the masses though a critical darling. Well people, I'd never had the chance to see him, and wasn't going to miss this one, in spite of having to take a pass on the Brazilian Girls and Tortoise. And holy shit, he did not disappoint!


Do you know this guy? A lot of people don't, to America's shame. Brit rocker, one of the founders of Fairport Convention, in my opinion he's one of the very best guitarists out there, with a mastery of an utterly individual mix of rock, blues and traditional music from at least 2 continents. He played new stuff, old stuff, no FC material as far as I could tell, but my knowledge of their catalogue is far from encyclopedic. Thompson's set was one of the highlights of the weekend for sure, with all the things you'd expect: tight band, great songs, RT was in fine voice and his guitar work was off the hook, natch; and the ineffable live factor was well-charged - the crowd was in tune with the music and the musicians returned the favor.

So I needed a mental break after that. We caught parts of the sets from Kings of Leon and Michael Franti & Spearhead. Both were good, especially Franti, but the combination of fatigue and awe kept me from altogether thorough attention. Which may have been for the best, in light of what happened next...

Bonnawrap-up

This will be the first of probably several posts on the Bonnaroo festival I went to last week with Sherin, J.P. and my brother-in-law Jason. You've seen some of the advance notice here - 4 days of music, art and camping in southern Tennessee, replete with acts that gave much cause for high hopes. Earlier today, I was asked why it's taken me so long to post about this at all, and while I could respond with the standard 'it takes time to recover, life is hard, blah blah blah,' you'd all see right through that because you know the truth: when you're a rock star of my magnitude, you end up spending a lot of time drizzling chocolate syrup on naked models and other such activities. Also, Sherin beat me to the obvious title and opening line in her 6/19 entry.

So for now, I'll just say that the Roo rocked our socks off. Seriously, you should have seen our feet; they were pretty gross by the end. It was more than worth treading around in sandals, though, and hiking the half-hour from the tent to the venue (including that huge bottleneck at the 'security' checkpoint - which was pretty comical, and seemed to be for show. They really looked for contraband the first day; by the end of which I'm guessing that the security team had confiscated enough chemical refreshment to keep the whole staff going the whole weekend, because by Friday they were pretty halfhearted about it, and by Saturday people were smuggling in whole coolers full of stuff.) There were plenty of moments that fell short of transcendent, and a couple that were really quite lame, but those moments were way outweighed by the awesome rockage of the best acts.

Diving right in, Sherin and J.P stood on line to catch Lewis Black and friends; I'd seen a full set of his before, and the line was long, so Jason and I went to "This Tent" to see The Black Angels instead. They're from Austin, which makes me happy, and took their name from the Velvet Underground's 'Black Angel Death Song.' True to this origin, they give good drone. Dark but not oppressive, their live show casts a long shadow on their (good) recordings. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this was a big theme for the weekend. Bands I already really liked got that much more of my respect when I heard and saw what they're capable of in person.

After the angels, J & I ducked over to "The Other Tent" to hear the end of the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars. They're just what their name sounds like: good fun dixieland meets Eastern European Jewish clarinet Jam. Moved on to "That Tent" (yes, I know, the venue names are like the "Who's on First?" routine. Just dreadfully clever, ain't it? :p ) to catch The National. Not much to say about them: they were fine, but I spent part of the set just chillin in the grass. Which was a-ok, because it allowed me to save my energy for Rodrigo y Gabriela who fucking rocked!!!!

[the usage of 'rock' and its variants as a modifier is already really old, I know, but sometimes it's the only word that will do...]





Mexican guitar duo, plenty flamenco, heavy metal 'tude; he has fieryfast picking skills and she whales on the git box with such percussive fervor that a couple times I caught myself scanning the stage looking for the nonexistent drummer. Maybe a teeny bit too cheerlead-y for my taste, and I don't think we needed both 'Wish You were Here' and 'Stairway.' But complaining about such details would just be perverse.

And on that note, it's back to the chocolate sauce. Another installment will follow shortly...