In the latest announcement, the folks at the Bonnaroo music festival have said Phish will actually close out the festival with the final Sunday night performance.
It had been speculated that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band would get the honours, though it seems Phish will now take their rightful place at the forefront of the fest. The band's first set, on Friday, will be a "special late night performance," which could easily be something like 12-4a.m.
Meanwhile, the Boss and his boys will suit up Saturday night, likely in the main evening show at 8 or 9p.m.
The Beastie Boys, Nine Inch Nails, Wilco, TV on the Radio and Snoop Dogg will also perform.
Stay tuned for more news from Bonnaroo, and for my preview of another great fest, 10,000 Lakes.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Tennessee Heat
Friends, this is the most exciting Bonnaroo lineup since 2005, the year when the fest cemented itself as the pinnacle of the summer jam-band scene.
The 2009 lineup promises a return to the early days of Bonnaroo, highlighted by the anticipation of the soon-to-be-starting Phish reunion tour.
The reunited Tre, Page, Mike and Fish will play two shows - if I had to guess, something like the midnight to 4 a.m. slots on Friday and Saturday - and should be rounding into their old form after doing the first six shows of their tour.
After Phish, the 2009 lineup gets really interesting. The Bonnaroo organizers are continuing the experiment this year, diversifying the music away from the jam scene as they have in years past with bands like the Roots, Tool, Pearl Jam, Metallica, Kanye West, Cyprus Hill, and even last year’s main stage show by Chris Rock.
The 2009 lineup has Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in the festival headliner role, giving the Boss his first Bonnaroo appearance and the chance to show how creative he can be. He’ll be the guy who closes out the show Sunday night, which means Stevie Van Zandt will likely be wandering around the festival grounds for three days doing Sopranos impressions and scoring lots of blow.
Next up and making their dramatic comeback from the obscurity of the European festival circuit, where they’ve been touring since the release of a critically acclaimed instrumental pop album…the Beastie Boys! Yes, the hip-hoppin’ white boys are back on the big stage (literally).
The first thing that came to mind when I saw the Beasties on the lineup was the show Beck put on in 2006, where he really went creative and did things onstage you would never see anywhere else but Bonnaroo - the Boys have the opportunity and the potential to do the same.
Nine Inch Nails picks up where Metallica left off last year, though Trent Reznor will have to do a bit better than the red and white touch-screen lightshow he had on his 2008 summer tour if he wants to win over the crowd, which was lukewarm to Metallica’s antics last year.
The real wild card of the show is Snoop Dogg’s appearance, which could really be a lot of fun. Everybody loves Snoop, but will he be able to handle the expectations of Bonnaroo?
As Kanye West found out last year, you can’t just plan on doing your same old thing - the set has to be musically, visually and culturally on a different level.
Rounding out the experimentation at this year’s Bonnaroo is the techno-pop genius of Paul Oakenfold, the slinky hip-hop rhythms of Erykah Badu and the vocabular verbosity of singer-songwriter Andrew Bird. Three of the new darlings of rock, TV on the Radio, MGMT and Animal Collective, make their first appearances in Manchester, while Merle Haggard brings a down-south touch.
Finally, Phish’s arrival back on the scene had the serendipitous effect of bringing back some of the greatest jammers to ever grace the What and Which stages. Gov’t Mule, Ben Harper and Wilco return after skipping last year’s fest, while moe. and Bela Fleck are back for their first turns since 2006. These are some of the bands who helped create this festival, in all its jammy glory.
Nevertheless, festival mainstays such as Robert Randolph and Medeski, Martin and Wood are nowhere to be found, though the lineup is less than half full. Stay tuned.
Bonnaroo runs the June 11-14 in Manchester, Tennessee.
The 2009 lineup promises a return to the early days of Bonnaroo, highlighted by the anticipation of the soon-to-be-starting Phish reunion tour.
The reunited Tre, Page, Mike and Fish will play two shows - if I had to guess, something like the midnight to 4 a.m. slots on Friday and Saturday - and should be rounding into their old form after doing the first six shows of their tour.
After Phish, the 2009 lineup gets really interesting. The Bonnaroo organizers are continuing the experiment this year, diversifying the music away from the jam scene as they have in years past with bands like the Roots, Tool, Pearl Jam, Metallica, Kanye West, Cyprus Hill, and even last year’s main stage show by Chris Rock.
The 2009 lineup has Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in the festival headliner role, giving the Boss his first Bonnaroo appearance and the chance to show how creative he can be. He’ll be the guy who closes out the show Sunday night, which means Stevie Van Zandt will likely be wandering around the festival grounds for three days doing Sopranos impressions and scoring lots of blow.
Next up and making their dramatic comeback from the obscurity of the European festival circuit, where they’ve been touring since the release of a critically acclaimed instrumental pop album…the Beastie Boys! Yes, the hip-hoppin’ white boys are back on the big stage (literally).
The first thing that came to mind when I saw the Beasties on the lineup was the show Beck put on in 2006, where he really went creative and did things onstage you would never see anywhere else but Bonnaroo - the Boys have the opportunity and the potential to do the same.
Nine Inch Nails picks up where Metallica left off last year, though Trent Reznor will have to do a bit better than the red and white touch-screen lightshow he had on his 2008 summer tour if he wants to win over the crowd, which was lukewarm to Metallica’s antics last year.
The real wild card of the show is Snoop Dogg’s appearance, which could really be a lot of fun. Everybody loves Snoop, but will he be able to handle the expectations of Bonnaroo?
As Kanye West found out last year, you can’t just plan on doing your same old thing - the set has to be musically, visually and culturally on a different level.
Rounding out the experimentation at this year’s Bonnaroo is the techno-pop genius of Paul Oakenfold, the slinky hip-hop rhythms of Erykah Badu and the vocabular verbosity of singer-songwriter Andrew Bird. Three of the new darlings of rock, TV on the Radio, MGMT and Animal Collective, make their first appearances in Manchester, while Merle Haggard brings a down-south touch.
Finally, Phish’s arrival back on the scene had the serendipitous effect of bringing back some of the greatest jammers to ever grace the What and Which stages. Gov’t Mule, Ben Harper and Wilco return after skipping last year’s fest, while moe. and Bela Fleck are back for their first turns since 2006. These are some of the bands who helped create this festival, in all its jammy glory.
Nevertheless, festival mainstays such as Robert Randolph and Medeski, Martin and Wood are nowhere to be found, though the lineup is less than half full. Stay tuned.
Bonnaroo runs the June 11-14 in Manchester, Tennessee.
The Music Is About To Begin
The summer festival season 2009 is here! Most of the major fests have unveiled their lineups, and I already can’t wait for June to get here! Check out the individual artist lineups and festival breakdowns here, and navigate to the individual homepages to join their mailing lists.
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