Thursday night, the energy was thick, electric, hanging in the air, harboring the events about to unfold here in Bonnaroo. As were heading out into the thick of things, we passed a campsite where they had these huge cookers set up into which thousands and thousands of live crawfish were being boiled. This was just one
campsite. There are at least 50-60,000 other campsites doing pretty much the same thing. Getting our party on.



The first band of the evening, The Black Angels ripped out of the gate with a gorgeous shoegazing set that ended with a Spaceman 3 meets Iggy version of "I Wanna Be Your Dog."

Then Mutemath came on and literally destroyed the place. The band's album is kinda Margo meets Electronica, with a couple interesting songs, however, live, this New Orleans band pulled out all the stops, taking the crowd on a musical tour de force that summoned the spirts of everybody from Jerry Lee Lewis, Jagger, even GG Allin(!). They were so good they got the first naked guy of the fest up on stage with them. Paul, the Mutemath lead singer was a psychopath, rolling over his keyboard rig like it was a gymnastics horse, and ending the show by taking out the giant light display behind them. The Dude ran and threw himself full-on sideways into it. No shit.



After that the hippies split over to wiggle to Tea Leaf Green, while the rockers stayed to see Clutch, who sounded like the Fat guy in BTO trying to be Robert Plant. And the cool indie kids went to mope with The National.
They all had some moments, but nothing like what Mutemath pulled out. Things ended up with a late night set by Athens, GA band The Whigs who did a nice little groovy garagey set capped by a fuzzed out cover of "Instant Karma"
As I'm walking back to die in our new home, I could hear a thousand voices filling the air. "And We ALLLLL SHINE ON!!!!"

Nice way to start things off.

-Jeff Napier
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