Over the 12-hour period from noon to midnight yesterday,
Bonnaroo organizers slowly
rolled out the the list of artists performing at this year's festival, being held June 10-13th on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee. It was convoluted and senselessly complicated but, I guess, remarkably effective from a PR standpoint. Now that the dust has settled and we can take a big-picture look at the whole lineup, one thing is certain: for better of worse, Bonnaroo continues to be the most diversified festival around, catering equally to hipster-types (Phoenix, The xx, The National), country-loving jam-band-type (The Zac Brown Band, Miranda Lambert, Kris Kristofferson) and no-brainer mainstream-types (Weezer, Kings of Leon, Dave Matthews). They've even got an impressive slate of hip-hop artists lined up this year: Jay-Z, Kid Cudi, Nas (With Damian Marley), Wale. I thought for a minute about how Bonnaroo seems to contradict what everyone always says about how our culture has become one of highly specialized niches, and my heart was briefly warmed, but then I realized the niche of people who like Weezer, Kings of Leon, Dave Matthews and Jay-Z is just way, way bigger than all the other niches. Anyway, if you're going, be sure to get back to Brooklyn right away for a certain local music festival happening soon thereafter.
