Friday at Bonnaroo 2011

As Bonnaroo built to a head on Friday, the day turned out to be a hectic and overwhelming one.  More than a few attendees were roundly confused by an evening stunt that featured parachuters dropping several thousand fluttering LED lights, and that can be attributed to the monumental amount of activity at the festival.  They could hardly be expected to comprehend the stunt or the cryptic messages borne by the cargo’s QR code after such a day.  Plus, many of them had seen Ron Jeremy in the flesh, or perhaps been berated by Lewis Black.

Under sunny skies and tolerable heat, Bela Fleck led his original Flecktones lineup through a quick set of mostly new material on the Which stage.  Jeff Coffin was a great Flecktone, but Howard Levy’s return to the band has revitalized the quartet’s creative spirit and it shows in their highly coordinated cosmic jazz attack.  Along with Levy’s contribution on piano and harmonica, the highlight of the set was the rubbery “Prickly Pear,” which is about as greasy as the band gets.  Victor Wooten’s tumbling bass lines duel with Levy and Fleck’s insistent melodic huff to fantastic effect.

On the main stage, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals put on an incredible display of energy that was eagerly reciprocated by the swelling audience.  Potter’s sexiness and personality are by now legendary, but the band is getting by on way more than short skirts and adorable gesticulations these days.  Theirs was a bombastic blur of a set, kicking off with the rollicking combination of “Ah Mary” and “Only Love,” blasting through “Stop the Bus” and a crowd-pleasing “White Rabbit,” and culminating with the wiry “Medicine.” 

Tantalizing sets butted up against one another all evening.  Diverse spectacles like Matt and Kim and The Sword occurred around the same time that Warren Haynes Band followed the Flecktones on the Which stage.  As much of a part of Bonnaroo’s being as anyone, Haynes brought a new band that is a far cry from the familiar testosterone-laden blues rock of Gov’t Mule or the classic compositions of The Allman Brothers Band.  Instead, this sextet focuses on funkier material that played well to the masses while still incorporating loads of instrumental alchemy from monster players like Ron Holloway (sax) and Nigel Hall (keys).  It’s the soul and R&B side of Haynes that few have experienced.  That said, they did open the set with the Mule song “Tear Me Down” before moving into several selections from the new Man in Motion album.  The show’s finest moment, though, was a lengthy sequence that saw Haynes’ own twisted love song “Take a Bullet” envelop a righteously groovy version of Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish.”  The was no need to leave the Which stage, since one of the most anticipated sets of the year took place soon after Haynes was done.  With a voice like velvet gravel, Ray Lamontagne swept the crowd off their aching feet with an enchanting solo piece to open.  His touring band then joined in and applied their ragged-but-right stamp to tunes like Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried,” the haunting “Beg, Steal, Borrow,” and the ubiquitous shuffle of “Trouble.” 

The star power of Bonnaroo X was on full blast as huge droves of humanity made their way to the What stage to witness My Morning Jacket’s first main stage performance ever at an event that has become part of the band’s legend.  Dashing a setlist full of standbys with new songs like “Victory Dance” and “Circuital,” which kicked off the set just as they begin the new album, Jim James and company brought a new kind of swagger to their expansive show.  With full horn section in tow, MMJ not only treated the enormous crowd to favorites like “Off the Record,” “Gideon,” “I’m Amazed,” and “Wordless Chorus,” but constructed a rousing finale.  The anthem “On Big Holiday” sealed the deal on the show after the Preservation Hall Jazz Band added their inimitable snazz to legendary versions of “Dancefloors” and “Highly Suspicious.”

The second reunited original lineup to grace the Which stage on Friday was Primus.  Figurehead Les Claypool gave the crowd a hearty tenth anniversary “Bonnaroooo” howl, and he’s got every right, having first inspired the now-ubiquitous call during his set at the inaugural event.  Primus peeled off a delightfully demented slice of their songbook while taking the time for some surprisingly lengthy jams.  “American Life,” in particular, was placed on the band’s lab table and fiddled with for some time, while classics like “Jerry Was A Race Car Driver” and “Harold of the Rocks” held tighter to their structure.  The trio did take every opportunity to experiment, though, and no one could have been prepared for the sight and sound spectacular that Les, Ler, and Jay unleashed as they tested new material and indulged in old stuff.

After the unabashed, gargantuan sing along that was Arcade Fire’s headlining set, Bonnaroo slipped into late night mode with a bevy of beats to choose from.  While Bassnectar pounded away at the glowring crowd and The Black Angels unraveled people’s brains with their psychedelic snarl, one half of Outkast hosted a dirty south dance party.  Big Boi didn’t just have a DJ press play on his beats, either.  The majority of drums, bass, horns, backing vocals and guitar were performed by a band, and their green Adidas track suits matched those of the dancers that occasionally embellished song choices.  Hip-hop shows normally move at a breakneck pace, and this was no different.  Big Boi didn’t perform many songs in their entirety, preferring to keep the show moving by blending his limitless supply of iconic verses and hooks into one mass of Southernplayalisticness.  While bonafide classics like

“Southernplayalisticcadillacmuzik” and “Players Ball” drew huge cheers, so did the new stuff.  The bubbling beats of “Shutterbug” boiled the audience in a broth of booty-shaking, “Fo Yo Sorrows” was a hyped-up rallying cry for the unapologetic potheads in the crowd, and “General Patton” blazed a trail of pummeling beats and classical samples.  The litany of hits was seamless and awe-inspiring, from the old-school “Rosa Parks” and “Ms. Jackson” to the slightly less old-school “GhettoMusick” and “The Way You Move.”  The over the top smorgasbord of music on Friday is the norm for Bonnaroo, and there’s even more where that came from.  An even more diverse lineup awaits the weekend, and the stars will no doubt continue to come out in Manchester.

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