I Think We Broke Time - Ten Years Since My First Bonnaroo

Bonnaroo -- Are You Alive? Tell me How Does It Feel To Be Alive?

~Metallica, Fade to Black 2008

I had heard of Bonnaroo - I didn't know if I could handle "that much" jam music. I admit - as I have been called a music snob (by my husband - because he is the only one who could get away with that) I admit that I was a little leery of a four day jam festival. I had a great time in 2003 in Music Midtown Atlanta. It was a good mix of all different types and decades of music: Def Leppard, B-52's, Dylan, Buddy Guy, Les Claypool, Govt Mule - you get my point. I can't listen to too much of one thing for too long - my brain just can't hack it. After a concert - I can't listen to that band for days. After Faith No More this summer, I went home and listened to Amy Correia. Maybe something ain't wired right up there, but that is just how I am.

In the winter of 2007 I agreed to blindly buy Bonnaroo 08 tickets, knowing that I would at least know our friends from Dark Star Orchestra playing there. To the disappointment of Bonnaroo purists - 2008 was not going to be filled with jam only bands. The metal gods, the grunge gods and the rock and roll gods shined their light down upon the fields of Manchester TN and gave me the following main stage line up: 

Metallica, Pearl Jam, My Morning Jacket, The Avett Brothers, Sharon Jones, Jackie Greene, Dark Star Orchestra, and Robert Plant -- to name a few.
 
I could not get to Tennessee fast enough.

In 2008 Bonnaroo had  found the perfect mix of jam, rock, blues and crazy. Read on.

Thursday night, after these Brooklyn kids finally put their studio sized tent up, we ventured off to see some new bands before Dark Star Orchestra went on. I have to admit - there is a communal-ness to Bonnaroo. The town lets us make them the third largest city in Tennessee for four days and there are only a few common sense rules: don't kill anyone, try to keep all your clothes on, share your things and say sorry if you step on someone. I had to say sorry a lot the first night as I was not prepared for so many people just lying on the ground.

Two great acts went on before DSO: Nicole Atkins and the Felice Brothers. Amazing performers!! Nicole is a Jerseyite with a killer voice and the Felice Brothers made their way from singing in NYC Subway Stations to a good gig at Bonnaroo (if you like the Band and are fond of whiskey - I highly recommend these guys).

Now, I had seen our friends perform a gazillion times before. That night would be special since they sang Tennessee Jed and it automatically became the anthem for the weekend. It was also super sweet to see our friends play the festival. We would hang with Dino, one of their drummers, for the rest of the festival. First night in and I knew I would like the festival. It was time to get some sleep - for tomorrow, Metallica would play.

Umphrey's McGee

Saturday I was able to finally figure my way around the farm without a map. So many great bands played! Umphrey's McGee, Drive By Truckers, the Raconteurs, Les Claypool, Willie Nelson, to name a few. The hours tick tocked by until finally, the time had come. I don't really think Billy knew me 100 percent until the moment Chris Rock said these words: Are you ready for Metallica!!

I transformed into the adolescent skate board punk teenager and screamed every word to every song. Dino couldn't believe I knew all the words. I am sure that when Billy heard me shout Die, Die, Die at the top of my lungs during the opener Creeping Death, he had seen it all. Every song but one or two were from the Black album and back. The Bonnaroo crowd loved it! I loved it.
I hadn't seen Metallica in a while and they had the energy they did in the early 90's. Billy enjoyed it for two reasons, I am assuming. First, because he saw what the music did to me. Second, they played Nothing Else Matters, a song that was played at the funeral of his firehouse brother, John Florio, after 9/11. John was a huge Metallica fan and everyone around the firehouse knew it. Even James Hetfield, lead singer of Metallica knew it. He penned a letter to John's widow after reading his bio in the NY Times.

