Saturday 17/06/06 Day 3 @ Bonnaroo Festival, Manchester, Tennessee

The press trailer is abuzz with talk of rain.  Two correspondents from Nashville report drizzle on the way down to Manchester.  Here at noon, however, the sun shines bright for The Magic Numbers.

In his review of the Robert Altman film, A Prairie Home Companion, Roger Ebert describes it as a film with which you would want to cuddle.  The same adjective applies to the music of The Magic Numbers.  Romeo Stodart’s self-effacing, humble modesty is a refreshing change of pace for a frontman.  The songs are brilliant, with a take-charge bass straight out of Interpol.  And the female voices are divine.  They also have a melodica.  That never hurts.  The Magic Numbers – together with The Dears, are leading the resurgence of melodica-laden greatness in modern rock.

But the crowd surge has already begun.  Our elbowroom at the beginning of the set has vanished.  We know what we have to do.  Time to trudge on down to What Stage.  Time to camp out for Radiohead.

Lord Ambiance:  Can I get a beer first?

Certainly.

We catch the end of the Neville Brothers.  Aaron in his tattooed eunuch glory.  We receive compliments on Lord Ambiance’s chairs.  “They’re the perfect height.”  “No wonder,” says Gigwise, “they’re French.”

If a theme exists for Bonnaroo 2006, it is this:  Renew Orleans.  They’ve got it printed on T-shirts in the Preservation Hall Café, where, last night, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band led a conga chain right out into the night air thanks to an infectious tuba riff – think Trick Daddy’s “Shut Up,” or The Streets’ “It was Supposed to Be So Easy.”  In the year 2000, Gigwise caught the same band on their home turf and it wasn’t even close to being this sensational.

Yes, it’s a major embrace of New Orleans for this year’s Bonnaroo.  Coming up next, Big Easy resident Allen Toussaint, together with Elvis Costello.  It would’ve been better had it just been Toussaint.  After every song, Elvis, like a cantankerous codger talking back to the nightly news, feels the need to proselytize the crowd with his anti-Bush administration diatribes.  Here’s his take on FEMA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he calls them, “jackasses and nincompoops.”  Well no shit, Elvis.  Tell us something we don’t know.  The topper is when he unleashes a George W. Bush bobblehead, modified by masking tape and ink so that the base reads, “knob.”  Okay, coot, we get the point.  This is as tired as the redneck comedian’s Dick Cheney jokes over in the comedy tent.  Just shut up and playing ****in “Alison” already.  Sixty excruciating minutes pass before he gets to “Watching the Detectives.”  The interim is filled with back catalogue fodder like “Clown Strike.”  “This is an old song of mine I like to put a new coat of paint on every now and then.”  Gigwise has a question:  How exactly would a clown strike affect society?  Knob.

Is it time for Beck yet?

Hey, here he comes.  Wait.  That’s not him.  That’s Tom Petty, isn’t it?  Oh no.  Don’t tell me he’s doing the same damn set as last September at the Riviera in Chicago.  The band is at a table eating dinner.  Yes, same show.  Check the archives.  Only difference this time around is Beck’s got a puppet show.  Toward the end of the set, there’s a film with the puppets shot on-site at Bonnaroo, which saves Beck’s skin, for no other reason than it being a colossal pisstake on the hippies.  Message to Beck: you live in Hollywood, get into movies, man.  It’s obvious you ain’t feeling the music any more, the performing component, at least.  But your comic timing and line delivery are phenomenal.  I’ll have my agent call your agent.  Let’s do lunch, babe.  

Since his 1999 gyrations to Midnite Vultures, Beck has aged 17 years in the last seven.  You can see it on his face on the Jumbotron – once cherubic, now haggard.  You can see it in the way he’s hired that speccy goofball to be his one-man cheerleading squad.  Most of all, you can hear it in the way he forgets the lyrics to half his songs.  In fact, the only time he shows a bit of energy the whole show is when he pulls out a cover of the Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize?”  The guitars are washed right out of set-closer, “E-Pro” (should’ve been the set-opener).  All in all, a half-hearted performance.