The Boss Rules Bonnaroo with a Pumped Fist

Usually at Bonnaroo, my musical ADD makes me hop from one show to another after six or eight songs—there’s just so much good stuff to hear. But two artists accounted for over five hours of my time yesterday—Wilco and Bruce Springsteen. A two-hour set from Wilco reminded me that the band has two of my favorite guitarists—Jeff Tweedy and Nils Cline—and Pat Sansone ain't no slouch. I Tweeted to the world (or at least the small portion of the world that gives a crap about my proclamations) that there are very few live bands better than Wilco right now. But I saw one of those few later on that same stage when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played their first U.S. festival ever.

Amazingly, I’d never seen the Boss before—a fact that I’ve taken a lot of heat for as editor of music magazine. As I’m sure you already know, all the hype is well-deserved. He’s a manic preacher/showman/everyman, using every part of the stage, including on top of the piano. He jogged up and down the aisle towards the soundboard, leaning into the crowd, standing up on the railing, taking requests by grabbing fans’ homemade signs. He was the Boss, commanding us to sing along with “Santa Claus is Comin’ To Town,” despite the dusty sweat baked onto our bodies by a Tennessee day in June, despite his own protestations that it’s “too fucking hot for Santa,” all because a fan had handed him a giant cardboard Santa. And we did. We did whatever he said, whether or not it made sense.

But Wilco and Bruce were just part of my Bonnaroo experience yesterday. While blogging from the Paste tent yesterday morning, I listened to Grace Potter, Katzenjammer and Brett Dennan on the Sonic Stage 30 feet away. Afterwards, it was time for a humor break. Bonnaroo integrated comedy as a part of the festival experience years ago, and it’s a trend that has reached most big American festivals now. Jimmy Fallon, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter are all in Manchester this weekend, and I watched the Daily Show All-Stars. After a taped introduction from Jon Stewart during which he claimed he could still smell us up in New York, Wyatt Cenac, Kristen Schall, Rob Riggle and John Oliver all performed. Unsurprisingly Oliver was the funniest of the bunch. Schaal's descriptions of Bonnaroo dancing were even funnier when I ended up dancing next to her during both Of Montreal and Wilco later in the day.

After Oliver finished, I bolted straight to Bon Iver, one tent over. I'd just seen him a week earlier, but Justin Vernon has become an exceptional live performer. He takes his quiet songs and plays with the dynamics so they build into these enormous moments that one of my friends compared to Sigur Rós. Not bad for a soft-spoken singer/songwriter. He had us all singing along to “Wolves” for a perfect ending.

On the same stage a little later was Of Montreal. Kevin Barnes’ show was the kind of thing people come to Bonnaroo to see. It featured cave dwellers covered in white body powder breaking a bottle over the head of Beatle Bob, gift-wrapped gas masks under a Christmas tree, pig-people grooming faceless people and getting groomed by happy troll-people who then reveal themselves as the cave-dwellers and run off with the pig-maiden, football players shooting confetti and tackling each other, a dinosaur-man with huge arms tossing rubber balls into the crowd, a bird-man popping glitter-filled balloons, and, of course, killer songs. And that was all before I left to catch Wilco.

After Bruce, I listened to a bit of Nine Inch Nails, but the crowd was so packed in, I decided to stick around for just a few songs of what Trent Reznor claimed would be the band’s final U.S. performance. We’ll see how long that holds.

Today promises to be a good one with Ted Leo, Elvis Perkins, Jessica Lea Mayfield, Erykah Badu, Madi Diaz, Andrew Bird, Okkervil River, Band of Horses and Neko Case all playing. And then while everyone else watches Phish, we’ll beat the traffic home.