Saturday was a day of new bands and performers I had never seen play live. I was able to see Little Feat and Levon Helm in The Other Tent. In the band lounge with Dino, I kept on asking who was playing outside on the Which Stage. I didn't know who Gogol Bordello was but I was determined to find out. I was not prepared for insane time that would follow. Gogol Bordello are a gypsy punk band with members from everywhere. They play, what my friend has deemed, hard rock polka. Their jams are contagious. Fiddles, girls in red spandex banging drums and cymbals, a lead singer straight from the Ukraine via the Lower East Side, accordions (this was like the year of accordions, I swear). I began to dance with a kid from Manchester Michigan. It felt like we were flying as we attempted to keep up with the music. At one point, he looked at his watch and proclaimed: I think we broke time. My watch isn't working.

I went back stage as soon as they were done to share with Billy and Dino my new favorite band. Dino (the drummer) was in an all out Guitar Hero dual and Billy was talking to a writer for High Times Magazine. I wanted to move to Bonnaroo!

Pearl Jam hadn't played a festival since the 90's when eight kids were crushed to death at a festival in Europe. That, mixed with the political climate of the presidential election, I knew this would be a great set full of emotion. 

This set would contain one of my top five favorite live moments in my 40 years on this planet. 
  
Pearl Jam was tight that night. Eddie again and again commented how great it was that so many people could get along. We were 100,000 strong - a small town as he called us, before he went into that song. Billy went off to take a nap as Dino and I watched into the third hour of Pearl Jam, Release, Porch and Hail Hail were given to us like gifts from Andrew Wood, who I am sure was looking down at his former band mates from Mother Love Bone and smiled fabulously (as only Andrew could).

From Pearl Jam we were on to see Phil Lesh and Jackie Greene (who we had seen on the Sonic stage earlier in the day). First we had to find Billy and make sure no one stepped on him while he napped (how do you nap during Pearl Jam?). I wanted to stay up all night because tomorrow was the last day of Bonnaroo!! We left as soon as Phil and Jackie ended and went back to our tent.



Sunday was like Christmas, the Fourth of July and my birthday all rolled into one. That day, June 15, 2008, I would finally see Robert Plant. I left Billy and Dino to go and see Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi while I staked out the perfect seat for Robert. I should also note that Alison Kraus was playing with Robert. Not that I don't like her, she is an amazingly talented artist but I was biased. I had to see my Golden God of Rock and Roll. 

Then it happened. At 6:15 (Bonnaroo is always on time and that is awesome). Robert and Alison strolled onto the stage singing Rich Woman. I knew that the audience was split 50/50 for who they were there to see. We were so close to Nashville so a lot of folks came out just to see her. My kneed buckled. I was in the presence of Robert Plant, lead singer of Led Zeppelin. Singer of all of those songs you made out to in high school. Wearer of too tight pants and apparently buttonless shirts. I was awed for almost two hours. He sang Black Dog and In The Mood. They sang the Battle of Evermore together. It was quite a unique experience to sing Down to the River with 50,000 fans.

I didn't want to it end. Sadly, after watching Widespread Panic at the What Stage, it was time to move on. It was a perfect festival. I was with my husband, friend and 100,000 people who love music as much as we do. We sang, we laughed, we met new friends, we ate, we drank, we saw bands that made us remember memories of the past. For four days in 2008, I was a citizen of the third largest city in Tennessee. I go back each year to the farm, as we call it. It will never be the same as that year, but going back always evokes those memories of that first time I went to Bonnaroo. True to its Creole name, Bonnaroo is a really good time.

I'll Be Your Muse

Merri Cyr

I want to be ripped apart by music. I want it to be something that feeds and replenishes, or that totally sucks the life out of you. I want to be dashed against the rocks

Jeff Buckley was the purity that the music industry needed in the early 90's. He was raw, emotional, talented and vulnerable. For those lucky ones to have seen him perform at Sin-e, it must have been magic. He was a perfectionist - keeping so many recordings to himself only to be found after his untimely passing 17 years ago. All of those recordings remastered by others - would they have been good enough for him?

Jeff was becoming a star - much probably to his dismay. His desire was to be an artist. However, this artist was being talked about by those he called inspirations - Paul McCartney, Robert Plant, and Jimmy Page.

