Let me start of with this: It was the best of times and it was the FUCKING worst of times. I cannot sum up my weekend on ‘the farm, prostate ’ in the backwoods of Tennessee any more accurately. Bonnaroo has been the future plan, clinic emphasis on future for a couple of years, cialis but after seeing this years lineup and deciding there is no time like the present I bought the tickets and managed to corral my roommate into joining me. Many reactions are given when telling others you are going to Bonnaroo. There are looks of jealousy, skepticism and many “I went to that before it became mainstream.”  But we set off for an experience because that is what Bonnaroo is. Its not a music festival or camping, it’s a ridiculous carnival with 80,000 people, music, rides (Ferris wheel and water side), comedy tent (hell yes Bob Saget and Tobias Funke, I mean David Cross), cinema tent (which shows cult movies and performances like the Polyphonic Spree performing all songs of The Rocky Horror Picture Show) and the Sonic Stage which holds small thirty minute sets by the bands and artists in case you missed their real set. Also have you ever wondered what happened to the world supply of hula-hoops after you reached the fifth grade and threw yours out? We found them, for at Bonnaroo one will always be within ten feet of you.

A lot of what we read or was told on how to hack it was pretty spot on and helpful such as bring rain gear because of course its going to rain during the first and last days. Have you ever taken down a tent in the pouring rain at four AM only to then drag your junk two miles to catch a shuttle to the airport? NEVER again. People also talk about how nice and hospitable the festival is. I can attest to this as someone who lost their phone, TWICE, and got it back immediately by friendly bonnaroo-vians. That being said, niceness only gets you so far. The people working Bonnaroo were all nice … but had no idea what the fuck was going on. Ever. After asking twenty different people directions to something and getting twenty different answers you start to just figure it out by yourself, which means a lot of walking in circles. My legs are so toned right now. Camping is also a cluster of confusion, but luckily a godsend in the form of an uber hippie (named Nightshade, yes Nightshade) who let us camp in the back of the information booth at pod three. I won’t discuss how confusing the camping was set up, but there were at least twelve pods with the numbers getting larger the farther you get from Center-Roo (the actual festival site). The closer you camp to Center-Roo the noisier it is all night, but the less walking/stumbling to your tent you will do after a two to four AM Animal Collective show. At the same time, Center-Roo may be the best laid out festival venue because it has so many stages laid out in a way that one can get from one stage to another on the other side in less than ten minutes which makes those overlapping sets less of a disappointment. That being said, the “clever” names for stages are actually the anti-Christ of the festival. The names are “this tent,” “that tent,” “other tent,” “which tent,” and “what tent.” It sounds so funny, until communication becomes a ten-minute conversation on “when you say this tent do you mean this tent, like where we are, or “this tent?” Unreal and illogical, but in the end we were there for the music so we quickly learned which were what and that… and the other.

My roommate and now Bonnaroo-vian buddy Jackie and I had a hard time narrowing down our top performances and moments, like Sophie’s Choice hard, but we seemed to manage this list.

HAIM – The three sisters making up the band are terrific performers and put on a really energetic show, which the crowd went nuts for even though they have yet to release a full-length album. Their song featured an ending with all three drumming together. They were so engaged and hyped up that one sister, Este, had so much momentum that when she stopped drumming, she fell flat backwards onto the ground, then picked herself up laughing and waving goodbye.

Lord Huron (at the Sonic Stage) – The band played a stripped down, almost acoustic set at the Sonic stage that we caught. The set emphasized the singer’s great voice and the chill, easy listening music that relaxes you, but doesn’t put you to sleep, but you want them to keep playing.

Alt-J – The band has surged in popularity this last year and each one of our roommates has gone on Alt-J benders so we are huge fans of the album. The performance was just as electric. You can’t really tell what the singers are saying or if its even English, but they had a great stage presence and the crowd was lovin’ it.

R. Kelly – We knew we wanted to hit up R. Kelly’s set, but in all fairness, we just wanted to hear some “Ignition,” so we were thoroughly surprised when he played all of these songs we had forgotten about such as “Fiesta,” “I’m a Flirt” and even the epic childhood jam “I Believe I can Fly.” Thanks to Space Jam everyone in the crowd belted out the lyrics while paper doves were released into the air for about three minutes. Jackie threw a big “Thank You” to our old NOW CDs because now we have all these songs at home. The best part of his set besides his great performance was that he didn’t even pee on anyone!

Rock n’ Soul Dance Party Super Jam – We both agreed that our top five includes the Rock n’ Soul Dance Party Super jam. Super jam is the only way to describe the two-hour dance party where rock, soul, dance and a ton of Sly and the Family Stone was played. All ages were grooving’ till 2 AM. While the jam originally included Jim James, John Oates, Larry Graham (of Sly and the Family Stone), a ton of other artists joined in such as Brittany Howard (Alabama Shakes), and Billy Idol and R. Kelly, both of which ran to play with the super jam minutes after their sets ended. It was unreal and something that could never be recreated in all of its funky gloriousness.

Bjork – Bjork’s performance was everything a Bjork performance needs: weird costumes, her weird music, weird graphics and a weird crowd. In fact, this was the first and only performance where people weren’t socializing, but glued to the stage, afraid they would miss something. She pranced around in a mask that covered her entire head, resembling a porcupine from space, and everyone loved it. One of the best parts of the performance was the ten or so backup singers. They were dressed in velvet space looking robes and were the most casual backups ever. They talked to each other, they put their hair up and then down whenever they wanted to, but they sang impeccably and they danced however they wanted, mostly jumping and flailing about which is the only acceptable way to dance to Bjork.

