Bonnaroo, June 12
For day two of Bonnaroo, one of the summer's biggest music festivals, Decider continued to defy sunstroke and dodge grumpy townies in Manchester, Tenn., to search for rock nirvana. (Not Nirvana, mind you—we all know what happened to them.)
1:30 p.m.: Even with their inconsistent time signatures—switching from, like, 6/4 to 1/1 within the same song—Dirty Projectors broke through the wall of pretentious into something more broadly appealing and sincere. At one point, David Byrne, a true guru when it comes to mixing the cool with the nerdy, came onstage, and an already amped crowd went ape-shit.
2:45 p.m.: Animal Collective played an unimpressive, whiny set while some guys danced in the mud pit. As concertgoers ambled away with the band still onstage, they grumbled more about the show than the literally hellish weather (97 degrees, no shade).
3:30 p.m.: Toumani Diabate plays the kora. Béla Fleck plays the banjo. Performing together, their method might be described as dueling, but what they really do is build songs collaboratively, taking turns riffing Deliverance-style on "Yankee Doodle Dandy." They're sparing with their words, flaunting a total mastery of their instruments that seems to be their most coherent form of communication. Whatever this language is called, it's amazingly fluent.
4:45 p.m.: Yeah Yeah Yeahs? Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!
8:30 p.m.: In contrast to Thursday night's Passion Pit show, where an enthusiastic audience danced to a lackluster performance, the crowd at the Beastie Boys set couldn't match the energy onstage. While the veteran MCs spit inspired rhymes ("Grandpa's been rappin' since 1983," said Ad-Rock), some concertgoers stood listlessly and chanted for Phish. But the Beasties were still impressive, even hyperactive despite the zen style of MCA. They played a Check Your Head-heavy set, often picking up instruments and actually jamming out—not unlike Phish, ironically. At one point, Nas came out to promote a forthcoming collaboration.
11 p.m.: Phish songs are like balloons, floating so high it's easy to forget anyone is holding the string. The tunes just sort of lift into the air, assuming their own improvised trajectories. In that way, the band's studio albums are merely fodder for the live show. It's easy to see why these guys have such a devout following.
2:30 a.m.: Twice Girl Talk's set was interrupted by technical difficulties as dancing fans onstage jostled the plug out of his laptop. While his mash-ups are sometimes mind-blowing—is that Biggie mixed with Elton John?—it's difficult to ignore that his instrument is a computer and his performance consists of pushing a few buttons, often sounding identical to the collages on his albums. Still, the guy knew how to pump some bass and move a crowd.