Where would he be today? With the world in such disarray - misconstrued values and the state of music in an odd place - would he be at the forefront of the few who have their own ideas and visions of sound?

Yes - Jeff haunted me in my dreams - and he is welcome back at any time - for Jeff has a place in my life. Albeit this time you don't have to live under my bed. When I listen to his music, I am taken back to the shores of Australia. I can taste the bitter heartbreak of a naive love, smell the eucalyptus in the early morning, and feel the hot sun on those salty ocean days. He transports me to a memory and a time when YouTube didn't exist, and visions are captured only in my mind.

On May 29, 1997, the Mississippi took the soul of a musician and offered his body to the shore at Beale Street - as a last testament to the musician he had become maybe. When I walk past St. Anne's in the morning, I imagine Jeff singing at the memorial for his father all those years ago. Jeff was a Wished for Song.

You're song

A Wished for Song

Go through the ear to the center

where sky is, where wind, where silent knowing.

Put seeds and cover them.

Blades will sprout

where you do your work.

~Jelaluddin Rumi

 

 

Just Like The Ocean Always In Love With The Moon Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk at 20

Kurt was fairly quiet and introverted most of the time. Jeff was the opposite. He was very much full of life and had a lot to say. He was somebody in love with experiencing everything. Within a very short time, he had all these famous old rock stars coming to his shows. Which put a a lot of pressure on him. People talked about his concerts the way they used to talk about Hendrix: they'd sit there, wide-eyed, telling you stories about him. He definitely had an aura. It's impossible to say what it is exactly a guy like that has, that is so attractive to other people. But he had more of it than anyone I had ever met. 

~Chris Cornell, Jeff's friend and music director of Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk.

Sketches is anything except what you'd expect for the follow up to Jeff's debut album, Grace. Jeff would be proud of that. He began writing songs for the album he wanted to call My Sweetheart the Drunk and was recording many of these songs when he swam infamously into the Wolf River on May 29, 1997. He left behind many unfinished songs and recordings that had to be interpreted and assumed finished in the way Jeff would have wanted. Helping in that, at the request of his mother, was friend Chris Cornell.

Sketches is two discs of ups and downs. There is a lot of scorn, the powerful, heartbreak, isolation, and acceptance. His lyrics show growth, chance, and not Grace part II, a leap Sony would not have been happy with for sure. 

Who knows what would have become of Jeff. The truth that music was his home - and that the music he wanted to create and enjoy. When you start to perform under fake names just to enjoy playing a small show for the sake of music...who knows how long Jeff would have survived the industry. Easier said then done now as opposed to the big label 1990's.


Twenty years since we heard what was going on in Jeff's mind and heart. There was change going on within Jeff. The sounds he used to record Grace at Bearsville Studio differs greatly from the raw sound of the songs he recorded in Memphis and in New York City for Sketches. There is one eerie similarity between the two albums: Jeff's references to river, water, and drowning. 

Below, some lyrics from each track. 

Disc 1

The Sky Is A Landfill
The storm has ripped the shelter
Of illusion from our brow
This power is no mystery to us now.
Leave your spirit genocide
The cancer you won't remove
We cast our funeral rose inside
And bury the need to prove
Our mutilation is to gain from the system  

Everybody Here Wants You
I know the tears we cried
Have dried on yesterday
The sea of fools has parted for us
There's nothing in our way
My love 
 
Opened Once
Just like the ocean
Always in love with the moon
It's overflowing now

Nightmares By The Sea
I've loved so many times and I've drowned them all
From their coral graves, they rise up when darkness falls
With their bones they'll scratch the window, I hear them call
"Don't know what you asked for." 

Yard Of Blonde Girls
Through the yard
Through the yard of blonde girls
Through the river and the sea
Gold sharks glittering
A tree of white
Breaks the earth
The streets where Lola played
   
Witches' Rave
You'd like to see him suffer
For you fantasy and thrill
He fell sick while we made love
He's out there, somewhere, still


New Year's Prayer
Leave your office
Run past your funeral
Leave your home, car
Leave your pulpit
Join us in the streets where we
Join us in the streets where we
Don't belong, don't belong
You and the stars
Throwing light
  Morning Theft
True self is what
Brought you here, to me
A place where we can
Accept this love
Friendship battered down by
Useless history 
Unexamined failure 

Vancouver
We're where we belong
It should end here
Until the end of time
Beyond the moment
That ends our bondage
I am your failed husband contender
I'm your loan shark of bliss.

