Like a million?

Braver men and women than us have foundered in the muddy, marijuana-soaked waters of Bonnaroo, the annual four-day music/camping festival on the grassy flats of Manchester, Tennessee. And though there is Jay-Z, and the Gaslight Anthem, there are also predatory drug dealers, sweltering heat, multiple bouts of rain, and dudes in tie-dye, playing didgeridoos outside your filthy tent at all hours of the night like it's their fucking job. Here in New York, our superiority complexes don't need much reinforcement, but just in case you found yourself dreaming of that Phoenix set on the Which Stage (or is it the more whimsical What Stage?), here are a gang of reasons why you're better off here than there:

More >>

​Courtesy of Purple Diary, where they note that the shearing was self-inflicted and voluntary. Not a bad look, really. And big news for a day like today. Photo by Aya Tanizaki. [Purple]

​​That right there is the world's first, possibly only, and probably last iPhone drum circle, a September 20 McCarren Park lark organized by the artist Mike Koller in association with the MTAA collective. As explained by M.River of MTAA: "The main objective of the iPhone Drum Circle is to get a total stranger to do a little dance on our blanket. That and hopefully enjoying the last summer Sunday in the park this year for an hour." May this never happen again. [Rhizome]

​Buried in yesterday's New York Times comprehensive John Edwards infidelity retrospective was an extremely uncomfortable anecdote about just what kind of promises a desperate would-be president makes to his ticking time-bomb of a mistress. Namely:

The notion that Mr. Edwards is the father has been reinforced by the account of Andrew Young, once a close aide to Mr. Edwards, who had signed an affidavit asserting that he was the father of Ms. Hunter's child.

Mr. Young, who has since renounced that statement, has told publishers in a book proposal that Mr. Edwards knew all along that he was the child's father. He said Mr. Edwards pleaded with him to accept responsibility falsely, saying that would reduce the story to one of an aide's infidelity.

In the proposal, which The New York Times examined, Mr. Young says that he assisted the affair by setting up private meetings between Mr. Edwards and Ms. Hunter. He wrote that Mr. Edwards once calmed an anxious Ms. Hunter by promising her that after his wife died, he would marry her in a rooftop ceremony in New York with an appearance by the Dave Matthews Band.

More >>

Noah Kalina

​Speaking of Pink Mountaintops, Stereogum today posts a new song from Castanets, a similarly veteran one-man/big-band psychedelic folk act. "Worn From the Fight (With Fireworks)" is as good a title as any--like most Ray Raposa compositions, the song is low-key and dazed and a certain kind of exhausted. But the details here make the thing come into focus--glitchy, clicking computer percussion; watery, hyper-synthetic bass; and a lovely trace of echo washing over everything. It's also romantic as hell, in a quiet way: "When I arrive from the endless drive to you sitting on the steps," sings Raposa, "I'll step with all of me to meet you there, my dear." Hear the track here.

​Hey, thank god, the dream is dead: Woodstock 2009, long threatened to grace Prospect Park, possibly in this very month, will not happen. It's the 40th anniversary of the festival this year, and the 10th anniversary of Woodstock 99, the malevolent cauldron of sexual assault and mud that provided a sublime eulogy for everything the first festival seemed to promise and then failed to deliver. Or, to put it a different way, as putative festival organizer Michael Lang did to Rolling Stone: "Money. No sponsors." We'll take it as heartening that worthless boomer nostalgia failed to arouse itself sufficiently to cover the projected 8-$10 million cost of a free concert in the middle of Brooklyn. After All Points West, we hope to never see another mud-covered bare foot in our entire earthly existence.

Woodstock Promoter Lang Drops Plans for 40th Anniversary Concert [Rolling Stone]

​Gathering of the Vibes Festival, the 14-year-old lark of a four-day concert in Bridgeport, Connecticut, concluded its 2009 edition on Sunday in a deluge of rain, Grace Potter, CSN, and Buddy Guy, tallying tens of thousand people in attendance and one mysterious dead body. The AP reports:

Police are investigating the death of a person whose body was found near the campsite of the four-day Gathering of the Vibes concert in Bridgeport.

The body was discovered early Sunday morning at the west side of Seaside Park, where the concert was being held. Police say they're looking into reports that someone dumped the body and drove off, but a city spokeswoman says the death does not appear to be the result of foul play.

The person who died has not been identified.

Rolling Stone adds that the death was "the first on-site fatality in the history of the festival" (as opposed to off-site fatalities?), which also featured George Clinton and Bob Weir, and quote the police as saying it may have been "medically related," which seems like code for a drug overdose. Celeb Stoner clarifies, tracing the cause of death back to the "nitrous mafia." Yikes. Says one commenter: "I AM SO SAD!!!!!!!! NO MORE F'N NITROUS!!! You are ruining our good vibes!" Or, you know, killing people.

Though it doesn't reach the lofty heights of Triumph at the Star Wars Screening or Triumph at the Tonys, the mere fact that Conan O'Brien's attack dog deigned to take on Bonnaroo suggests a certain apex of mainstream acceptance/derision. A dog puppet humping a turntable is actually an excellent way to encapsulate the whole "DJ School" concept; his extensive, awkward interview with the lass in the tent camp brought to mind a line from the Star Wars episode: "You can choose from all kinds of guys who have no idea how to please you." Passing on a Twitter joke shows remarkable restraint.

(Part 2 after the jump.)

More >>

The Twittersphere is alight with #Bonnaroo, where it's supposed to rain all weekend. But that's not the only reason to avoid the annual mud-soaked four-day "camping festival" in Manchester, Tennessee:

The pigs are apparently out in full force. Also, the word "'roo."

You might end up inadvertently becoming this hobbit's bitch.

More >>

See this is pretty much why we don't go to weekend-long outdoor music festivals. That and sunburn, heat stroke, visible back tattoos, dudes in flip-flops, clouds of dust, a preponderance of bands whose names begin with the letters "p" and "h," and the fact that you have to survive on the grimiest food possible, sometimes for days. Anyway, this is Seattle's Sasquatch festival, and that is a dude dancing in an all too familiar way to Santigold, who surely would be less sanguine about this reinterpretation of her music than she ultimately turned out to be about Terry Urban's Southerngold. It made us laugh, which you know, on a Friday, is something. [h/t West Coast Sound]