Bonnaroo 2007 moment of furious closure

If Saturday was about the winning of hearts, Sunday was the moment of swell, one constant bulbous swell bent on a mission to rock-or-burst.  Or both. 

The heat shot to its most incapacitating yet.  Roo’ers were laying under picnic tables, next to garbage cans, behind other Roo’ers for shade.  The fainting began, the first dropping being witnessed at my second show of the day, Elvis Perkins.  I was in the photographer pit, swinging to Perkins’ brand of jazzy Americana, mutually aching with the thump of this hot, wooden stand-up bass.  She was right behind me, the fan; just dropped from the waiting, the coveted front row spot got the best of her. 

Good news is she was okay.  Security gave her a little water and she was back on her feet, just in time to hear a separate fan, mid-crowd, belt out this: 

The—way—you—play—your—music—makes—me—feel—good—inside.

In print it kind of looks cheesy.  But it was this almost practiced cadence, this raw conviction that forced a sweet festival rock smile on everyone there, including the fallen soldier in the front. 

From here on out, no dust, no heat, no hangover, bad trip, $10 burrito could ruin the ascension to mass music appreciation. 

Wolfmother immediately kicked up the pace, blazing through a mid-afternoon slot, ripping solos behind heads, swinging mics in the air.  If you were watching from a cross-stage vantage point, all you could see was this dirty dancing fury of southern-tinged, balls-in-a-vice rock. 

The Decemberists followed suit, though via acoustic circus tricks, oddly opening with one of their most quirkiest Picarasque songs, “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” – the one that sounds like a sea chanty – that allowed enough time for me to go grab a beer from the press tent, trek the 200-yard path around the back of the stage and arrive mid-crowd, notebook in hand for the next song.  Fellow Portlander John Roderick from The Long Winters could be seen side-stage, toe-tapping to the mostly Crane Wife cuts that would follow.  Roderick joked pre-show, in the press area, that he would run across the stage naked to steal the spotlight…yeah, that never happened. 

Frontman Colin Meloy was the first to revolt against the heat, instructing the crowd to collectively point at the sun, drag it down with their fingers shouting “Go Down Sun!  Go Down!” That didn’t satisfy him, though, “Everybody start stomping…see how much dust we can kick up, huh?” Actually that was kind of counterproductive, choking up throats.  But it did reverse the oppression.  The Roo’ers realized that they were in charge now.

So was the vibe over at Wilco’s stage, Roo’ers dancing in mass-defiance to the heat.  To all the press that claimed their latest album, Sky Blue Sky, dad-rock-tame, please answer to Nels Kline and Jeff Tweedy’s wall of bleeding-heart, dueling fret-burning on “You Are My Face.” I don’t know anybody with rock in their veins who wasn’t bubbling at this point.  The quartet’s answer?  Another Sky Blue Sky track, “Shake It Off,” slowing mid-song to allow tweedy to punctuate “so many beating hearts in one place.”

Tweedy, with everybody’s hearts in his hands threw an ace with a song “that everybody seems to know the words to,” inciting a mass sing-along with “Jesus, Etc,” the fiddle-laden ballad tugged and tugged, 50,000 Roo’ers chiming in on the lyric “our love is all we got.”

I talk about all this heart-swelling like it was some reincarnation of Woodstock.  No.  Do not enter those images.  Enter this:

A sunset, mass-exodus to the center of the grounds via The White Stripes.  90,000 Roo’ers of all tastes flooding the dry, dry dirt with sweat-beaded limbs and brows.  Jack and Meg didn’t even bother with a salutation, just jump-kicked straight in to some filthy Detroit garage-blues, crunching power chords, thundering bass drums as if racing to rock the sun out of the sky.  It was fist-pumping fury.  It was beatnik-era jazz yelps – Roo, Roo, Roo!  Go, Go, Go! Yes, Yes, Yes! No time for song titles.  When Jack did speak, it was some speedball backwoods dribble: 

It’sReallyGoodToBeHearDownInTennesseeMegYouThinkSoToo?

This was Bonnaroo 2007.  This was a festival bursting with true music hearts, defying shitty weather, style boundaries, in the name of appreciation and most of all, rockness.