Roo Coverage from a late night
Rudeness, over-ego, disrespect, call it what you want, but that’s the feeling of the late night that lasted until sunrise on Saturday. I wanted to check out Kanye West, something entirely different for the Bonnaroo crowd. He was first to go on around 8:00, at the same time jack Johnson was to go on. That didn’t fly with him so he was moved to the first late night show on the main stage to go on at 2:45 AM. Late, but reasonable for most of the Bonnaroo crowd. While everyone was waiting it was moved to 3:00…..3:15….3:30….3:45 (announced at 4:00 A.M.). I made two trips back to my tent, came back and he still wasn’t on. Finally at 4:20, fairly appropriate, though still uncalled for, Kanye took the stage. Well, It looked more like a giant laptop that he rapped to pre-recoded music. The music wasn’t great, the stage show was worse, and for all the hype and waiting, it was easily the worst show I’ve seen from my 6 years shooting ‘Roo. If I want to see a performance of someone walking around to a cheesy lights and “storyline” side show, I’ll watch my 4 year old niece’s DVDs. I was willing to give Kanye a chance even though he refused to make any changes in his show and had to move his time/stage throwing the schedule of the entire festival off. His disrespect for artists that played around him and common courtesy to the (few) fans left standing tells me more then enough about Kanye West. I won’t be stopping for his show at Lollapalooza, not worth another sleepless night when I have work to do covering the rest of the more talented artists.
I took in about 4 songs, had enough, and a few of us went to the Farris Wheel and actually caught sunrise at the top. I guess one good thing came from it.
At that point it was time for sleep. Hope I have enough energy to make it through one more Sunday after such a disappointing night. Death Cab for Cutie should be awsome, as with a few others, but slow day overall.
Too bad about Kanye – what a punk. Waiting up till 4:20 am is ridiculous.