I went to the very first Bonnaroo the summer after my junior year of high school. My best friend and I were huge Widespread Panic fans, and we had just found out that the lead singer was going to die of pancreatic cancer (R.I.P., Mikey). Pancreatic cancer aside, it was an unbelievable lineup for my high school headiness: Phil Lesh, Gov’t Mule, Bela Fleck, Keller Williams, moe, String Cheese Incident, Trey Anastasio, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, Galactic, Ween, and, of course, Widespread Panic – just to name a few.
Our mothers had no idea that we were headed to what was being lauded as the modern day Woodstock. I think they thought it was going to be more like one big camping trip, which in some ways it was. They didn’t know what the hell we were about to get into.
But neither did we.
Throughout the nine hour journey from Charlotte, North Carolina to Manchester, Tennessee, we were extremely nervous because we were underage and had hidden four cases of Bud Light in our car. Little did we know that we would be the least of the problems for Manchester’s Finest.
When we arrived and got in the three hour waiting line, we found out that they were checking for two things in your car: people that didn’t have a ticket and tanks of nitrous oxide. When they searched our car, they found the beer. We were flushed with anxiety. We were going to spend the entire weekend in jail with three wookies who would be in there for selling nitrous.
The cop grabbed the beer, moved it to the side, lifted up the spare wheel, checked underneath it, then waved us through.
“Be safe,” the cops on horseback said.
“Thank you officer, you too,” I said back.
We pulled into our spot and found that we were parked next to a guy named Dan. Dan was a twenty-three year old who was trying to grow a beard. He installed cabinets in New Jersey. When I asked him how his job was he said, “fun”. He brought a guitar, although he told us he didn’t play it. He had a lot of Jack Daniels. He had come by himself. He whistled himself to sleep. He never took off his shoes. Thoughts of being murdered crossed my mind. I now know what it was like to sleep on a train during the dust bowl.
After we got settled, we decided to go check out the scene.
“Have you been to Shakedown?” a dude asked us.
“No, where is it?”
“That’s why I was asking you, bro!” the guys said before hacky sacking his way down the line of port-o-johns.
For those of you who haven’t been to numerous jam band concerts, “Shakedown” is short for “Shakedown Street”, the name of a famous Grateful Dead song. In the parking of any of any of these concerts, Shakedown Street is usually the equivalent of a hippie farmers market. However, Shakedown Street at the first Bonnaroo was more like a hippie Costco. There were bongs the size of tricycles. There were kids on tricycles holding bongs the size of tricycles. There were blacklight posters of Jerry. There were wood carvings of Jerry. There were wooden bongs that looked like Jerry that glowed under black light. One vendor was selling the three following items: bongs, dildos and pizza. I didn’t see any sanitation grades.
But what about the drugs? Well, they were actually kind of hard to find. If you were Helen Keller.
Stalks of marijuana were sold by topless women who looked like poorly imitated Janis Joplins. Mushrooms were sold as if someone was making a salad for a soup kitchen after a hurricane. And acid doses were sold on sheets of paper, the dealer ripping them off like he was an acupuncturist giving away his business card at the worlds largest yoga class. And we were worried about four cases of beer.
Now, we had been to numerous concerts in our day. We had seen numerous lot scenes, “Shakedowns”, veggie burritos and ganja goo balls (don’t ask). But we had never seen like this. And the music hadn’t even started.
The first night we went to see String Cheese Incident play with Keller Williams. Heady, no doubt. We heard “Freaker By the Speaker” standing right next to the speaker. Everything was cool, everyone grooving under the “harvest moon” of Tennessee. Then, directly beside us, a guy just keeled over. He started shaking and spitting up blood. We were freaking out. Then, like a wooked out Quail Man, his friend appeared.
“Dude! Holy shit! Oh man. It’s that acid. It’s that acid. It’s that acid.”
He was freaking out. He was rubbing his forehead, while trying to make his friend sit up. Then he said one of the most amazing things I have ever heard in my entire life.
“Dude, you need a cigarette.”
He proceeded to pull a pack of Marlboro Reds out and put one in his half-conscious friend’s mouth, and light it for him. The amazing part? It worked. The dude walked back to his tent, or wherever he was going, under his own power. It was a miracle.
After the show, we went back to our car. Dan was there, holding his guitar, not playing it and generally just freaking out anyone who was sober enough to pay attention.
“How was the show?” Dan said.
“It was cool. Saw some dude throw up blood,” I said.
“Oh, man, that’s crazy,” Dan said.
“Yeah, what’d you do? Which concerts did you see?”
“Concerts? Oh, I didn’t go see any concerts.”
We locked the doors of our car and went to sleep, because we had two more nights with all 100,000 of these people.
Browse Timeline
blog comments powered by Disqus
Loading ...
Comments ( View Comments )
Add a Comment