You & I
You and I
Ah, the calm below that poisoned the river wild
You and I
Tears that dry on a rude awakened child
Where you look down
I've walked before
Burning holes
With eyes of liquid brown
If we had only known
In a way
We wouldn't reach this ground
You were my only home  

Disc 2
Nightmares By The Sea
Stay with me under these waves, tonight
Be free for once in your life tonight


New Year's Prayer
Stand absolved behind your electric chair, dancing
Past the sound within the sound
Past the voice within the voice
Haven't You Heard
Paranoia will write the world prayer
Make sure that you fit in the right holes
But when you take his offer, you're done for 

I Know We Could Be So Happy Baby (If We Wanted To Be)
We had a birthplace in common
We had separate beds and lives
I'll just sit here and glow
Break out the oldest pictures
Hand your ruined letters out to dry
We had a birthplace in common
And separate beds and lives
And lives, and lives 


Murder Suicide Meteor Slave
Welcome down to paradise rock
There is no single entrance
With the stars to revolve around
There is no real underground

Back In N.Y.C.
You're sitting in your comfort you don't believe I'm real,
You cannot buy protection from the way that I feel.
Your progressive hypocrites hand out their trash,
But it was mine in the first place, so I'll burn it to ash.
And I've tasted all the strongest meats,
And laid them down in colored sheets.
Laid them down in colored sheets.
Who needs illusion of love and affection
When you're out walking in the streets with your mainline connection? 


Demon John
Today or tonight
Better get yourself together
And transcend it, a burst of light
Blaze stars into me
While the love breaks through here and now 

Your Flesh Is So Nice
  Jewel Box
Diamonds from the pavement
Where a broken glass had been
Just like these troubles that I'm leaving to the wind
Like sapphires in boxcars speeding towards the end
Like thieves, my bad luck grows  

Satisfied Mind (Cover)
My Friends and My Lovers, I Will Leave, There's No Doubt
But One Things For Certain, When It Comes My Time
I'll Leave This Old World With A Satisfied Mind

Gunshot Glitter [Bonus Track]
Down to the sea out of the skies
Of gold cards and casual tears
I have only come to see you shine
Feminine smiles the right side is wise, more than I.
I wanna be your lover,
Lipstick my name across your mirror.
Blood red with flaked gunshot glitter
And be one with all you disowned in your young life. You paranoia politician diva.
You paranoia politician diva. 
 
Thousand Fold [Bonus Track]
There ain't a star born that brightens
More than you, you always should have known,
I'll illuminate your question,
Long time ago I'd died and gone.
What has brought the question?
Time has brought the question.
Come and call the question,
Oh, oh, oh.
Here are the stars, same thing again

I am a railroad track abandoned
With the sunset
Forgetting
I ever happened
That I ever happened

Leave My D'Angelico at Checkpoint Charlie ... Crossover Editition

This story was inspired by Bill Flanagan's book U2 At the End of the World. Particularly, this story was inspired by Bono's pants-less escapade in the newly former East Berlin when a family decides to take back their home after the fall of communism.

"I'm not here for or against any government,” Springsteen said, speaking in German. “I've come to play rock 'n' roll for you in the hope that one day all the barriers will be torn down.” July 18, 1988 Bruce Springsteen in East Berlin 

          Steam still escapes their mouths as they are locked in a passionate kiss.  The fire, not lit long enough to warm the room, warrants the sheet covering the couple, still dressed where nudity is not necessary. Biatrix hasn't taken off Alex's oversized Grenztruppen visored service cap and it is tilted sideways on her head as the two consummate the first time of seeing each other in over three months. Each thrust from Alex emanates gradually louder moans from Biatrix.