Animal Collective – The band played the late nightspot from 2 to 4 AM. To say at this point everyone is either delirious from sleep deprivation or drugs of some sort could be accurate, but the band made up for it in enthusiasm. They started off with an introduction that included beat boxing by Michael Winslow from The Police Academy and kept the crowd going for two hours through jumping, screaming and having a blow up centipede taking up the entire stage as an homage to their newest album. Their newest album heavily dominated the performance, so that sucked that many of their most popular songs weren’t played, but a live Animal Collective performance seems like a foreign experience. You can’t understand a word they say and the music has a completely different sound than the albums. It’s almost like seeing something new created right in front of you until you realize they just played all the songs you never really paid attention to before.

Paul McCartney – As to be expected, the MVP award, the best experience and the most enjoyable set goes to The Beatles Paul McCartney. His nearly three hour set was filled with songs from The Beatles, Wings, his solo albums and two different firework shows. Someone that old and that classic could be a bore or just play the song exactly like the album, but he played off the crowd, mentioned signs, talked about the pussy riots before playing “Back in the USSR” and started “Something” with a ukulele. Seeing 80,000 people of all different ages sing “Hey Jude” at the top of their lungs on a giant farm was nothing short of epic and a reminder of why Paul McCartney has achieved the notoriety and longevity of his career he has.

Swans – My pick of the best set of the weekend, besides the deity that is Paul McCartney, would have to be hands down Swans. I love being surprised. People always talk about how festivals are a great place to find new music and every time someone says this I call bullshit. And every festival I am proved wrong. I go to festivals like many to see those that I know and I have a schedule I expect to follow, but plans always change, sets become boring, you start wandering and what I find is that the bands that you know by name, but no specific song can delight you the most. Such is with Swans. I know them like most do, as an indie post punk band that critics love, but I never really delved too deep. Now, throw me in the deep end and I hope everyone joins me. Swans’ leader is Michael Gira, a man who essentially discovered Devendra Banhart and published albums from Akron/Family. He also looks like he could be a serial killer, but that seemed to fit into the band which is made up of much older dudes playing an hour and a half of reverb, weird instruments and lyrics that either don’t really make sense, or I couldn’t pay attention to them because the texture of the music commands full attention.

Honorable mentions go to Mac Demarco (an awesomely underrated performer), Wild Nothing, Portugal. The Man, Future Birds, Django Django, Baroness (I don’t listen to them, but their set was super engaging) and David Byrne and St. Vincent (its David Byrne. And St. Vincent. Need I say more? Plus they played their collaborations as well as their separate music including an epic performance of “Burning Down the House”). One of the highlights would be Grizzly Bear pulling Beyonce Solange on stage to do vocals for their most well known song “Two Weeks” which brightened up their beautiful, but very mellow set.  Vacationer was also a bright spot on the Silent Disco schedule. Yes, you look ridiculous dancing with no music, but there is always someone way more out there than you and the set was filled with Daft Punk, Michael Jackson, and Vacationer’s own music.

Buzz bands suck. Not meaning they actually are bad, but at festivals, everyone and their mom wants to say they saw a certain band insuring a huge crowd and a not enjoyable experience for anyone that actually is a fan. Bonnaroo was no exception in that Tame Impala, The XX, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, Ed Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and especially The Lumineers could have been skipped to avoid terrible crowds and hearing the Bonnaroo meeting conversations (i.e. “is this your first Bonnaroo?” “Where are you from?” “Do you have any molly?”). Macklemore puts on a show and it actually was a pretty great time to sing and dance to the crazy beats and catchy as hell lyrics, but the shots of the crowd by the camera made it look like we were at some spring break Miami video. The Lumineers on the other hand was definitely the worst of the weekend due to the too rehearsed and predictable performance, the speakers must not have been working well because it was like whispers, and everyone and their drunk brother decided that that would be the night to go trashy wild as exemplified by the small 20-ish girl passing out next to me as well as the massive amounts of loud LOUD conversing about everyone’s drug use. FYI, no one cares and if you have to talk about it that loudly, your inebriation levels are probably not that high, you are just kind of an a hole. They also decided to do this weird clapping / sing along for fifteen minutes while a camera or a man crowd surfed. I didn’t understand why this was happening until I remembered they have one album and were given an hour and fifteen minute set at the second largest stage.

All in all, if one goes to Bonnaroo you can have the experience you want, just commit to the weekend. Know that you are going to be a dirty mess as a combination of the lack of showers and the soul crushing humidity and running on next to no sleep (again due to heat and Bonnaroo’s night shows). If you want to pay 300 bucks to camp and do drugs there’s a group for you. If you are there for socializing then you came to maybe the most friendly music festival where everyone wants to introduce themselves, but this also means normal people have to listen to the dumbest conversations. Bob Saget should have hosted a show at the ‘Roo entitled “People say the Dumbest/Craziest Shit” including but not limited to: “they totally stole our idea for having a tiger on stage” (random unknown indie band member about stuffed tiger on Father John Misty’s stage), “when your saying this tent do you mean this tent or “this tent?” “There’s too many damned naked men here,” “he went a little overboard, I’ve never taken more than an eighth” (of what????), “he’s never seen boobs before, Come on, he can’t leave Bonnaroo without some Bonna-Boobs” (two dudes trying to persuade a girl into showing them her chest… in the middle of the portapotty line), “sorry dude, can I grab the pipe between your legs?” “So if I’m a 1.6 is that all alcohol in my bloodstream?” and the cake topper was a twenty something girl who talked and grinded on a new friend during Sir Paul McCartney’s set: “I’m doing this for my bucket list… if this was Madonna I would actually pay attention, but I just don’t like this.” I’m sorry, who doesn’t like the Beatles? IT’S THE BEATLES.  But if you are there for the music, year after year, the lineup never seems to disappoint. Just remember, baby wipes and a toilet paper roll/tissues will save your ass. Literally.