Tomb of the Mutilated

The sheer amount of music presented over the course of the three days of the Bonnaroo Music Festival, held in Tennessee over a June weekend in 2002, was staggeringly diverse. With over four stages, music was presented from roughly 2:00 in the afternoon until sometime after sunrise (a schedule is included in the liner notes). Though the appeal of the event was built around a number of strong-drawing jam bands (notably Widespread Panic, Phish's Trey Anastasio, String Cheese Incident, the Grateful Dead's Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, moe., the Disco Biscuits), the music looked much deeper than that and included acts such as Ween, Amon Tobin, Norah Jones, Z-Trip, Jurassic 5, Blackalicious, and others. The resulting two-CD set, while unfortunately giving the short stick to most of the hip-hop and electronic artists on the bill, serves as a nice road map to the independent/college music scene as it was in 2002. The music is extremely accessible on the whole; stuff that 60,000 people could get behind. Despite a predilection toward jam bands, the music rarely gets too exploratory, as the producers struggle to cram 21 performers across two discs. The most interesting and original improvisation comes from Trey Anastasio's big band (performing with far more aplomb than on Anastasio's contemporary solo effort) through a ten-minute skronking freefall on "Last Tube." The disc is also peppered with a few derivative efforts, including Gov't Mule's "Banks of the Deep End" and North Mississippi Allstars' "Sugartown." But for every boring number, there are also creative original songs from the likes of moe ("Captain America"), and Ween ("Bananas and Blow"). There is a palpable energy on each and every part of the two CDs' tracks, as the performers (most of whom weren't used to performing to such huge crowds) are clearly jazzed to be performing in front of a sea of seething bodies. [Also available on video and DVD.]