          The room that was cold and silent, is now slowly filled with the sunset, which is red as a nosebleed and filling the dank , East Berlin flat. The room and the couple are tinged in deep red tones making it appear  as if the world is on fire outside. It's heightened by the last of the light reflecting off the Spreekanal below. Outside, the faint sound of a crowd could be heard, but not by the couple who can currently only hear the sounds of each other and the straining bed.

             Just as Alex is about to name a fifth deity and collapse onto Biatrix, the crowd outside finally became obvious to them both. Just about as obvious as the footsteps tramping up the stairs.

          "Was zur Hölle ist los? Was zur Hölle ist los?" He says in a frenzy because he's supposed to be sitting in the gate guard booth a few blocks away.
     
          "Yes, just what the hell is that?" Biatrix's soft British has a hint more curiosity in it. Her brown bobbed hair makes her look like a cabaret girl. As she pushes Alex off her, a young East German border guard enters the threshold of the door. 

          "Oberleutnant!"

          Biatrix, still clad in the hat, has wrapped the sheet around her barely clothed body, leaving Alex to fend for himself by holding onto his private parts after saluting.

          "Wachtmeister?"
         
          Their level of professionalism strikes Biatrix. The Sergeant quickly updates Alex, his first Lieutenant, without being bothered of what he just interrupted. She puts her pants back on as she gathers something about a press conference gone horribly wrong. She buttons her white dress shirt and finds her sports jacket on the floor.

          She looks out the window at the throngs of East Germans passing under the window of the flat on Wallstrasse. The protests have been growing but there is something different about this. Even the massive demonstration at Alexanderplatz was impressive, but there is energy in the people below.  These people are going somewhere. They have bags with them and a look of determination.

         "Ich muss gehen." She looks at Alex as she mutters to herlelf. She must go soon.

          "Danke." Alex quickly dismisses the Sergeant and rushes to the window.  He smiles at Biatrix and kisses her.

          "It's happening." Still without pants and his shirt unbuttoned, Alex smiles as he stares out the window. "And it's happening by accident!" He starts to button his shirt as Biatrix hands his uniform trousers to him. His hands are shaking as he takes them from her.
        
          "They can go? To the West?" She begins to help Alex with his pants as he buttons his coat. "Just like that?"

           "Not really, but yes, really. Krenz just announced on live television, that starting immediately everyone can pass through the checkpoints to West Berlin...What he was not educated about or simply failed to mention was that you can apply to pass tomorrow and then still have to wait another day to go and that you won't be able to return to the East once doing so." He grabs his hat off the dresser and places it neatly onto his short blonde hair. "The communist leader in East Berlin just started a revolution."

          "I have to get back." Biatrix leans on Alex as she puts her boots on.

          The two stop and stare at each other, seemingly alone in the midst of the end of the world they've come to know. With shouts of wir wollen raus, we want out, fill the streets, the two lovers study each other.
  
           "You'll be helped by my superiors and the allies." The ecstatic mood quickly sours at the realization that British spy and empathetic and brave East German border guard are at a precipice. "You helped us. You helped so many of them."

          "Meine mutter, go to her. She will be worried. Please. I don't know how I'll..." he stops. He turns his attention to his boots, pulling them over his trousers. Then he begins to laugh.

          "What?" She asks as the moment is becoming absurd.

          "Can you please go to my flat?"

          "You're kidding. The guitar?" Biatrix puts her purse over her shoulder and habitually checks for all of her documents.
        
          "You can drop it off at the Checkpoint."

           "So you want me to casually drop off your 1964 Excel D'Angelico, in cherry red, amidst the throngs of people waiting to breathe air in the free world?" She starts to laugh as well.

            "I mean, if you could grab some of my records as well that would be great." He puts his hands on her shoulders. "Bee, I'm asking you to get my guitar.  You know that is the only thing I have from my father...For the past five years you've been smuggling people into West Berlin and valuable medicines into East Berlin all the while maintaining a secret relationship with an East German border guard under the threat of  detection by the Stasi."

