Bonnaroo 2017 Lineup Announced

Gaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!

Just the first two on the poster, man.  U2 and Red Hot Chili Peppers?!?!  Just those two make me feel like I need to cancel my family vacation scheduled for June and go to the sticks in Tennessee and get my camp and jam on.  DANG!  Those are both bands I'd go see on their own, and pay a bunch to see, so having both of them for the price of a festival is huge.  Maybe, just maybe, this reflects what ACL will get in the fall?  THAT WOULD BE AWESOME.

After that, I think you can see two artists that are going to be making the poster for every major festival - Lorde and the XX - meaning that we likely can expect them to show up at ACL as well.

After those first two big names, you've got a lot of the new-normal for these festivals:

• Some good stuff (Chance the Rapper, Cage the Elephant, The Head & the Heart, Car Seat Headrest, Royal Blood, Strumbellas)
• a hitmaker I don't care for (The Weeknd)
• some EDM garbage that I don't care about but the kids like (Major Lazer, Flume, Marshmello)
• terrible rappers (Travis Scott and Torey Lanez)
• and then a bunch of stuff I don't know (Big Gigantic, Glass Animals, Future Islands, Crystal Castles, Yellow Claw, etc.).  Those band names are kind of funny.  Its like a computer algorithm picked them out after being told that humans enjoy band names that contain one Adjective followed by one Noun.

They give a slight nod to the old school ethos of the Roo, with Umphrey's Mcgee near the top of the poster, but it sure seems like this festival used to be more about jam bands and that world, rather than chasing hot R&B garbage like the Weeknd.  But maybe that is just my recollection.

Also, this poster doesn't take long to just disappear down some wormhole of WTF.  I know the small type people aren't usually big artists, but I just did a mental straw poll of the bottom 14 lines of this poster, and I've heard of 15 but have not heard of 54.  Heard of, I don't even know what Greensky Bluegrass or D.R.A.M. actually sound like, but I've heard those names before.  Woah.  That might be totally normal, but it feels like a pretty large percentage of unknowns.  Which could be super rad, or totally terrible, honestly.

I'd go see this, literally to see the top two on the poster, and then just fill in with other stuff that seemed interesting.  I guess I'd be hopeful that Lorde's new music is good, hopeful that some of those bands I've never heard of in the large type print end up being something other than EDM, and then go wild with random stuff at the bottom of the poster.  Because maybe Wilderado and Unlike Pluot are freaking amazing.  I dunno!  Or I'd do a lot of the drugs with the kids and sleep through the entire weekend in my crap-stained tent.  One or the other...