Bonnaroo Festival Expands Beyond Jam Bands

[DudeAsInCool]

In a front page article of the NYTimes, John Pareles examines the growth of the Bonnaroo Festival:

'Back to a Garden Where More Than Jams Flower':

MANCHESTER, Tenn., June 17 — Each year the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival insists it’s not just a hippie jam-band festival. This year two of Bonnaroo’s three headliners came from way off the jam-band circuit — Tool on Friday night and the Police on Saturday. Other performers on the three-and-a-half-day schedule spanned British rock, Canadian pop, soul, bluegrass, reggae, jazz and alternative hip-hop along with jam-band stalwarts like Sunday’s finale headliner, Widespread Panic.

...The reunited Police were a perfect fit for Bonnaroo. They were always a trio of virtuosos, packing jazzy inversions into three-minute pop songs. What disappeared when the band broke up in 1983 was a chance to hear the interaction of musicians whose blend and friction forged one of rock’s most original ensemble sounds. They left behind terse, neatly arranged studio albums and a few live recordings. Now on tour again, they are jamming other options. Their Bonnaroo set interspersed familiar arrangements with new ones, often within the same song.

...Maynard James Keenan, the leader of Tool, mocked Bonnaroo’s hippie atmosphere: “I assume you’re on the marijuana and the LSD,” he deadpanned. “You’re all under arrest.” But Tool played a magnificent set, with songs that built from monumentally slow, earth-shaking intros to fast, intricate progressive-rock. In a way Tool could have been the Police’s evil twin, using equally intricate, quick-fingered music along with an infusion of harder rock to sound more menacing. Bonnaroo’s crowd danced even as Mr. Keenan sang about a Deadhead drug casualty in “Rosetta Stoned.”

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