         "Fine." As she grabs her coat a ruckus is heard downstairs. Thinking the crowd outside is simply overtaking the vacant building, they rush out, leaving the fireplace roaring.

          Downstairs, they are met with a family carrying their bags and seemingly their worldly possessions. "Raus aus meinem Haus!" Three burly German men cross their arms in deifiance as children begin to run past them and up the stairs.

          "Your house, this place has been vacant for years!" Biatrix doesn't even bother to answer them in German.

          Alex grabs her hand and leads her past them. They all stare at the East German soldier, uncertain of his next actions. "Willkommen zuhause!" He shouts to their surprise. Welcome home. Exiled to the west, a family is finally welcomed to return to their own home.

         At the front door, they embrace before going their separate ways. Alex kisses the top of Biatrix's head while also smelling her hair. He speaks, her hair muffling him. "I love you. Be safe."

         She squeezes him even tighter. "You need to get away as soon as possible. I'll be at Cafe Adler every day at one o'clock. If you've any problems have the allied guard call for me."

        The crowd is bumping into them as they kiss. He dissolves into the masses moving towards Checkpoint Charlie.

       Alex easily gets to the checkpoint but find that Justus, the young Sergeant is being met with defiant members of the Stasi Pass and Control Unit. They won't let anyone through.

     Now, being the most senior member of the guard at the checkpoint, he orders all gates opened. People flood through, leaving their East German passports ripped up as they enter into freedom. No more worries about the death strip, the heavily fortified no-mans-land between the East and West divide. No one else's father, like his own, will die the horrible way he did, sacrificing his life for most of his family's freedom.

       Ten days go by and each afternoon at 1 o'clock, Beatrix arrives at Café Adler. The café conveniently sits opposite the Allied side of Checkpoint Charlie. It's where she fist saw Alex, albeit from a distance as he was guarding the East German gate.

          She successfully rescued the one personal possession of Alex's that meant the world to him, only because it was his father's. The cherry red D'Angelico guitar made it's way safely to the Alex before she was quickly pushed through to the new world with the crowd.  She was met with the welcomed cheers of the Weissi, or the people of West Berlin who were handing out flowers making it feel more like Woodstock than November 9, 1989. Immediately she went to Alex's mother's flat to tell her that hopefully soon, her son would come to the West.

         Biatrix looks at the clock on the cafe wall as she sits in the back room. The cafe, set up like a railroad flat, is packed. Her allied spy hangout will become a tourist trap, she thinks to herself. The lights from the Television crews around the world have turned the dimly-lit cafe into Times Square.

        She sighs and makes sure she's left a tip. Her head down, she makes her way to the front of the building.  Someone bumps into her as she makes her way to the door.
  
         He's no longer in his green uniform, but is wearing jeans, a leather jacket, and a Bruce Springsteen t Shirt,  his guitar case flung over his shoulder. It's also been ten days since he's shaved, making him almost unrecognizable to her. Alex smiles as he turns to her.

          Beatrix leans over to the nearest table, picking a flower out of a canning jar. "May I?" She doesn't look for acceptance before handing the flower to Alex.

          "Willkommen zuhause. Welcome home." 

My Dream Set List for U2 Innocence + Experience Tour

Super excited to have U2 on the concert calendar yet again this June. So here it is, the wishlist. Yes, this set list is super long, so I'd be happy to hear each of these across three glorious nights at the Garden. 
What is your ultimate U2 set list?
 




Miracle of  (Joey Ramone)
I Will Follow
Desire
Sleep Like a Baby
Blackout
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Van Dieman's Land Intro; Please;Troubles
The Fly
Stay Faraway (So Close)
Love Comes Tumbling


Intermission

Raised by Wolves
Pride
Walk On; The Ground Beneath Her Feet
City of Blinding Lights
Where the Streets Have No Name
Treasure (Whatever Happened to Pete the Chop)
Numb
With or Without You

Encore
Window in the Skies
One Shot of Happy;New York
Is That All?
Stranger in a Strange Land
Drowning Man 
Hawkmoon 269
Gloria - 40